Stop Global Warming Right Meow! Project Overview
The objective of our project was to not only create memes that addressed the issue of global warming, but also for our created memes to provide a certain level of political/social commentary and generate discussion and critical response on the image/message boards we posted on. In trying to decide what types of images we wanted to use, we decided to capitalize on the emergence of the cat as an internet phenomenon and use the burgeoning and readily-available database of cat memes on message boards across the internet to remix and create our own memes about global warming / climate change. This, we thought, would prove a successful approach, as intertextuality and the remix of elements of popular culture are key factors in producing viral online memes.
In creating our images, we really wanted our memes to look like memes, and thus wanted to draw upon as many recognizable stylistic elements of existing memes as possible. The idea of writing in LOLspeak and the use of the heavy white, black-outlined Impact typeface, in particular, were key identifying features of memes that we incorporated across all of our images. Furthermore, seeing as an overwhelming quadrant of viral memes are GIFs, we, too, explored the medium and created a GIF animation of our own.
We posted our memes on our Tumblr and on 4Chan and Canvas, and tagged all of our images with tags including, #haha #funny #lolcats #lolcatz #cats #cat #lol #lmao #rofl #meme #global warming #climate change #extreme weather #water #wtf. This let our memes pop up in searches for more exposure and distribution. The Tumblr we created also allowed followers to reference back to a homepage if they saw one of our memes to see our other memes. On Tumblr, we received 50+ “likes” and “reblogs” and 8 followers, which was indicative of certain sucesses in getting responses and showing that our memes were getting around, but because the nature of Tumblr is heavily image-based and not very conducive to discussion, the responses were not critical in nature.
We then posted the memes onto 4chan and Canvas, and received different responses on each website. The different cultures and environments on each site provided for different responses. 4chan proved to be the best place to create a discussion. We posted a few different memes into the /b/ section and were able to get responses to each meme posted. The longest thread came from the “noah?” meme with the caption “do you believe in global warming?”, which we posted more than once, and each post got multiple replies. Although a lot of comments were not sympathetic to global warming, many claiming it is made up by “brainwashed ultra-liberal west coast candy ass,” it still created a discussion nonetheless.
Throughout the course of this project, we bore closely in mind the qualities of a meme as detailed by Knobel & Lankshear. In their article Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production, they outline that popular memes must have 1) an element of humor, 2) a rich level of intertextuality that references and remixes popular culture, and 3) that they are based on the ironic and awkward juxtaposition of images. Our memes are all quite successful in incorporating these three elements: they all incorporate a certain level of quirky humor by awkwardly, ironically juxtaposing images, some of which we created and some of which we found and remixed. However, most importantly, our memes manage to remix popular culture to achieve a high level of intertextuality. Our GIF animation, the “Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wife” meme, for instance, manages to remix not only cats with global warming, but also reference Antoine Dodson, a man whose news interview went viral on Youtube and coined the catchphrase “Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wife.”
In addition, our project was also greatly informed by our readings of Jodi Dean. In her book Blog Theory, Dean raises the question of whether critical discourse is capable of taking place online. She argues that the Internet has created a threat to critical discourse, “the deluge of images and announcements, enjoining us to react, to feel, to forwards them to our friends, erodes critical-theoretical capacities- aren’t they really just opinions anyway? feeling dressed up in jargon? Drowning in plurality we lose the capacity to grasp anything like a system. React and forward, but don’t by any means think.” In our project, the kind of responses that we received definitely supported this notion. “React and forward, but don’t by any means think,” was precisely the nature of the responses we received Tumblr – people “liked” and re-blogged, but did not by any means respond critically or contribute to discussion.
Only a few people replied with any sincerity, and if they did, their replies were definitely more so “reactions” and “feelings dressed up in jargon” than they were true critical thought. Although we did seek to start a discussion, we did not anticipate our posts resulting in a serious discussion. Especially given the platforms we were engaging with, neither Canvas, Tumblr, or 4chan have ever been places where serious critical discourse have taken place. All of these websites are built in ways that are not conducive to critical discourse. For one, each of these sites are heavily image-based. As aforementioned, Tumblr only allows users to “like” a image, if a user wants to contribute a text “response” they have to re-blog the image and then add their own caption, therefore not allowing for a seamless continuing dialogue between users. 4chan does allow for a text response and a continued conversation based on one post but most users rarely leave a post that is just text, images are nearly always used. Lastly, Canvas does allow for text replies, but mostly users remix images or use the “stickers” provided to express their opinion on the post. The biggest issue with these platforms is that they do not seamlessly facilitate critical discourse – though this is actually an overarching characteristic of online communities as a whole. As Michael Bertstein, et al. writes in his article about 4chan and /b/, content is ephemeral because of the fast-paced nature of the community and the constant posting of newer content. All posts eventually get lost in the blog roll. While 4chan may provide for the best place to have a continuous dialogue, it is also the most temporary of all the platforms due to the fact that it does not archive any posts and there is constantly new content that pushes older content back into history.
In terms of creating memes that remixed popular culture, i.e. with cats and other memes, to address global warming and climate change in a humorous, satirical way, we were very successful. We were also successful in sharing and distributing the images across multiple platforms and message boards and getting responses. However, our ultimate hurdle was to be able to generate critical, meaningful discussion about global warming and climate change in response to our memes. While we were successful in creating memes that users recognized and engaged with, the memes did not illicit a critical discourse. We recognize this being because of the inherent character of memes being referential, visual, and arguably mostly comedic in nature. Equally as problematic is the inherent ephemeral nature of the platforms we posted to. The more image-based, less critical, discussion-led nature of message boards like 4chan, Tumblr, etc., created a difficult environment to facilitate critical discourse. Our project addressed and identified the reality of many of the concepts in our readings and, all-in-all, was successful.
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