Staffer fears meme takeover

“Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” – Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol feared that if you look at something long enough, it loses all its meaning. His art illustrated that when we are exposed to something enough times, it blurs into nothingness before our very eyes.

This is my problem with memes.

Anyone remotely familiar with Internet culture is familiar with memes. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines a meme as an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture, sort of like a virus.

It’s almost the reverse of what Warhol was getting at. Instead of taking a product, and making it something original, memes have become taking something original and making it a product.

People spew them at each other, going so far as to flood message boards, comment sections and forums with them.

They’ve made the leap to advertisement, Sprint being the worst offender that stands out in my mind.

Recently, at the movie theater, they displayed an ad that illustrated a man on his phone surrounded by these hovering blobs of memes, Internet jokes, and IM’s. Nyan cat, double dream hands and several other familiar images float and surround him.

I think this illustrates the idea of my article rather well: We are practically breathing memes in like a constantly hovering cloud. The whole point of the advertisement is to turn off your cell phone. Maybe they’re onto something?

Mad, on Cartoon Network (a guilty pleasure of mine. I’m sure others, also enjoy the “edgy cartoons” including “Adventure Time”, “Regular Show”, and the like), is also guilty of this.

During a parody of Grey’s Anatomy, entitled “Grey’s In Anime,” there is, for one brief moment (about one minute and 10 seconds according to the YouTube excerpt), a character that looks suspiciously (and by suspiciously, I mean exactly and unmistakably) like Pedobear. This was the point at which I realized this had gone too far.

Each meme is entitled to its 15 minutes of fame. They come and they go, but they illustrate Warhol’s ideas on culture almost painfully. The Skyrim memes may be the worst offenders.

While initially kind of funny, I have seen more people who claim to have taken arrows to the knee, or adventurers to the knee or a Nyan cat to the knee, more times than I can count.

Why can’t I hold all these memes?

I know what you’re thinking. “I see what you did there.” At this point in the article you’re like “Y U NO SOLUTION?”

Truth is, I can’t think of one. *Trollface*

Oh, God.