The Memetic Internet

• In Event: The Life Stage of Meme Research: Conversations in a Fledgling Field

Abstract

This presentation argues for a grammatical shift in conceptualizing memes: from ‘meme’ as noun to ‘memetic’ as adjective. This shift deemphasizes the solitary texts we often label ‘memes’ and instead emphasizes the social processes applied to these texts. The memetic logics of multimodality, reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, and spread are ingrained in mediated cultural participation, at multiple levels. Individual authors produce ‘memetic’ texts, even if their texts are not collectively reappropriated. Tumblrs like Kanye Wes Anderson, Beyoncé Voters, and Fly Art Productions are the work of finite authors, but are memetic in their reappropriation of both popular culture and image macro aesthetics. Even less public, a consistently shared, innovatively applied, inside joke between two friends can be ‘memetic’, even if the spread stops with just a pair. Even if ‘meme’ ceases to be a label for subcultural ‘internet culture’ texts, mediated cultural participation will continue to be memetic.

Bio: Ryan M. Milner is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, USA. He investigates the social, political, and cultural implications of mass connection. Most substantially, he has emerged as a leading scholar on internet memes, spending a half-decade immersed in the sites of their creation, circulation, and transformation. In this time, he has published on memes in The Fibreculture Journal and the International Journal of Communication, and has contributed public commentary to The Conversation and The New York Times. His research on memes informs his current book project with Humboldt State’s Whitney Phillips. Between Play and Hate: Antagonism, Mischief and Humor Online is forthcoming from Polity Press in 2016.

Author

• Ryan M. Milner, College of Charleston