Previous to this class, I had never given the idiom “The Medium is the Message” much thought, dismissing it as little more than an inconsequential cliche, a truism more trite than true. After giving it more thought and being involved in the discussions and study surrounding it in class, I think it a truism both true and consequential, and one whose veracity is made all the more clear when it comes to New Media, and more specifically, memes.

Memes are the saying “the medium is the message” made manifest, for while most signifiers of a medium specify form and only tangentially content, a meme is made a meme foremost by its content, and only tangentially by its form. Memes appropriate all other mediums to make themselves: videos, text, sculptures, paintings, and pictures can all be memes. Memes transcend medium-restrictions and are able to hijack any form and content. This adaptability exemplifies new media and the context and culture that surrounds it.

Before this class I took memes seriously, thinking them quite enjoyable, but I didn’t take them as seriously as this class has taught me to do. Memes are far more than funny subversions, they are very serious ones. They are subversions whose importance is telling both of the people who enjoy them, and the cultural context in which they are created. I think postmodernism finds a nearly perfect vessel in memes, and as meme-making continues and is refined, I think memes will be the postmodern end in all media and across all mediums.

I suppose that is a bit worrying though. The relativity of memes, though their primary appeal, can be viewed as their primary pitfall. Especially as some memes become more and more focused, containing the cultural contextually sufficient only for a small group of people, it can be asked whether memes are useful cultural units between individuals and groups. It would then have to be asked what is defined as a useful cultural unit, and whether any other mediums are better ones. Is individualized context and meaning less useful than meaning that requires far less context? I believe this is only the case when the individual is not the focus, but rather the society or any other more global consideration. Is something that five hundred thousand people like any more valuable than what five like? Again I believe this is a vestige of a view both archaic and asinine, where meaning is evaluated on the basis of popular appeal. That is a dangerous means of valuing anything, and I would not resort to it.

Memes are made by and in the context of increased relativity, but they foster relations (relative though they are). Memes can bring people together, not in any quixotic sense of the word, but in a way that is no less meaningful. I can send a meme to a friend and they’ll enjoy it both for themselves, and because I enjoyed it. The sharing not only adds meaning to the meme as a unit, it adds meaning for me and the person I send it to. The act of viewing a meme adds meaning to it, both implicitly (via the act of creation) and explicitly (cultural and individual context is added), making clear the postmodern underpinnings that support it.

Memes run parallel to fine art in the Dadaist sense, where anything can be a meme if deemed so. This democratization of meme-making is ever apparent, every meme being made and remade by the individual who shares and views it. Identity is erased and simultaneously recreated in the mind of the observer, for a meme has no meaning other than that assigned to it by them.

An interesting note about memes and their specific contexts is that even if you are outside the context of a specific meme, you can still enjoy the meme for that lack of understanding. A meme can be made meaningful in spite of your lack of knowledge about the specifics of the meme, instead created by your recognition of the context that you lack. Thus the spectacle of a meme itself, as opposed to its context, can be the source of enjoyment of one.

I’ll leave you with this quote about memes:

“According to all known laws

of aviation,

there is no way a bee

should be able to fly.

Its wings are too small to get

its fat little body off the ground.

The bee, of course, flies anyways

because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.”

– Jerry Seinfeld