Here for the Lols

In his 1976 book, “The Selfish Gene,” Richard Dawkins explored the way genes relate to human evolution and, particularly, factors that connect genetic behavior to non-biological elements—what in our culture was moving from generation to generation outside our physical makeup.

Within the framework of evolutionary biology, Dawkins saw a universe driven by Darwinian principles. That in all the chaos of chromosomes and cosmos you can find some purpose, some predictable behavior, and the genetic pattern of “replicate, variate, select” guides this directionality—that the universe is evolving in a "best" direction. Genes are naturally selecting to help us adapt and exist in our surroundings. And if genes are, why can’t non-genetic entities do the same thing?

Dawkins considered behaviors, ideas, stories and beliefs, all to be pieces that transferred across generations to adapted and survive. How in a dark room, when someone walks in with a cake in candle light, we all know to start singing “Happy Birthday” for reasons beyond our biology. He called these transferrable elements that shape our existence “memes.”

Dawkins saw the universe as a complex framework of language, religion, culture, belief, humor, legend, all vying for position in our collective conscience. As humans shared songs, ritual dances, knowledge of when to plant crops, the strongest elements would survive with the next generation just like genes.

Mimetic theory argues that we are less originators of new ideas, less true creators, and more imitators and purveyors of memes, trying to always share the best information, the best version of an idea, the best piece of art, so it will survive to the next generation. It explains why spirituality, humor and artistry remain dominant human traits even when they don’t always seem to demonstrate an evolutionary advantage. It’s also hugely complex work that helps explain why our brains have evolved to be so large, even when it’s a huge biological hazard for a human woman to birth offspring with heads of our size.

Today, when we talk about memes, we often think of image macros: digital photos with text overlay, often done in Impact font. We think of memes as remixes, in the way we think of the elements of hip-hop music or collage art, but also in the way Ancient Sanskrit theatre would reuse gods and stock characters from Indian mythology, Shakespeare would steal characters and entire storylines from existing plays, or Disney appropriates narratives from a variety of folk traditions often retaining only a few choice elements—just enough to ensure we connect some past understanding to their story.

Memes are bigger than any single creator. They are a big part of our digital shift towards cultural singularity, as we allow more and more creation and remixing without clear authorship. We are deviating from a model where culture moves from source to receiver. Today, it’s more nebulous than that. We often can’t pinpoint where a joke began or what the Ur-version was, but we watch the repeated structure and absorb fragments of a joke until we know the rules.

It transcends to the real world as well with, for example, the global spread of vocal fry and vocal patterns that rise at the end of each sentence because of streaming American reality TV shows and many early YouTubers being from Southern California. Or, consider the introduction of words like noob, derp, photobomb, google, selfie, sext, lol, troll, unfriend, or TLDR into the dictionary. In true Dawkins fashion, meme and internet culture can have as significant an impact on who you become as your genetics and the culture of your immediate environment.

Memes are simple, making them highly shareable, and allowing them to function as elements of language, like emojis adding flourish to digital speech in a way that presents sentiment and context in an otherwise static mode. They’re split into genres, like “rap lyrics rewritten in Colonial English vernacular over Joseph Decreux’s 1793 self portrait,” identifying memes as sortable by category, as any art form. This also shows meme as historical critic, if not educating, at least nodding to our shared past. And perhaps, subtly, illustrating notions of hegemony, colonialism, the absence of persons of color in much of pre-1900s Western art. White appropriation of hip-hop culture online. Us laughing at the biggest internet joke of all, someone who is inauthentic.

Some move from history to current affairs, as with Biden / Obama memes, reflecting the rise of ubiquitous news in the 2010s, but also our ability to construct history on the internet. I have never been in a room with Barack and Joe but imagine their relationship was much more strained and complicated than these memes reflect. This, however, is how future generations will perceive the intimacy of their administration.

Some don’t rewrite, but perhaps re-prioritize history. Memes that have unexpectedly made Smash Mouth, Nickelback, Shrek, Spongebob Squarepants, Guy Fieri, and A Bee Movie common staples of the web provide these assets future historical relevance in a way that they never would have had otherwise.

And some deliberately reimagine history, a la Ted Cruz / Zodiac Killer memes or “Sarkozy Was There” memes, seemingly for humor, but in a 2016 Public Policy poll, 38% of Florida voters claimed there was a likelihood Ted Cruz might be the Zodiac Killer, implying these jokes may be more pervasive than we realize.

Memes are us telling stories to make sense of the world around us. In this way, we use memes as we use mythology. Philosopher Raptor was derived from the “Advice Animal” parent genre made popular in 2006 as people began widely sharing images of their pets on the net, giving rise to LOLCats and Advice Dog. These play with the idea of anthropomorphism and connect to the concept of the beast fable common in medieval folklore: a talking animal brings wisdom and often follows, or ironically contradicts, stereotypes about their species.

Myth and religion have always been about clarifying unexplainable phenomena. Memes follow this trend giving secular reasoning behind strange moments in culture or history. Or in many instances, they just comment on and connect to these moments, using powerful reach, providing avenues for reaction and response, as any good shaman might.

Memes are increasingly about substantive subjects and delve into the more sophisticated realms of ontology, global issues, and feeling. Memes, too, more frequently feature everyday people, rather than stock photo models, celebrities or historical figures. This presentation of the every-person, of bringing the protagonist from “someone you’ve only heard of” to “someone you could conceivably know” is a frequent trope in local folklore and urban legend.

Memes evolve to intersect multiple ideas, like Kanye at the VMAs and the Bayreux tapestry. Pulling stock characters into new settings is a common device in folklore across culture, notably with popular figures like Coyote in Navajo mythology, Anansi in West African mythology, or John Constantine in DC Comics.

Memes can be connected by language, rather than image, sharing text-based jokes and frameworks, prompted by the insertion of something as innocuous as a few words. Simpler still, early internet memes were just symbols made to look like different things, like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, ([:]V).

Now, internet memes have evolved to include video. Shared ideas and jokes can translate incredibly well in this medium. Our tools to create with video have grown up too, creating a greater parity among everyday users. In the same way that papyrus allowed us to record stories, the printing press revolutionized pamphlets, portable typewriters democratized the novel and photocopiers upended zine culture, Photoshop 3.0’s 1994 introduction of layers and sites like memegenerator.net have expanded access to photo-based memes. And platforms like Vine (#RequiescatInPace), Snapchat and TikTok give an avenue for creators to capture and edit video with the necessary tools to participate in mimetic discourse.

Our increased communication through memes is guiding how we use social media. Social channels have become saturated with memes and meme culture, from content, to structure, to comments and conversation, to the tools of the platform itself. Social media is following our vision, and as such, tools that allow us to make, share and participate will continue to evolve and find favor in the digital landscape.

Expect more robust tools in platforms like TikTok, the emergence of comparable tools within existing apps like Snapchat and Facebook and Instagram, and the rise of their copycat apps that seek to tap into a digital desire to meme with new media. And beyond video, who knows what's next? VR-based memes, live challenges and stunts. More AR filters and games. Geocaching the dankest of memes. Deepfake pranks. Whatever's ahead, you're going to want to buckle up.

Internet memes are a contemporary manifestation of a millennia-old human need to imitate, create, and share. They are reshaping our language, altering our perception of history and generating new folklore. It’s a frequent question what purpose they serve, but part of the phenomenon is the ambiguity of that answer. Like asking the purpose of art, religion or humor, there’s a lot to unpack.

Memes build connection and informal community. They provide the coveted sense of being in on an inside joke. They satisfy our desire to generate. They give us a chance to be a maker and see someone respond positively to something we did, seconds after we did it. And as with any creative discipline, they force us to look at the world around us and teach some manner of compassion, of empathy.

Or maybe they just make us laugh. Maybe people who aggregate on the internet are inclined towards social anxiety and depression, feel they don’t fit in with existing friend groups all the time, feel worried about the state of the world as they over-consume news with its now titanic proliferation. Maybe memes are a cultural salve, beacons of joy in what can otherwise feel a pretty barren landscape.

Maybe memes are just our way to cope, just our way to reach out to someone else who’s coping too.

And maybe that’s enough.