This week’s meme is Haters Gonna Hate

The Back Story: The phrase first appeared in the song “Playas Gon’ Play” by 3LW. In it, the lyrics are:

The playas gon’ play
Them haters gonna hate
Them callers gonna call
Them ballers gonna ball

Since then the word “hater” and variants of it have been adopted into common usage in American hip hop and comedy as well as casual vernacular for people who consider themselves successful.

The set up: Using a picture or GIF of someone or something doing something “pimp” and/or showing no regard for an individual or groups hostile remarks addressed toward the person or thing depicted.

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This week’s meme is Money Face

The Back Story: Moneyface images have been circling the net since May of 2008 but did not become widely popular until around August of 2009. Some view it more as a photo technique but it still has held meme status due to it’s popularity.

The set up: Take a banknote and fold it in half over the image of the person depicted. Then hold the note in front of someone’s face to make the two faces match up.

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This week’s meme is Joseph Ducreux

The Back Story: Joseph Ducreux was an 18th Century French artist known for his unorthodox style of portrait paintings. Interested less in the classical ideas of portraiture used by later French artists like David and Ingres. Ducreux took more of a “Formalist” approach, taking the medium to a new ground by tearing down the fourth wall between subject and audience by depicting himself pointing out of the canvas while grinning maniacally, reflecting his belief that facial features could be used to depict personality. The end result is a self portrait of an old time guy looking smug and pimp.

The set up: Translate rap lyrics into 18th century period style speech thus challenging the creator of the image and the reader’s ability to identify the song or phrase.

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This week we’re focusing on Kanye West – Imma Let You Finish.

The back story: At the 2009 VMA awards Taylor Swift won the Best Female Video award for one of her many songs about a young virgin who gives it up to the cool guy at school and then he ditches her for being lousy in the sack. So Taylor goes on stage to accept her award and wouldn’t you know it, mediocre singer and jackass extraordinaire Kanye West forgets everything his mother taught him about how to act in public and decides to storm the stage, take the microphone from Taylor and let everyone know that he felt Beyonce had a better video.

The Setup: Take a picture of a thing or an event, Photoshop in Kanye and a phrase describing how something else was better.

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This week we’re focusing on Pete Hoekstra.

The back story: In June of 2009, there was A LOT of stuff going on in Iran with people protesting the elections. Thousands of people rioting in the streets, police beating and shooting people, overall bad times. The government started blocking a lot of internet traffic and diminishing the media reports of what was going on. To try and get the word out, a lot of Iranians turned to Twitter to keep the rest of the world in the loop of their struggle. On June 17th, GOP Congressman Pete Hoekstra sent out a Tweet comparing the life and death struggle of the Iranian people to the struggles the GOP party faced against the Democrats.

Not only did it portray Hoekstra as an insensitive crybaby prick, but it also gave birth to a great meme.

The Setup: Take an ordinary event, then blow it out of proportion by comparing it to something entirely different.

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