Personally, I first encountered Internet memes on social networking sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, YouTube and Twitter. Typically comedic or satirical in style, the audience for the phenomenon tends to be that of the younger, Internet savvy generations that spread ideas through mixed media on their personal blogs. The content often varied; from political to ridiculous, memes popularize an assortment of different things. With the advent of the Internet age, and the new services it provides, like message forwarding, text and instant messaging, and the heightened use of social networking sites, memes, and with them, opinions, expressions, and ideas are much more quickly spread.

            Though some Internet memes express political ideology, cultural phenomena, or societal movements, most are less poignant, taking on parody, imitation, and manipulation to get a point across. Whatever form they take, they are typically an expression of the self or of a group, and thus provide a rich view into the culture of the very Internet itself, causing some social researchers to question if their place in other areas of our world. Where they are created, and how to ensure their popularity, however, is the real mystery behind memes. Typically based on opinion, and wholly reliant on their web-based audience to gain popularity, there is no exact science in determining which new meme will rise to fame next, as no one can determine what the audience will take to. Further, due to the rapidity of the Internet, and the accessibility to some sites that make it easy to create new memes, (such as memegenerator.net), it is hard to trace the rise to fame of a certain meme, as it can spread so rapidly through the channels of the Internet from it’s point of origin.

            Memes themselves can vary in form. Videos such as the “Rickrolling” meme came to popularity as a prank on YouTube.  The video, usually titled as something attention grabbing, would typically appear in the “suggested videos” sidebar of the site, and once clicked, would redirect you instead into Rick Astley’s music video for his song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. This trend, called “Rickrolling” grew to popularity, culminating in an April Fool’s Day joke by the moderators of YouTube in 2008, when they masked several “Rickrolling” videos as the “featured videos” on the site. Other memes can be represented as images or graphics with captions. The meme “LOLcats” grew to popularity in this way, featuring several candid and humorous pictures of cats with text featuring poor spelling and strange phrasing superimposed on top of them. Sent often through emails, these were clearly meant more as a joke than to inform. Other memes are just graphics re-represented in other situations, such as the “Pepper Spraying Cop”. At a UC Davis peaceful protest in November 2011, a police officer was photographed casually pepper spraying several students participating in the protest. To make this event more known, and in the spirit of parody, his image was quickly photoshopped, and re-represented throughout art, film, and history, pepper spraying various subjects from the The Beatles walking across Abbey Road to the Mona Lisa. In making this meme so popular, the deeds of the officer were condemned internationally, and a new interest in the “Occupy” movement was created.

            Due to their obvious popularity, and seeming permanence, Internet memes are now a subject studied at a social level. The way they influence thought, are influenced by current events and popular culture, shape speech, and entertain mass audiences has proved that memes have a significant societal impact, especially among the lives and culture of the young. They have become almost an extension of Walter Ong’s “second orality”, providing a new venue for Internet-era communication, as they are passed back and forth, utilized, referenced, and infused into everyday language just as often as regular speech. Their obvious influence has not gone unnoticed in other areas of society as well. Advertising experts picked up on the trend that Internet memes can create quickly, and have begun utilizing them for their products just as fast. These ad tactics have inspired such popular memes like the “Old Spice Guy”, originating from an Old Spice commercial, that has since spawned several parodies and references. These memes, though satirical, create a new place for advertisers to generate interest in their products, giving memes yet another reason to stick around in the future.

            Internet memes are a somewhat difficult concept to grasp. Ranging from jokes about cats with poor spelling, to bad music videos produced by talentless 13-year olds, to graphics making social comments masked in parody, their genres are indeterminable, and one can never predict what form they will take next. Essentially a form of self-expression, they provide a rich look into the ever-developing culture of the Internet environment. Wide spread, and fame inducing, they can decide what we, as the users of the Internet, care about next, and have the power of taking the smallest of events and bringing them to light. Though they are a somewhat new occurrence, and have the tendency to stray towards the comical, Internet memes should not be in any way discounted, as their impact on modern society is an unprecedented occurrence.