After reading some of my peers’ previous blog posts, I am glad to find that I am not alone when it comes to not truly knowing the definition of a meme before this class. When reading From Memes to Mashups: Creating Content from Content a meme is explained to be “a unit of cultural information that replicates while still remaining whole” (78). I wrote this definition down and re-read it to try and grasp what exactly that meant. I thought I knew what it meant to some degree after delving into that definition a little bit. Especially when it was noted in class that the Apple logo could be considered a meme, I was on the side that favored that it was a meme, but couldn’t exactly explain why. It wasn’t until we were shown the TED talk clip that it was broken down into a much more basic description that I was able to fully understand a meme.

It is funny to me that what a majority of us in the class and our generation knows to be a ‘meme’ is in fact a meme in the definitive sense. This idea just proves to aid our discussion in that the negative part to memes is that we lose the sense of what the original product initially is or the origin in which it came from, who it came from. What I am trying to say can more easily be described with the music example that was discussed in class. Artists have taken to using samples of other artists’ songs and making new music with it. So I suppose the fact that we all know a meme to be the picture along with a usually funny or ironic statement attached to it, is exhibiting the negative effects of losing the origin of the word ‘meme’ itself. Something that is copied.

Now that we’ve got memes down it’s time to explore mashups. Are mashups memes? This was the question presented in class. What a toughy to answer! In class I voted that they were not memes because it’s like taking a fraction of things and putting them together to make a whole. But the more I think about it I guess it is like taking a bunch of memes to lump together to make one massive meme. Honestly this meme talk and exploration is a bit of a head scrambler. Only Exhibit can properly articulate the paradox of confusion.

(http://tinyurl.com/xhibitmeme)

I’m not very ‘current’ on the meme culture. I wasn’t even sure how to look them up besides Google? I remember when memes became a ‘thing’ a few years ago. There was a whole Facebook page dedicated to UMass Memes even. I know people still create them and they become even more popular when a big event happens (like the Superbowl), but other than that I feel like they have sort of plateaued already. I wonder what will come next! Someone said that the next generation will bring on some new form of ‘meme’ that will be foreign to us because we will then be old. I agree with that statement.