Cool Story, Bro?: Relevance, Timeliness, and the Problem of “Lame Memes”

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

Abstract

Although academic definitions of the term “meme” vary, one consistent theme in much of this work is the notion of transformation and textual dynamism. This poses a number of logistic and theoretical complications for researchers, since in the time it takes to research, write, and publish a project about a specific meme, participatory texts (or even the communities that first created and/or amplified these texts) often undergo profound transformation. Sometimes these texts disappear from the cultural landscape entirely. Sometimes the texts are so successful (for example rage face comics and advice animals on 4chan and reddit) that they lose their original audience and over the course of a research project become “lame memes.” Knowing that the (sub)cultural landscape will likely shift as they write, how might researchers assess "relevance" or "timeliness,” of memetic content? Further, what can or should be said about “lame memes?”

Bio: Whitney Phillips holds a Ph.D. in English (Digital Culture focus/Folklore structured emphasis) from the University of Oregon and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She has published essays and articles on internet memes, constitutive online humor, so-bad-it's-good media engagement, free speech online, and online vigilantism. Her research has appeared in the peer-reviewed journals First Monday, Television and New Media, and Transformative Works and Cultures, and her book on trolls, which pulls from media and cultural studies, folklore studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory, as well as thousands of hours of participant observation, will be published by The MIT Press in early 2015. Her second book, co-written with Ryan Milner of the College of Charleston, is titled Between Play and Hate: Antagonism, Mischief, and Humor Online (Polity Press 2016). During the 2015-2016 academic year, Dr. Phillips will be a Lecturer at Humboldt State University.

Author

• Whitney Phillips, U of Oregon