Internet Memes and Ideology

Dissertation: BA History of Art

Student Number: 200597448

April 2014

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations…..p.3-4

Introduction…..p.5

Section One: Theoretical Framework

On Ideology…..p.6-13

A Semiological Approach…..p.14-19

The Database Form…..p.20-26

Section Two: Analysing Internet Memes

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First-Order Meaning…..p.27-35

Second-Order Meaning…..p.36-44

Conclusion…..p.45-46

Bibliography…..p.47-48

Illustrations…..p.49-55

All examples of memes and facts about them sourced from the

following sites:

Meme Database, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes [Accessed

throughout March 2014]

Teh Meme Wiki, http://meme.wikia.com/wiki/Teh_Meme_Wiki [Accessed

throughout March 2014]

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List of Illustrations

All images displayed here are examples of the specific

internet memes discussed in the dissertation.

Fig.1, I Can Haz Cheezburger variant of lolcats,

Happy Cat, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-cat, [Accessed 2nd

April 2014]

Fig.2, Tom Honks variant of Woll Smoth,

Woll Smoth, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/woll-smoth, [Accessed

2nd April 2014]

Fig.3, variant of Ainsley Harriott,

Ainsley Harriott Images,

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/ainsley-harriott/photos,

[Accessed 2nd April 2014]

Fig.4, An example of a rage comic, featuring two variants of rage

faces in the bottom two panels,

Rage Comic Images,

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rage-comics/photos, [Accessed 2nd

March 2014]

Fig.5, Rage Guy variant of rage faces,

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Rage Guy (FFFFFUUUUUUUU-), http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rage-

guy-fffffuuuuuuuu, [Accessed 2nd April 2014]

Fig.6, a rage comic featuring the forever alone variant of rage

faces

Forever Alone, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/forever-alone,

[Accessed 2nd April 2014]

Fig.7, variant of Sixties Spiderman

‘60s Spiderman, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/60s-spider-man,

[Accessed 2nd April 2014

Ayan-Yue Gupta

Introduction

In this dissertation I explore the relationship between

ideology and internet culture: how ideology spreads across the

internet and how it shapes and is shaped by online communities

and their cultural output. I should clarify immediately that I

do not wish to treat the internet as a discrete and self-

contained domain; rather, the internet is part of a wider

social shift that is now thought of as “media convergence”.

Henry Jenkins (2006) describes this as the intersection

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between new and old media, and argues that this intersection

has profound effects on the manufacture and consumption of

culture. He understands convergence in terms of a culture

industry and consumers: e.g. online communities devoted to the

consumption and dissection of the output of the entertainment

industry. Thus media convergence is analysable in terms of

Theodor Adorno’s (1991; with Horkheimer 1944) idea of the

“culture industry” – which is roughly the thesis that

production of cultural artefacts is embedded in ideology.

Adorno’s analysis dissects an industry-consumer relationship

characteristic of a pre-convergence age; my aim is to come

closer to extending that project to analyse the relationship

between consumer, culture industry and ideology in the context

of media convergence. This is a vast and complex area, so

naturally I would need to delimit and focus my investigations.

To that end I limit myself to looking closely at the

phenomenon of internet memes: that is, a cultural artefact (it

could be a picture, a phrase, an animation) that has spread

among internet communities. I hope this focus will bring us

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closer to understanding ideological movements within media

convergence in general.

This dissertation is presented in two main sections, with

several subsections in each: the first section deals with the

theoretical framework in terms of which internet memes may be

analysed, and the second section offers demonstrative analyses

of specific internet memes.

Section 1: Theoretical Framework

On Ideology

Ideology is a central concept in this area, so I begin by

clarifying precisely what I mean by ‘ideology’ before

detailing my methodology.

Louis Althusser presents ideology as fundamental to

society: ‘as if human societies could not survive without

these specific formations, these systems of representations (at

various levels), their ideologies…So ideology is not an

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aberration or a contingent excrescence of History: it is a

structure essential to the historical life of societies.’1 He

makes an important distinction between ideologies in

particular and ideology in general, and develops his position

accordingly. He argues that ideologies in particular ‘have a

history of their own’2, but ideology in general ‘has no history’3.

Ideology in general has no history since its ‘structure and

functioning are immutable, present in the same form throughout

what we can call history, in the sense in which the Communist

Manifesto defines history as the history of class struggles.’4

It is maintained here that while particular instances of

ideology (ideologies in particular) may have a form that is

historically determined, beneath these historical forms lies a

skeletal structure that remains fundamentally unchanged

despite historical processes. Another way of putting this is

in terms of ‘outside history’ and ‘within history’, categories

1 Louis Althusser, For Marx, From: Ideology ed. Eagleton, Terry

(New York: Pearson Education Ltd., 1994) p. 882 Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, From: Ideology ed. Eagleton,

Terry (New York: Pearson Education Ltd., 1994) p.993 Ibid p.994 Ibid p.100-101

8

Althusser takes from The German Ideology (by Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels, written in 1846): ‘Ideology, then, is for

Marx an imaginary assemblage, a pure dream, empty and vain,

constituted by the “day’s residues” from the only full and

positive reality, that of the concrete history of concrete

material individuals materially producing their existence.’5 By

this argument, history is fundamentally material and concerned

with real human praxis. In The German Ideology, ideology

functions outside material relations of production (despite

being determined by them as well), and is therefore simply a

shadow of history. History may determine the forms of

ideology, but only in the sense an imprint of a hand is

determined by the existence of a real hand. The imprint has

‘no history of its own’; it is simply a photo negative of

real, material history — outside it. Althusser takes this idea

of outside/inside history but inverts the notion of ideology

being a mere imprint/negative, calling his theory of ideology

‘positive’. For Althusser, ‘ideology is eternal’6, in that it is

‘omnipresent, trans-historical and therefore immutable in form

5 Ibid p.1006 Ibid p.101

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throughout the extent of history…’7 This statement has several

important implications, including the suggestion that ideology

precedes class. Since it is eternal, an irremovable function

of society, one can only talk of class after the fact of

ideology, meaning that the only way one can relate ideology to

class is in terms of superimposition — ideology has an

original function that remains unchanged. Class may alter how

this original function ultimately is manifested (e.g. it may

be manifested in class war), but it can only be a secondary

function to the main ideological function of assuring ‘the

cohesion of the social whole’8. This directly contradicts the

standard Marxist view that ideology is bound to class in a

dialectical relationship, and is therefore a manifestation of

class war.

Here, crucially, Althusser gives ideology a causative

quality; makes ideology into a structure inbuilt into society

that informs material processes. He reverses the notion of

7 Ibid p.1018 Jacques Ranciere, On the Theory of Ideology—Althusser’s Politics, From:

Ideology Ed. Eagleton, Terry (New York: Pearson Education Ltd., 1994)

p.142

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ideology as dragged along by material praxis, in which praxis

and ideology intersect as a necessary result of the

interaction between people and their environments. Althusser

locates ideology in the realm of the ‘profoundly unconscious’9,

functioning as ‘images and occasionally concepts, but…above

all as structures that they impose on the vast majority of men…

Men “live” their ideologies…not at all as a form of consciousness, but as an

object of their “world”—as their “world” itself.’10 So ideology is

inseparable from how people perceive and interact with the

world: ideology is a lived relationship, very much part of

material praxis such that ‘it is not their real conditions of

existence, their real world, that “men” “represent to

themselves” in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those

conditions of existence which is represented to them here.’11 (My

italics)

9 Louis Althusser, For Marx, From: Ideology ed. Eagleton, Terry

(New York: Pearson Education Ltd., 1994) p. 8810 Ibid p.8911 Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, From: Ideology ed.

Eagleton, Terry (New York: Pearson Education Ltd., 1994) p.103

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This notion is further developed when Althusser uses it

to describe individuality: ‘all ideology hails or interpellates concrete

individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of

the subject.’12 Individuals gain their subjectivity (their

unique set of beliefs, values—in short their sense of

identity) through ideology, and furthermore, ‘the category of

the subject is the constitutive category of all ideology’13.

Subjective categories such as ‘individuality’, ‘identity’ etc.

are ideological because they have the capacity to imply

certain ideas of how the subject fits into/functions within

society. Althusser gives the example of someone ‘hailing’

another:

interpellation or hailing…can be imagined along the lines ofthe most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing:‘Hey, you there!’…Assuming that the theoretical scene Ihave imagined takes place in the street, the hailedindividual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject.Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was ‘really’addressed to him, and that ‘it was really him who washailed14.

12 Ibid p.10813 Ibid p.10814 Ibid p.109

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Essentially, when one is hailed one is contextualised, placed

into a situation that is social and therefore one is

recognised as a subject with all the implications of social

roles and beliefs that being a subject comes with. A subject

is an individual installed into society since the categories

of the subject all presuppose social contexts. For example,

the subjective (subjective meaning ‘of the subject’) category

‘identity’ brings to mind concepts such as nationality, job,

religion — all concepts which presuppose social relations.

Jacques Ranciere has pointed out several problems with

Althusser’s conception of ideology, in particular that making

ideology a necessary and immutable part of societies in

general, with a constant function ‘to assure the cohesion of

the social whole by regulating the relation of individuals to

their tasks’15, effectively dehistoricises ideology and gives

it a metaphysical status. Ranciere asks whether Marxist

discourse can really ‘define functions like: securing social

15 Jacques Ranciere, On the Theory of Ideology—Althusser’s Politics, From:

Ideology Ed. Eagleton, Terry (New York: Pearson Education Ltd., 1994)

p.142

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cohesions in general?’16 The point here is that Althusser’s model of

ideology relies on concepts such as social cohesion, but by

making ideology eternal and precedent to relations of

production such concepts are rendered unintelligible. From a

Marxist point of view social cohesion in given contexts can

only be understood in terms of the already existing relations

of production and class. Ranciere asks what ‘is this

structure, whose level is here distinguished from that of

class division? In Marxist terms, the determination of a

social totality by its structure means its determination by

the relations of production characterizing a dominant mode of

production.’17 The unanswerable question is: how can one

understand social structure and its relation to a social

totality except by grounding such concepts within the

discourse of material relations of production? Ranciere’s

argument essentially suggests that Althusser takes the

features of a capitalist, class society and, through the use

of a ‘Comtean of Durkheimian type of sociology’18, by making

16 Ibid p.14317 Ibid p.14418 Ibid p.143

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those features general laws of a general society, renders

those features (including social totality and structure and

therefore ideology) ahistorical much like physical, scientific

laws of nature. This confers upon them a metaphysical status,

a position which, if one accepts basic Marxist tenets, is

fundamentally wrong since, unlike natural processes, social

processes cannot be described ahistorically according to a

generalised logic.

To clarify what the basic Marxist view is here, I take

recourse to Raymond Williams’ observations on the status of

Marxist materialism. He warns against the ‘naïve dualism of

‘mechanical materialism’, suggesting that the language of

ideology as mere ‘“reflexes”, “echoes”, “phantoms”, and

“sublimates” is simplistic, and has in repetition been

disastrous.’19 What Williams alludes to here is the view that

emphasizes the metaphysical primacy of material practise, such

that ideas and therefore ideology are all mere reflections of

human praxis. This appears to be much the view found in

19 \ Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, From: Ideology Ed.

Eagleton,Terry (New York: Pearson Education Ltd,. 1994) p.177

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Althusser’s interpretation of The German Ideology, summarised

above. Williams criticizes this view for repeating the

‘idealist separation of ‘ideas’ and ‘material reality’’20,

merely reversing the idealist conception of the realm of ideas

taking precedence over the material realm. Through this simple

reversal, the Marxist ‘emphasis on consciousness as

inseparable from conscious existence, and then on conscious

existence as inseparable from material social processes, is in

effect lost in the use of this deliberately degrading

vocabulary.’21 It is implied here that the naïve mechanical

dualism shown in Althusser’s interpretation of The German

Ideology obscures a far more subtle and nuanced metaphysical

position — that of the inseparability of material praxis and

ideas, of how material praxis will always involve the

generation of ideas and of how both categories inform each

other, rather than one being shunted along by the other, as is

posited by the idealist and naïve mechanical materialist

position.

20 Ibid p.17921 Ibid p.179

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This more sophisticated view can be understood as

dissolving the categories of ideas and material praxis. To be

able to understand material praxis, one must have an

understanding of the movement of ideas, since every practical

action presupposes some kind of conceptual category. For

example someone carving an object in the likeness of an

elephant must assume a particular conception of an elephant, a

particular conception of causality in his hope that through

chiselling something he will achieve a similarity to the

elephant, a particular conception of aesthetic value since he

wishes his elephant to be beautiful. Similarly, to understand

a particular conceptual logic one must have an understanding

of human praxis, since a posteriori knowledge (which is grounded

in the senses and therefore practise) forms much of what we

know and how we conceptualise things. Given this, one cannot

accept a view of ideology as simply the negative of real

history, as to do so would be to assume that the categories of

‘material’ and ‘ideas’ are discrete and separate. This is one

of the problems Althusser’s notion of ideology tries to solve.

In Althusser’s model ideology is given an agency beyond the

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merely negative, one which is able to influence practical

history. However in attempting this he reverts to an almost-

but-not-quite-idealist position, separating ideology from

materiality and predicating the results of material processes

of production such as class conflict on ideology. Ideology and

societal structure become rather strange ahistorical

categories that seem to be concerned with the subject’s

relationship to his material environment, yet also distance

themselves from those same relationships through their alleged

precedence over them, and it is this that Ranciere picks up on

in his criticism. Althusser’s theory of ideology is

inconsistent with both naïve materialism and the more

sophisticated position implied by Williams. I wish to

disregard the former inconsistency since I want to discard

naïve materialism, and focus on resolving Althusser’s position

with the latter version of Marxist materialism. Thus it is

this latter version that I take to be the fundamental Marxist

view of the relationship between ideas and material processes.

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Williams’ clarification of this fundamental position

allows me to retain the causative elements of ideology

described by Althusser while dodging the pitfalls outlined by

Ranciere. Therefore I accept the following features of

Althusser’s notion of ideology: that it is a result of the

relationship between the individual and his/her societal

environment as well as the individual’s perception of that

relationship; that it has the potential to inform and mould

relations of production and that it interpellates the

individual as subject. I reject the claim that ‘ideology is

eternal’, that it takes precedence over material relations and

therefore informs and moulds productive relationships without

being moulded by productive relationships itself, as well as

any notion of class/material functions simply being

superimposed onto an original ideological function. For

further security against problems of dehistoricisation, mix-

ups between what is material and what is ideational, I shall

take ‘ideology’ to refer specifically to capitalist ideology,

such that ideology is entwined with capitalist processes such

as class conflict, mass production and consumerism. In

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summary, I use ‘ideology’ here to mean a conceptual nexus

folded into capitalist material processes that inform the

nature of the subject as well as how the subject functions

within capitalist relations of productions. Ideology is not

something that is ever constant in any sense, and its

manifestations in religion, politics, culture etc. are

informed by those same material relations it preserves and

moulds (through its instalment of the subject). This I think

is a view of ideology that is fully consistent with the

fundamental Marxist view of the idea/material relationship.

20

21

A Semiological Approach

With the above theory of ideology in view, I now need a

related theoretical approach for describing internet memes.

One possible theoretical approach can be derived from the

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origin of the word ‘meme’ from Richard Dawkins’ concept of

meme, which is roughly the cultural equivalent to the gene.

Dawkins defines it as a ‘unit of cultural transmission, or a

unit of imitation.’22 So a meme, which can be ‘tunes, ideas,

catch-phrases’ sits in its cultural environment, changing and

replicating according to certain cultural pressures. They are

replicated through word of mouth, through books, art etc.

Memes can be measured in terms of survivability; some memes

survive for a long time, such as the idea of God. It has

‘great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially

plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about

existence.’23 It functions as a ‘doctor’s placebo’24. This idea

raises several questions, such as whether applying this

evolutionary logic onto memes adequately describes the way

units of culture behave, and whether looking at units of

cultural information in terms of survivability can say much

22 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University

Press 1999) p.19223 Ibid p.19324 Ibid p.193

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about the social dynamics that surround the meme. The most

serious concern is whether the idea of a meme grants too much

agency to ideas, fashions, catchphrases; and whether

construing such things as something as concrete so to be

comparable to genes gives them too much independence.

Furthermore, in this evolutionary model there is a danger of

falling into a similar trap as Althusser. Evolutionary logic

is a generalised concept, ahistorical because it is designed

to describe functions of nature. Evolution happens without

regard for history, and so the logic that describes the

process must remain indifferent to the social affairs of

people. Internet memes however, as cultural artefacts, are

subject to social forces that are historically contingent.

Their meaning, their form etc. are the result of processes

tied to a particular state of social and historical dynamics.

Thus two possible problems arise from the application of an

ahistorical, general logic of evolution to the inescapably

historical internet meme. Either this logic misses out on all

or a lot of the key historical features of memes relevant to

the question of this dissertation, or it construes these

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historical features as ahistorical features, as facts of

indifferent nature. Both would constitute fundamental

distortions.

A better method of talking about memes can be found in

semiotics, specifically in the work of Roland Barthes. In

Mythologies, Barthes sets out a system for talking about what he

called ‘myth’. Myth ‘is a type of speech’25, more specifically,

it ‘is a second-order semiological system.’26 Here Barthes is bringing

together two semiological systems. The first is the system of

basic signification, the system that pertains to when a person

wants to directly and simply communicate something to someone

else. This first system makes use of the sign, which is ‘the

associative total of the first two terms’27, those two terms

being the signifier, that which points to something, and

signified, that which is being pointed to. The easiest example

of a first-order semiological system is spoken language. When

25 Roland Barthes, Mythologies Trans. Lavers, Annette (St Albans:

Paladin Frogmore 1976) p.10926 Ibid p.11427 Ibid p.113

25

someone says ‘tree’, the sound of the word tree or its written

form as signifier, the concept which is called tree is

signified. Put these two things together, and one has a sign—

the word ‘tree’. Signifier and signified are terms intended to

analyse what is really a coherent whole — the sign. In general

usage, one does not really demarcate the sound ‘tree’ from the

concept tree, one simply uses ‘tree’ as a word, as an already

formed sign. The second semiological system involves bringing

a specific attribution of signification to the sign, beyond

the pre-assigned order of signifier and signified: ‘…take a

black pebble: I can make it signify in several ways, it is a

mere signifier; but if I weigh it with a definite signified (a

death sentence, for instance, in an anonymous vote), it will

become sign’28 The black pebble, when endowed with a specific

meaning, becomes a sign. The black pebble as mere signifier

and the given signified meaning (the death sentence) become

simply parts of the whole that is the black pebble as sign.

Myth functions across both the first system and a second

system, ‘one of which is staggered in relation to the other’29.

28 Ibid p.11329 Ibid p.115

26

Myth makes use of the final term of the first system, the

sign, and turns it into a signifier for another signified.

Barthes’ example is the phrase: ‘because my name is lion.’30 In

the first system, the meaning is clear — the sentence

signifies the presence of someone who is called lion. At the

level of the second system however, the sentence is a

‘grammatical example meant to illustrate the rule about the

agreement of the predicate’31. Here we see how the latter

meaning takes the sentence, which on the first system

functions as a full and complete sign, and appropriates its

signifier and signified. As language is the semiological

system that makes use of first system signs, myth is the

semiological system that makes use of second system signs that

appropriate first system signs. Here Barthes introduces some

new terminology. The first system sign that is appropriated as

a second system signifier is the ‘language-object, because it is

the language which myth gets hold of in order to build its own

system’32. Myth is called ‘metalanguage, because it is a second

30 Ibid p.11631 Ibid p.11632 Ibid p.115

27

language, in which one speaks about the first.’33 So the literal

meaning of ‘because my name is lion’ forms the language object

for ‘because my name is lion’ as grammatical example. As a

grammatical example, the sentence becomes a sign that

functions at the level of metalanguage. The literal meaning

of the sentence is what Barthes calls ‘meaning’34, and is the

‘final term of the first system’. The sentence as appropriated

by metalanguage is ‘form’35. When one is thinking of ‘because my

name is lion’ from within the first system, one is

contemplating its meaning. From the point of view of this

sentence as a grammatical example, its meaning becomes form.

Barthes calls that which is signified by form ‘concept’36, and

in the example the concept would be the grammatical point the

sentence is making. The final term of metalanguage is

‘signification’37. Signified corresponds to sign, form corresponds

to signifier, and concept to signified in the first system.

The signification uses the sign for its own purposes.

33 Ibid p.11534 Ibid p.11735 Ibid p.11736 Ibid p.11737 Ibid p.117

28

When a sign of the first system is converted to language-

object for the services of a metalanguage, ‘form does not

suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, it pits it at a

distance, it holds it at one’s disposal.’38 The concept

signified within a given signification relies on the meaning

of an appropriated sign. In the grammatical example ‘because

my name is lion’, the meaning does not completely disappear,

rather it is used for the ends of the concept. One needs to

understand the meaning of the sentence to understand the

grammatical concept signified.

Adopting this framework means one will have to conceive

of the internet meme as some sort of sign (in what way will be

explored later on). By placing memes in the domain of

semiological systems, the analysis of memes is obliged to stay

within the bounds of the logic of signs, and this is a logic

that is continuous with cultural logics. Thus, a semiological

model of a meme can be used to describe them in relation to

historical forces such as ideology. The Barthesian framework

38 Ibid p.118

29

allows us to keeps things grounded in history and so avoid the

traps encountered with the evolutionary model. In fact,

Barthes’ project is to use his concept of myth to describe the

ideological functions embedded in the system of signs we

experience every day, hence his analyses of wrestling as ‘the

great spectacle of suffering, Defeat, and Justice’39, or his

interpretation of the front page of a magazine with a black

child in French military uniform saluting the tricolour as

signifying: ‘that France is a great Empire, that all her sons,

without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her

flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of

an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in

serving his so-called oppressors.’40

Barthes’ theory of myth can even be used to describe key

ideological functions, such as interpellation, in some detail.

In Althusser’s example of one person hailing another with the

phrase ‘Hey, you there!’ one can now see that the addressee

receives this phrase both at the literal level as well as at

39 Ibid p.1940 Ibid p.116

30

the level of metalanguage. The meaning of ‘Hey, you there!’ is

that there is someone at a particular time and place whose

attention is needed. At the same time this meaning is turned

into form to signify the concept ‘subject’, and at the level

of concept the phrase states that there is someone who is a

subject, and that as a subject this person has a specific

place and role within a relations of production, and that as a

result of this place and role the person’s beliefs and values

are configured in a certain way. The individual is

interpellated into a subject; the subject is installed through

the appropriation of the literal meaning of ‘Hey, you there!’

The role of the addressee within capitalist relations is

replicated through myth. Through the combination of

interpellation and myth, we can potentially discern how

internet memes function at the level of ideology, how it

replicates certain capitalist productive relations as well as

which of those relations are replicated. This in turn can tell

us quite specific details about how the category of the

subject is constructed and replicated in internet culture.

31

32

33

The Database Form

Though it seems evident that an internet meme may be thought

of, in some form, as a sign, it is yet to be established

exactly how the concept of sign may be used to describe

internet memes. Is a single internet meme composed of a

plurality of signs, or just one sign? If a plurality of signs,

will it be composed of signs that all share the same signified

but have different signifiers? Or will the signs differ in

signified as well? These questions may be answered by looking

at some examples of internet memes. One of the popular formats

of internet memes consist of an image superimposed with bold,

often capitalised, text. Examples of such memes include the

well-known ‘lolcat’. It consists of an image of a cat performing

some action, with some text superimposed onto the image

interpreting the action and the cat in an anthropomorphised

manner. The classic example of a lolcat is the ‘I can has

cheezburger’ image, which consists of a cat doing something that

is interpreted as appearing pleading in some way, as though

the cat were begging for something. The text imposed on the

34

image states 'I can has cheezburger?', as though the cat, with

its pleading expression and deliberately ungrammatical and

catchy advertisement-style slogan, were asking for a

cheeseburger. While there is an original image which initiated

the trend of cheeseburger cats, the meme generally includes

various imitations and variations on the theme of a pleading

cat with the cheeseburger slogan. While the pictures used may

be different, they are still recognised as being part of the

cheeseburger meme. So when one is talking about a particular

internet meme, it seems each meme refers to a group of signs

that are united by some theme.

Lev Manovich's idea of the database form can help us

understand further what exactly one refers to when they say

'internet meme'. The database is, first and foremost, a

cultural form.

He compares it to the form of the narrative, as in the

narrative of a book or a film:

After the novel, and subsequently cinema privilegednarrative as the key form of cultural expression of the

35

modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate —database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; theydon't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have anydevelopment, thematically, formally or otherwise whichwould organize their elements into a sequence. Instead,they are collections of individual items, where every itemhas the same significance as any other.41

Both the database and narrative forms are particular ways of

conceptually arranging and expressing particular currents of

culture. The narrative form is generally associated with

traditional stories, which have a beginning, middle and end,

linear chronological sequences etc. The database form, on the

other hand, consists of arrangements of multiple elements all

conjoined by some common property. Manovich gives the example

of a web page to illustrate this form:

...a Web page is a sequential list of separateelements...It is always possible to add a new element tothe list — all you have to do is open a file and add a newline... most Web pages are collections of separateelements: texts, images, links to other pages or sites. Ahome page is a collection of personal photographs. A siteof a major search engine is a collection of numerous linksto other sites.42

41 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) p.21842 Ibid p.220

36

A site like www.google.com is a search engine. You enter a

particular term and receive a list of web pages deemed most

relevant according to the frequency of the entered term in the

text of a web page. This term is the common property that

links otherwise disparate elements (web pages). Furthermore,

the term entered is but one possibility among the various

terms that could be entered, and thus is one unifying theme

among many according to which a database may be arranged.

An internet meme shares these properties. They are always

incomplete, or more precisely, concepts of

completeness/incompleteness are not applicable to the internet

meme. A narrative can be complete in that it can reach a state

in which adding or subtracting from it will be seen to destroy

or pervert the narrative. No one would buy a book with missing

pages. An internet meme however, as a database form,

continuously has parts of it added and subtracted. New

variations upon the theme of the meme will be produced, while

other already existing memes will eventually get deleted and

disappear. An internet meme will designate a plurality of

37

connected elements, in this case signs, in which the signified

of each sign are related to each other. A variation of a

cheeseburger cat theme is related to the original theme, and

both would be considered part of the same internet meme. It

may be said that one internet meme refers to a particular set,

and that some of these sets may share a property that warrants

their own set. An example of this would be the ‘advice animals’

meme, which designates a species of signs that all display

animals that signify a particular concept. One must note that

to think of different memes as rigid, individual, discrete

sets that do not interact with each other would be a mistake.

As elements of culture they are subject to historical

contingency and so will not keep a singular form — the sets

will vary throughout time and meld with and/or separate from

each other. Examples will be discussed further on.

Furthermore, internet memes are an example of

'transcoding', which is 'the projection of the ontology of a

computer onto culture itself '43 Lev Manovich argues that the

database form is derived from the way people conceived of

43 Ibid p.223

38

objects and there relations when working according to the laws

of computers, e.g. when writing code: '...any object in the

world, be it the population of a city, or the weather over the

course of a century, a chair, a human brain – is modelled as a

data structure, i.e. data organized in a particular way for

efficient search and retrieval.' 44 This is important to note

as transcoding illustrates the relationship between cultural

forms such as memes and their main medium — computers and the

internet. An analysis of this relationship will give us a

theory of the medium specificity of internet memes, which will

help in interpretation of concrete examples.

There are still several questions to consider before our

conception of an internet meme is complete. The first is: what

differentiates internet memes from other cultural

images/catchphrases etc.? Is it enough just for something to

have a database form and wide spread on the internet to be an

internet meme? An example we may use to explore this question

could be the ubiquitous and iconic image of Che Guevara, the

Guerrillero Heroico, photographed by Alberto Korda in 1950. There

are many variations of this image, so much so that its origins

44 Ibid p.223

39

as a photo are arguably overshadowed by the fame of the

general image 45. People now have knowledge of this image

because it is everywhere, because it is an icon of pop

culture, and not necessarily because of any actual historical

knowledge of the image. These variations on the image can be

interpreted in different ways: some have a straightforwardly

revolutionary subtext, some have an ironic subtext, mocking

the 'subversive' image's assimilation into capitalist modes of

distribution and consumerist notions of fashion, and so forth.

This, and that the image is recognised as a general cultural

image rather than as an image related to a specific historical

moment, seems to suggest the Guerrillero Heroico also has a

database form. Yet most people would not say it is an internet

meme.

The difference between the image Guerrillero Heroico and the

meme lolcat is that the latter has a particular discourse that

is largely exclusive to online communities. Lolcats have their

origins on online imageboards and forums, sites where users

45 The documentary film Chevolution, directed by Luis Lopez and

Trisha Ziff (2008), produced by Red Envelope Entertainment, traces

this process.

40

upload images and have discussions. The variations of the

first of these images arose in similar circumstances. People

saw the first images, and then made and uploaded their own

variations. The uploaded images then dispersed around online

communities as they are discussed, used in conversation and so

on. From this we can see that the content/meaning of internet

memes is shaped by communicative forces. Even the first images

of an internet meme arise out of communication. This ongoing

communication that determines a meme's meanings is what I mean

by a meme's discourse (‘…the majority of memes are part of a

complex, interconnected, and esoterically self-referential body of

texts referred to as “the memesphere”’ 46). Of course, treating

the discourses of individual memes as separate is only a

methodological categorisation — in reality these 'separate'

discourses interact with each other, inform each other, and

even imply each other, such that it is in fact quite difficult

to demarcate with confidence where one meme's discourse ends

and another's begins. As a discourse arising out of online

46 Kate Miltner, SRSLY PHENOMENAL: An Investigations into the Appeal of Lolcats

(Unpublished Dissertation), London School of Economics, London p.13-

14

41

communities, it is embedded with the values and perceptions of

these online communities, and so the content of internet memes

is likewise embedded with the values and perceptions of the

communities.

Images like Guerrillero Heroica are informed by the discourses

surrounding it also, but these discourses are not primarily in

the domain of online communities. The image is consumed by

many of the same people (in a society where internet use is

very common), but in this case it is far less likely for them

to be direct participants in the discourse that forms the

image of Che Guevara. Of course, many of those people will be

able to participate directly. But those will be the academics,

journalists, novelists etc. talking about Guerrillero Heroica; the

entrepreneurs who are able to turn the image into a wearable

signifier of commodified, hollowed out, revolutionary catch-

phrases that appeal to the tastes and sensibilities of a young

adult demographic. The frequency of those types of people

talking about and producing specifically this one image and

its permutations is less than the frequency of people talking

42

about and producing internet memes. Furthermore, the

production and distribution of internet memes is public.

Anyone can share and produce images online, whereas the

production and distribution of an image such as Guerrillero Heroica

is not — at least not necessarily -- public. Guerrillero Heroica can

be, and doubtless has been, circulated on the internet. Yet

the fact remains that much of the content of the image has

been produced/distributed according to non-public logics,

according to the rationales of political alignments and

entrepreneurial organizations.

A photo shared among a small group of friends is invested

with quite personal thoughts and exchanges. A commodified

image distributed through magazines and shirts is informed by

commodity rationality. In both cases the image is subject to a

wider, general, capitalist logic, but in each case the

relationship between the image and capitalist logic is

different: the investments made in an image by a small group

of friends are as subjects in a capitalist society and the

commodity rationality applied to an image is simply an

43

extension of the capitalist system. The same is true for

internet memes. Because of the public nature of the discourse

surrounding internet memes as well as experiences unique to

online existence, the relationship they have with capitalist

logic is similarly distinct. Internet memes exist at the

intersection between public cultural exchange and capitalist

rationality. It is this property that allows internet memes to

be used to understand the relationship between internet

culture and ideology. It is the nature of the discourses

producing and editing internet memes that separate it from

other viral cultural signs.

A final consideration to conclude this section: suppose a

particular online forum has developed some kind of internal

joke, and this joke then becomes common knowledge to members

of the forum such that variations are produced and pepper many

of the exchanges between members. Under the conditions stated

above, the joke is an internet meme. But many would not

consider it so because it is not popular or public enough. The

joke only has significance within the community of a single

44

online forum. The status of a set of signs as an internet meme

implies that the signs are well known across multiple internet

communities. This is quite a hard criterion to make explicit —

how popular is popular enough, we may ask? To sidestep issue

unanswerable question, I examine below only those internet

memes that are regarded as 'famous' or 'canonical'. For

similar reasons, let me state here that, insofar as this

dissertation goes, for something to count as an internet meme

it must have widespread use and popularity across multiple

online communities.

With these clarifications and definitions, I now turn to

the second section and look closely at specific internet

memes.

45

46

Section 2: Analysing Internet Memes

This section is devoted to the analysis and interpretation of

various examples of internet memes. Drawing upon a Barthesian

semiological method, I initially consider the first-order

meaning of some examples of memes and then examine their

second-order meaning.

First-Order Meaning

47

I argue below that the first-order meaning of memes is at

least partially determined by ‘medium conventions’. So to

begin, let me expand on what medium conventions are.

Medium conventions are part of a concept of ‘medium

specificity’, in which a distinction between 'medium' and

'technical support' is made. The former is 'a set of

conventions derived from (but not identical with) the material

conditions of a given technical support.'47 Here ‘technical

support’ is taken to refer to the actual physical material

that may constitute the film, artwork etc.: examples include

canvas, film stock, marble and so on. ‘Medium’ is the

technical support and the set of conventions derived from the

limits and possibilities of that technical support. In the

paper where Rosalind Krauss explains this notion of medium

specificity, her argument is that historically this conception

of medium started to function in the art world when

photography was beginning to fade into 'obsolescence'.

47 Rosalind Krauss, Reinventing the Medium, Critical Inquiry, Vol.

25, No. 2, "Angelus Novus": Perspectives on Walter Benjamin(Winter,

1999), p. 296

48

48However, it can be demonstrated that the notion of medium

specificity has, in some ways, acted beyond the narrow

historical period Krauss relates medium specificity to. It can

be found, for instance, in Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘aura’

in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction’. According to Benjamin, aura is a sort of

fetishism of authenticity that has been present in history

because of the limited capabilities of mechanical

reproduction. Because reproduction of cultural artefacts (such

as paintings, statues, ritual objects etc.) has always been a

limited technology, these cultural artefacts were unique, and

consequently uniqueness has been embedded in tradition as a

quality of artistic value. Benjamin gives an example of how:

An ancient statue of Venus... stood in differenttraditional context with the Greeks, who made it an objectof veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages,who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however,were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, itsaura. 49

48 Ibid p.29649 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,

(London: Penguin Group 2008) p.5

49

That the Modernist idea of medium can be included within the

scope of aura can be seen in the types of terms referred in

Modernist discourse on the medium: flatness, materiality,

essence, colour. Indicatively, Clement Greenberg, one of the

defining Modernist critics, carries out his analysis of

Abstract Expressionism in terms of 'pictorial structure',

'contrasts of light and dark,' 'finish [of a painting]'50. These

terms are used to describe an aesthetic, and furthermore, an

aesthetic based on the technical, material facts of making art,

much like aura is based on the technical, material facts of

making reproductions. Flatness, finish, contrasts refer to

technique and material support, which are the consequences of

making an image (e.g. a painting, a statue) in a particular

intended way. Thus these terms show a cultural logic similar

with that of aura in their veneration (through fetishism and

aestheticisation) of the consequences of the technical aspects

of production. It seems to me that the case of fetishising

uniqueness from limited reproducibility can be thought of as

equivalent as the case of fetishising medium. Both derive a

50 Clement Greenberg, American Type Painting, From: Art and Culture

(Boston: Beacon Press 1961) p.215

50

particular ontology from certain material conditions. With

aura the derived ontology is of the cultural artefact as

fetishised uniqueness, and this is derived from the

limitations of reproduction. With Modernism the derived

ontology is medium as the essence of art, and this is derived

from the particular way artists produce their works. In both

cases the manner of appraisal suggests conventions. From these

examples it is evident that the medium has little to do with

technical support in itself; it is the set of cultural

perceptions of that technical support which are determinative,

where technical support refers to aspects of a mode of

production. If convention is simply a sort of socially agreed

way of doing something, then using a widely accepted theory to

appraise something, as the Modernist critic does, is a matter

of convention.

With these arguments in mind we can argue that medium

conventions determine first-order meaning. Let’s consider the

Modernist critic looking at an abstract painting. He

interprets it according to a set of conventions that revolve

51

around concepts such as 'the materiality of paint', 'unity'

and so on. What the painting communicates to him, the meaning

that arises out of the interaction between critic and

painting, will presuppose such conventions. Similarly, that

the word 'painting' has meaning is only because of grammatical

conventions. The two examples are not completely analogous;

grammatical conventions have even less to do with technical

supports than concepts of medium. But nevertheless, such

examples make it clear how conventions in general, and

therefore conventions from medium, can determine meaning. What

the painting directly signifies to the Modernist critic depends

on medium conventions because he sees such things as 'purity

of form', 'unified form'. The second-order, mythological

meaning of the painting could then be, for a feminist critic,

the fetishisation of masculine values.

The question that arises is: do medium conventions

determine first-order meaning for internet memes?

52

To answer this question, I must identify some of the most

common conventions of internet memes. A good place to start

will be an examination of the image macro, which is arguably

the most common form internet memes take. Examples of image

macros include ‘lolcats’ and ‘advice animals’, which consist

of an image with some bold text superimposed. Kate Miltner has

noted how the function of 'identification humour' and in-joke-

iness is one of the primary function of lolcats and memes in

general: 'In jokes are important components of both memes and

online communities due to their facilitation of 'in-group-

ness' through the assumption of exclusively shared knowledge.'

51 For lolcats this identification humour is manifested in its

anthropomorphism; Miltner notes how this property 'may on the

one hand highlight the differences between humans and animals,

but on the other hand hint at the similarities between them.'

52 The use of animals, something distinctly not-human, creates

a 'distancing' 53 effect. Because human attributes are imposed

on the animal, those attributes are emphasized, and due to

51 Kate Miltner, SRSLY PHENOMENAL: An Investigations into the Appeal of Lolcats

(Unpublished Dissertation), London School of Economics, London p.1652 Ibid p.1653 Ibid p.16

53

this emphasis the viewer is able to relate to the joke as

someone who has the same attributes. The addition of a human

context is what generates the in-jokeyness. People who find

the meme funny feel their identity as a human reinforced.

Perhaps this argument may be taken further: the sense of

distancing and identification humour is created by

recontextualisation. By imposing the text onto the image of a cat,

the viewer attributes the human property signified by the text

with the cat. The image of the cat is then no longer

associated with cats, it is placed in a human context.

It may be asked why the introduction of a new term is

necessary for describing what could simply be regarded as

anthropomorphism. The answer is because similar processes may

be seen in internet memes that do not anthropomorphise.

Examples of memes which make this apparent include ‘Sixties

Spiderman’ and ‘Woll Smoth’, which also make use of

recontextualisation. Sixties Spiderman consists of image macros

made from stills of an old Spiderman television series.

Examples include stills in which Spiderman appears sick in a

54

bed, with a logo stating 'That post gave me cancer.' In such a

case the Spiderman persona is decontextualised from its

original setting, and a new context is imposed. The context

referred to here is one of a forum or public message board,

and invokes a hypothetical situation in which a user has made

a very low quality post. The humour here is generated by the

absurdity of the arbitrary juxtaposition of the Spiderman

context (with its superhero ideology) and low quality post

context. In making the latter context displace the former, the

two contexts are seen in conjunction. This creates a similar

distancing effect as that seen in lolcats. The absurdity of

such juxtaposition emphasizes an experience common to many

internet forum users: having a strong reaction to a low

quality post. Another example involves an image of Spiderman

appearing to put on/take off his mask, but his mask has

morphed into an odd shape resembling an erection, hence the

text: 'I have the weirdest boner right now.' This Sixties

Spiderman variation is notable because it is a cross between

two memes, the other being the phrase 'I have the weirdest

boner right now.' The phrase has its origins in the television

55

programme Community54. It gained popularity as a video-clip on

Youtube, uploaded by user bmw182, and from there was

transformed into a meme as people used the phrase in common

chat converse, through image macros etc. In this case the new

context imposed upon Spiderman consists of the

knowledge/experience viewers (of the meme) share about the

television programme Community and the other meme. We see the

same pattern of identification humour seen with lolcats here

too. The variations of the memes examined here appeal to those

who identify themselves as regular participants in internet

culture, and this identification is produced by means of

recontextualisation.

Other memes do not recontextualise as much as they

decontextualise. That is, the focus of such memes is on the

removal of the standard perception/context surrounding the

subject of the meme, and the absurdity and arbitrariness that

follows — no additional context is imposed. The Woll Smoth meme

is a good example of this. Woll Smoth memes all feature an

54 2010, Season 1, Episode 15 Director: Joe Russo Writer:

Andrew Guest

56

image of a celebrity with their faces photoshopped, such that

their eyes and mouth are reduced to minuscule proportions.

Often the image is accompanied by the celebrity's name (either

superimposed on the image or just accompanying it as a title)

with its vowels replaced with 'o' (thus changing actor Will

Smith’s name to Woll Smoth). The humour and appeal of the meme

seems generated only by its strangeness. Woll Smoth appears as

some sort of bizarre alien doppelgänger of the actor Will

Smith. His celebrity status and value as a figure of pop

culture is not completely removed; rather it is placed in the

background, partially displaced by the strangeness of the

alteration of Smith's features. In cases of

recontextualisation, something's context is diminished and

combined with some other context; here there is only a

diminished context and a strangeness, hence it is

decontextualised. A similar sort of humour is seen in Ainsley

Harriott memes. These treat the UK-based celebrity chef Ainsley

Harriott as a kind of found object. The meme consists of

Youtube clips, stills from his programmes, photoshopped stills

from his programmes and image macros. At the less extreme

57

scale of things Ainsley Harriott is simply displaced from

original contexts, so that, for example, bits from his

television programmes are taken unaltered and in isolation.

This emphasizes the celebrity chef's idiosyncratic voice and

mannerisms and his exuberant grin and makes them objects of

absurdity. Taken in themselves, Ainsley Harriott's traits seem

bizarre. At the more extreme end, the logic of this absurdity

is built upon. Some instances of this meme alter images of

Harriott by warping his facial features, or mirroring one half

of an image to create a full image, accentuating the

perceptual absurdity of his features. Again there is no

addition of context, only the presence of a partially

diminished pre-existing context rendered absurd by

displacement. So, this variation of Ainsley Harriott memes

works by decontextualisation. However, it is interesting to

note that the extension of this absurdist logic is also

carried out through recontextualisation, as Ainsley Harriott

is commonly placed against contexts of sexual suggestion (a

common example uses the text 'It's time to oil up'), or with

other memes and elements of pop culture. These make a strong

58

case for recontextualisation/decontextualisation being common

narrative, or rather database form, techniques. Perhaps these

functions may be compared to the similes and metaphors found

in literature. To say the lion was as big as a mountain is to

use the attributes of a mountain to highlight the size of the

lion. This does not seem much different from a meme

juxtaposing various contexts of shared knowledge to highlight

something about that shared knowledge.

To understand how these moves tie in with conventions,

recourse to the history of film and photography is useful.

Mary Anne Doane has argued that if film represents a material

trace of history, digital media represents 'a fantasy of

immateriality'55. On the one hand, the perceived objectivity of

film/photography is the result of material processes with

rigid limitations and capabilities. Digital media, embodied by

internet videos, photoshopped images etc., on the other hand,

'seems to move beyond previous media by incorporating them all

55 Mary Ann Doane, The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity,

Differences 18, 1 (2006), p. 143

59

and by proffering the vision (or nightmare) of a medium

without materiality, of pure abstraction incarnated as a

series of 0s and 1s, sheer presence and absence, the code.'56

There does not appear to be any limit to how many times and

how well you can mimic, edit and replicate, thus digital media

appear to have transcended material limitations. Of course it

would be extravagant to think this goes beyond appearance;

this transcendence is, as Doane notes, fantasy. But it is

still the case that the material limitations and capabilities

of digital media are quite distinct from that of

film/photography in that it is capable of vast degrees of

replication and editing. Thus the ontology of digital media

will be similarly distinct from film, and the conventions

derived from this ontology will also be different. Here

thinking about film/photography provides a useful

counterpoint, for the ontology of film/photography allows for

the growth of conventions that focus on preserving history.

For example, Andre Habib has argued that the film archive, as

a store of nitrate/acetate stock that may be found, for

example, in the British Film Institute, functions as 'trace-

56 Ibid p. 142

60

monument'57, that is, a monument to collective memory. It is

conventional for old films to be seen as a portal to the past.

If the ontology of film/photography leads to conventions of

preserving historical time, what kind of conventions can one

expect from the ontology of digital media? Digital media, with

their vast capabilities for altering photos, videos etc.,

seems to have an ontology antithetical to that of

film/photography. An objective link to the world seems

inconceivable in an environment of constant replication of

edited media. Hence, we would expect conventions that shrink

away from the objective world and the role as an index of the

past. We are therefore lead back to processes such as

recontextualisation and decontextualisation, where the

significance of the original history and context of an image

(in other words, the image's link with the real world) is

diminished, relevant only in its juxtaposition with other

contexts. Recontextualisation and decontextualisation are

conventions since, as evidenced by the above examples of

Sixties Spiderman, Woll Smoth and Ainsley Harriott, they are

57 Andre Habib, Ruin, Archive and the Time of Cinema: Peter Delpeut's Lyrical

Nitrate, SubStance, Issue 110 (Volume 35, Number 2), 2006, p.124

61

widely accepted methods of generating humour. They are medium

conventions because they seem derivable from the ontology of

digital media, which in turn is derived from the material

capabilities of digital media. It may be said, then, that in

internet memes, medium conventions fix first-order meaning

through their constant play with contexts.

62

63

Second-Order Meaning

In ‘SRSLY PHENOMENAL: An investigation into the appeal of

lolcats’, Kate Miltner recognises that one 'of the most

obvious generic “expectations” for LOLCats is that, as funny

pictures of cats, they should actually be funny,' and that

further, the nature of lolcat humour is that of

'identification humour, more familiarly known as “in-jokes”.

In-jokes are important components of both memes and online

64

communities due to their facilitation of “in groupness”

through the assumption of exclusively shared knowledge.' 58

Miltner demonstrates how this humour arises from

particular experiences rooted in particular social

circumstances. She conducted an empirical study based on a

focus group of thirty six members, in which she interviewed

the participants. Within this focus group she delineates

several subgroups. The first of these are the ‘Cheezfrenz’,

where:

‘Cheezfrenz’ is how community members are referred to onICHC [icanhas.cheezburger.com]. They are invested LOLCatlovers whose interest in LOLCats generally stems fromtheir affinity for cats...According to one focus groupparticipant who attended Cheezburger Field Day, the mostardent Cheezfrenz tend to be older women; while all of theCheezfrenz who attended my focus groups were female, theyranged in age from 21 to 72. 59

The second of these groups are the 'MemeGeeks', within which:

The vast majority (66%) were males between the ages of 24and 28, and overwhelmingly worked in the digital industryin some context.' The final subgroup were the 'Casual

58 Kate Miltner, SRSLY PHENOMENAL: An Investigations into the Appeal of Lolcats

(Unpublished Dissertation), London School of Economics, London p.1659 Ibid p.25

65

Users', who were 'mostly comprised of the “Bored At Work”population and cat owners. 60

So each group is composed of a fairly specific demographic

beyond mere membership of an online community. The Cheezfrenz

were mostly women, the MemeGeeks males in the digital

industry, and the Casual Users the 'bored at work' 61

population. Furthermore, it may be seen that each subgroup has

distinct ways of experiencing lolcats. The MemeGeeks' interest

in lolcats is part of a 'larger interest in Internet

Culture'62, hence their referral to themselves as '“children of

the Internet”, “from the Internet” and “(living) on the

Internet”'63. Such an interest is consistent with their

particular mode of interaction with lolcats: they spend their

time 'on content-oriented sites such as Tumblr and Reddit'64

that allow not only sharing of lolcats, but other memes and

other cultural content. Cheezfrenz 'actively seek out LOLCats,

usually on a daily basis,'65 suggesting an interest more

60 Ibid p.2661 Ibid p.2662 Ibid p.2663 Ibid p.2664 Ibid p.2665 Ibid p.25

66

specifically to do with lolcats than that of the MemeGeeks.

The Casual Users had the most passing interest in lolcats, who

'tend to engage passively with LOLCats, receiving them from

others via email or seeing them on Facebook.'66 Here I claim

that the correlation between the characteristics of a group

(e.g. being a male worker in the digital industry) and the

preferred type of interaction with lolcats shown by that group

can be accounted for by an online 'communal identity'.

I explore this communal identity further later on. For

now, we may see something of this communal identity if we

carry on analysing and interpreting internet memes -- in

particular, memes that have 'evolved around a new universe of digital

and meme-oriented content.' 67 These form a genre of memes that

Limor Shifman has noted as requiring understanding of 'a

complex grid of signs that only “those in the know” can

decipher.' 68 So it was possible to create this genre of memes

only given the existence of other memes, and moreover, given

66 Ibid p.2667 Limor Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture, (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2014) p.11868 Ibid p.118

67

the existence of an already developed internet community. One

example of a member of this genre which Shifman talks about is

the rage comic. Rage comics are short comic strips drawn with 'a

set of expressive characters, each associated with a typical

behaviour.' 69 These characters are known as rage faces,

referring to the first such which appeared. This first rage

face character consists of a figure showing great agitation

saying 'FUUUUUUU'. He is used in situations expressing anger.

The various other rage faces consist of different stock

characters expressing different emotions and reactions.

Typical subject matter involves mundane everyday affairs, the

small victories and losses of everyday existence (though rage

comics can address other types of affairs too), which are made

humorous through recontextualisation. These mundane affairs

are reduced to stock expressive characters and the

deliberately naïve method of drawing. Thereby these mundane

affairs are inserted into a context of references and meanings

one can engage with only with prior understanding and some

knowledge of the community behind the rage comics. Rage faces

have their own history and canon. There are a great many rage

69 Ibid p.113

68

faces, but generally only existing rage faces are used. There

is some kind of common agreement as to what counts as a rage

face. Of course new rage faces may be created, so there must

be some group of people creating different sorts of expressive

characters. But these can only become rage faces after they

have been introduced and accepted by the community of rage

face makers, and the number engaged in the appropriation of

already existing rage faces is higher than the number engaged

in the creation new ones. Hence there is a ‘canon’ of rage

faces within which a new character needs to be included before

it counts as a rage face. In discourses of art history, the

canon is a concept tightly interwoven with concepts of

history. The construction of a canon always presupposes some

notion of history: e.g. the patriarchal canon presupposes a

patriarchal history. The same kind of connection exists with

internet memes. For rage faces to be recognised as forming a

canon requires the existence of knowledge able to justify their

formation of a canon. There must be places where the

historical circumstances under which a face became a rage face

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are recorded, and indeed such places can be found (for

instance, knowyourmeme.com).

This canonical history must also be selective; to be included

in a canon is to exemplify some kind of cultural logic. To be

included within the patriarchal art canon requires one to

exemplify patriarchal values. Such selectivity is also present

within rage comics. All recognised rage faces have a

distinctive style. They are mostly black and white (some of

the ones consisting of the female character 'derpina' depict

yellowish hair), consist either of certain expressions traced

from celebrities (e.g. the 'bitch please' face is a tracing of

the basketball player Yao Ming) or caricatures done

deliberately crudely on programmes such as MS Paint. There

appears to be a particular aesthetic at work here, and this

aesthetic appears to be in the absurdist strain noted above.

Many rage faces (such as forever alone and the trollface character)

are done in an over-the-top style, with their expressions and

features grotesquely exaggerated. This is often accompanied

with a deliberately child-like drawing style, bold fonts and

70

extreme reactions to mundane/everyday things. The mundane

situations translated into rage comic form are therefore

mundane situations made as remarkable and not-mundane as

possible, and this creates a sense of absurdity. Faces that

follow this style all reinforce a particular variety of

recontextualisation — for a face to become a meme, one of the

requirements is that it must allow for the recontextualisation

of mundane experiences into the more extreme, absurd language

of rage comics.

Another important process occurs within the

recontextualisation of rage comics. Since many rage comics are

accounts of everyday experiences, they often contain a

character who is the centre of the narrative. This character

represents the creator of the comic, the one who is telling

the story of his experience in rage comic form (this status is

often signified by the phrase 'le me' (the French ‘le’ used

for extra humour). Through this narrative the creator's

identity is also transferred — it is recontextualised along

with the experience. This may be further explained in terms of

71

what Shifman calls 'hypermemetic logic'70, which is the

cultural logic underlying the 'sharing, imitating, remixing'71

of online media such as memes. This is a logic that have

'become highly valued pillars of participatory culture, part

and parcel of what is expected from a “digitally literate”

netizen.' 72 One of the underlying features of this

hypermemetic logic is 'networked individualism'73, in which:

people are expected to fashion a unique identity andimage, and by doing so actively construct their “selves”.At the same times, individuals participateenthusiastically in the shaping of social networks,demonstrating an enduring human longing for communality. 74

Networked individualism is the synthesis of individual and

network, and describes accurately the process evident in rage

comics. Through the representation of everyday anecdotes, and

the insertion of their narrator into a rage face character,

something of the identity of the creator (the one telling the

anecdote) is preserved and recontextualised into the shared

sign system of the rage comic community. The individuality of70 Ibid p.2371 Ibid p.2372 Ibid p.2373 Ibid p.3374 Ibid p.33

72

the creator's identity is expressed through the anecdote

itself and the individual reactions and emotions expressed by

the rage faces. The communality is expressed through the usage

of the sign system of rage faces, highlighting a shared

knowledge of the canon and history of rage faces, a shared

sense of humour etc. Hence one can say the rage faces signify

a communal identity. It seems, then, that we have stumbled upon

the second-order mythological meaning of rage comics. When one

looks at a rage comic, then one receives the first-order

meaning. The contents of the comic (the rage faces and

narrative) signify some anecdote recontextualised for an

absurd/humorous effect. At the second-order, the contents of

the comic signify a particular identity that is at once

individual (personal) and networked (part of a wider community

familiar with the contents of the comic). Hence a communal

identity is signified. Note how in the second-order's usage of

the contents of the comic (as signifier), their first-order

meaning is removed. The particular anecdote expressed by the

narrative and rage faces is irrelevant to their expressing the

creator's networked individuality and in turn a communal

73

identity. There simply needs to be some anecdote in order to

maintain the form needed to signify the communal identity.

So, we may say that the second-order meaning appropriates

the signifier of the first, as would be expected from the

position of Barthes’ theory of myths. In this example, the

creator's identity was preserved in the rage comic. However

this is not necessarily the case for all internet memes; there

may be a meme in which the viewer sees nothing of the

creator's identity. Even in this case, however, the contents

of the meme can still signify at the second-order communal

identity if the viewer has an identity belonging to the

relevant community. Of course, if the viewer has no knowledge

about the relevant community, the meme will fail to have a

second-order meaning or even, in some cases, a first-order

meaning. We see some of this networked individuality and

communal identity in Miltner's examination of lolcats. The

Cheezfrenz and MemeGeeks can be said to be communal

identities, defining their members according to some shared

knowledge and conventions related to lolcats. The Casual User

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group does not constitute a communal identity as its mode of

participation is too diffuse and passive, and does not really

require any knowledge of meme-specific discourse.

Of interest now is the correlation highlighted by Miltner

between real world identity (e.g. male worker in digital

industry) and the way they interact with lolcats according to

communal identities such as Cheezfrenz, and the relationship

between the two suggested by the correlation. This brings me

back to the concepts focused on at the beginning: ideology and

interpellation. It may be said that the networked

individuality engendered by the ongoing sharing, making,

editing, communicating in a participatory culture is an

example of interpellation. There are two reasons for this

claim. The first is that networked individuality essentially

concerns categories of the subject. Notions of 'individuality'

and 'identity' are ideological because they contextualise the

concrete individual in terms of social roles determined by

capitalist relations of production. Thus notions of

'individuality' and 'identity' interpellate the concrete

75

individual as social subject. Networked individuality

concretises the very same ideological categories of

individuality and identity set against the context of an

online participatory culture. The second reason is that this

online participatory culture is defined in terms of specific

social roles, in the same way society at large is defined in

terms of specific social roles determined by capitalist

relations of production. Thus, we can see online participatory

culture as a microcosm of society in terms of the relationship

between the subject and social roles, and so speak of the

functions of online participatory culture as functions of

ideology. Limor Shifman has observed what some of the systems

generating such roles are, and one of them is networked

individualism itself. Participatory culture can be understood

in terms of a logic which aims to continually allow people to

'fashion a unique identity and image and by doing so actively

construct their “selves” 75' and 'participate enthusiastically

in the shaping of social networks'76 thus forming a communal

identity. Thus the act observed above of memes signifying

75 Ibid p.3376 Ibid p.33

76

networked individuality and communal identity is a role

designed to enable this social logic. Another of these systems

is an 'economy-driven logic [which] relates to the notion that

contemporary society is based on an “attention economy”. In an

online attention-economy, the key resource is not 'information

but the attention people pay to it'77. So, in an online

participatory culture, there is an economic logic for the

distribution of attention. Shifman provides examples of this

economic logic at work: 'On sites such as YouTube, attention

can be directly tied to mimesis: the number of derivatives

spawned by a certain video is an indicator of attention,

which, in turn, draws attention to the initial memetic video

in a reciprocal process.' 78 In other words, functions such as

making memes, sharing them, commenting on them etc. can be

seen in terms of an attention-economy, in which case such

functions can be seen as economic roles. The last of these

systems is composed of 'cultural and aesthetic logics of

participation.' 79 Here engaging with memetic culture is seen

77 Ibid p.3278 Ibid p.3279 Ibid p.34

77

as fulfilling a logic of adapting pre-existing cultural and

aesthetic forms in society at large. Online social media

mediate ideas 'that are practiced within social networks,' 80

but are shaped by 'cultural norms and expectations' derived

from 'the history of pop culture genres and fan cultures'81,

which exist outside the online participatory culture. Hence we

may talk of engagement with meme culture in terms of specific

social roles analogous to those of real society, qualifying

the second reason.

Given these two reasons, we can say networked

individuality is a case of interpellation. It follows then

that meme culture can interpellate the subject into a virtual

subject. We may call this a second-order interpellation. In

society, ideology interpellates the concrete individual as

subject. When a subject engages with meme culture, the

ideological categories of individuality/identity that

interpellate the individual as subject are transferred into

that meme culture. However this meme culture is defined by

80 Ibid p.3481 Ibid p.34

78

social roles distinct from that of society, hence the subject

participating in meme culture is interpellated as a virtual

subject, which is a subjectivity defined by those distinct

online social roles. On the individual level, this virtual

subjectivity manifests as networked individuality. On the

collective level, this virtual subjectivity manifests as

communal identity. This is the main thesis of my dissertation.

79

80

Conclusion

I have tried above to understand internet memes in a way that

will allow analyses of meme culture in terms of ideology. Such

a way needs a theory that: (1) provides an extensive account

of what internet memes are; and (2) provides an account of the

relationship between internet memes, internet culture and

ideology. I have outlined such a theory by arguing that

internet memes are satisfactorily understood as groups of

signs which function at the level of mythology. Each internet

meme refers to a set of signs connected by a common theme — in

brief, internet memes take on the database form. Hence

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individual internet memes are composed of many variations on a

theme. At the level of first-order meaning, internet memes

signify various things (such as a form of humour or anecdote),

the content of which is determined by medium conventions such

as recontextualisation. Hence the first-order meaning of

internet memes is determined by the medium conventions derived

from culturally-determined ontologies of digital media. At the

level of mythology, internet memes signify the values of and

sense of belonging to a communal identity, as well as

networked individuality (whether this individuality is of the

viewer or the creator of the meme). Furthermore, this

signification takes place via the appropriation of the forms

shaped by medium conventions. Through this signification,

internet memes interpellate the subject as virtual subject,

engendering a virtual subjectivity defined by the social roles

exclusive to the participatory culture of which meme culture

is a part. This is made possible by the fact that ideological

categories of individuality and identity are transferred into

participatory culture, allowing online ideologies to flourish

and define and be defined by social roles such as attention-

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economy, networked individuality and cultural and aesthetic

preservation and adaptation. Such an argument is made on the

basis of an Althusserian concept of ideology modified

according to the criticisms of Ranciere and clarifications of

Williams.

If the above has been successful, we are one step closer

to a perspective of convergence culture informed by

fundamental concerns of critical theory, such as the culture

industry and ideology.

83

84

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Illustrations

88

All images displayed here are examples of the specific

internet memes discussed in the dissertation.

89

Figure 1, I Can Haz Cheezburger variant of lolcats

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Fig.2, Tom Honks variant of Woll Smoth

91

Fig 3, variant of Ainsley Harriott

Fig.4, An example of a rage comic, featuring two variants of rage

faces in the bottom two panels

92

Fig.5, Rage Guy variant of rage faces

93

94

Fig.6, a rage comic featuring the forever alone variant of rage

faces

95

Fig.7, variant of Sixties Spiderman

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