Meme Machine: The Popularity of Racist Memes on Funnyjunk.

By: Grant Butler

Introduction
Memes are a hilarious creation of the Internet. Their connotations trigger brief emotional responses that range from sadness to laughter. High Expectations Asian Father (pictured above) is an example of making a cultural stereotype into a meme, making viewers briefly chuckle before moving on. Memes play a large part in the shortened attention span of our generation due to the fast paced nature of the Internet and our never ending thirst to keep up to date with the latest trends. A meme's popularity depends on the participation of web users to spread the meme to others, who in turn spread it to more people, perpetuating the meme sharing cycle. This continues until it reaches the peak of its popularity; the meme is seen everywhere one day and suddenly gone the next. People have a tendency to move on to something new when they get bored with current trends.

Thesis and Method of Study
Building on a course reading by Carl Chen, I want to research why users enjoy sharing racist memes through online communities centred around similar interests. I want to conduct participatory observation research on the website Funnyjunk by actively participating in meme sharing culture. Funnyjunk is an image board website where users upload content (such as images, gifs, and videos) and engage in discussions with other users regarding that content. I want to engage in that discussion; ask users about their opinion on racist memes, what attracts them to these types of memes, and try to understand why culturally insensitive memes are so popular.

Why is this so Interesting?
This topic interests me because of the amount of content uploaded to Funnyjunk on a daily basis. The website itself has created some notable memes that have circulated throughout other websites. For example, the 'Oh God Why' meme originated on Funnyjunk and has been seen on other image boards like Reddit and 4chan. Another reason why Funnyjunk is so fascinating is because it is a platform where memes increase their popularity and users take these memes and modify them to make them original and funny again. An example of the way users might do that is to take the 'High Expectations Asian Father' meme and Photoshop the face onto a bear. Modifying memes keeps them in circulation of the popular memes and helps facilitate discussions among the community. One important point about memes is that when a meme's popularity fades, attempting to make it popular again is met with harsh criticism. These 'reposts', as online image boards like to call them, clutter the main pages and annoy users who want to see new content. That saying in show business "You only get 15 minutes of fame" applies to reposted memes in every situation, because once its popularity fades, people will forget about it and will not want to see it again.

Sources I plan to use
There are a few literary sources I want to draw on for this project. One of which is an article by Noam Gal that mentions how memes are fundamental in establishing norms and became a social tool to negotiate them, especially within the LGBT community. Norms dictate social situations, so over an image board, if you are not conforming to the norm of sharing popular memes, you will be left out. Other sources include articles by Ryan Milner and Liane Nooney, who both focus their discussion on how memes form online communities through the logic of 'lulz' using intentionally racist and gendered remarks for laughs. There are memes on the Internet specifically created to make fun of race, such as the 'That's Racist' meme that depicts a black child holding a watermelon, a basketball, and fried chicken; traits stereotypically associated with black people. While society would traditionally consider this image to be inherently racist, the Internet thinks otherwise. The Internet is not bound by the same rules as society is. Sharing and viewing racist memes has a ironic undertone to it; people do not have the same response to something racist they see online vs. real life. Memes on the Internet are used by a lot of people as a form of escapism. They want to forget about the problems in their life and have a good laugh, so when a racist meme appears online, they laugh along instead of getting offended. Racist memes look like they are designed to mock minorities, but actually they are intentionally designed that way and are trying to get people to laugh at themselves.

Broader Context
The broader context of this assignment could include an analysis of image boards like 4chan and Reddit along with other places online that perpetuate memes through their community. Another possibility is to create a survey, post it to Funnyjunk, and have the users answer questions about their beliefs regarding racist memes. Communities exist online that are not innately designed to perpetuate memes yet come up with their own memes to share with their community; their own inside joke. They help filter members from non-members and bring that particular community closer together through their shared understanding of specific humour. For example, Rooster Teeth fans have spread original memes such as 'Mark Nutt' throughout their community that you will not understand unless you are a Rooster Teeth fan. Memes are based on a user's understanding of the meme's context and background. If the user does not understand either, they will not find the meme funny, and will miss out on an opportunity to collaborate with other users who share the same interests.

Works Cited (potential sources)
Bergstrom, Kelly. ‘“Don’t Feed the Troll”: Shutting Down Debate About Community Expectations on Reddit.com’, First Monday 16.8 (2011), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3498/3029%3E.doi:10.5210/fm.v16i8.3498.

Chen, Carl (2012). "The Creation and Meaning of Internet Memes in 4chan: Popular Internet Culture in the Age of Online Digital Reproduction". Institutions Habitus Spring 2012. Pgs 6-19. doi: 10.1.1.363.7029

Gal, Noam, Shifman, Limor, & Kampf, Zohar (2015). "It Gets Better": Internet memes and the construction of collective identity. New Media & Society. doi: 10.1177/1461444814568784

Milner, Ryan M. (2013). FCJ-156 Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism and the Logic of Lulz. The Fibreculture Journal(22). Retrieved from http://fibreculturejournal.org/wp-content/pdfs/FCJ-156Ryan%20Milner.pdf Nooney, Laine & Portwood-Stacer, Laura (2014). One Does Not Simply: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Internet Memes. Journal of Visual Culture 13(3). pgs 248-252. doi:10.1177/14704112914551351