Meme culture reflection

While editing the slides for meme culture presentation, I deviated away from work for awhile and checked how many meme pages or groups I follow in my Facebook. I am actually following 12 meme Facebook pages from 3 countries: Korea, United States and Singapore.

(My personal favorite: unofficial Emory Memes Facebook page)

Well, memes are extremely witty and funny especially if they are about issues I am deeply interested in such as the politics in Korea. On top of the fun part, memes provide me with the latest issue, trend and news happening in places my life is associated with. Although, subscribed Wallstreet Journal and New York Times user, I hardly read them during the semester.

I figured, the only time I actually do read news articles is when I find a particular sarcastic meme on the Internet. Our very presentation on the allegation against Donald Trump on Russian involvement in election was no exception; my Facebook feed was flooded with tons of Trump memes with various sarcastic and witty captions on fake news, Putin, Russia and so on. Back then I knew Trump has been condemning certain new agencies on the issue of delivering fake, exaggerated news, but the emergence of Russia was something unheard of. So I logged into my beloved WSJ website and started reading few articles on the Russian allegation; my 1-year subscription was coming in handy.

Nevertheless, in this over-sensitive, political-correctness-obsessed world, memes seem to be the optimal platform to project various opinions in a funny way. Memes are essentially meant to be jokes after all. I think we are actually living in an amazing universe where one can learn of a popular issue via a meme! It's indeed an evolution from the cartoon shots featured on newspaper. Of course we should never take memes seriously, jokes are jokes. Still I really do enjoy the vibrant meme culture on the Internet these days, they occupy most of my Facebook feeds and I never get tired of this light procrastination from works:)