Memes

Meme Of The Week 6-24

June 24th, 2010

This week’s meme is the Successful Black Man

The Back Story: The original creator of this meme (who is remaining anonymous) has stated that the idea first came up while talking about discrimination issues at work. The meme then was picked up by 4chan’s random board which is a hot bed for racism. The appeal of the meme is that it breaks the racist stereotypes and in itself is a counter to racism.

The set up: The meme is based off of a picture of a black man dressed in business attire and when done correctly, the top line is an incomplete sentence that refers to a typical black male stereotype, but the sentence is continued on the bottom line in a sophisticated manner showing that the man does not fit the stereotype.


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Meme Of The Week 6-17

June 17th, 2010

This week’s meme is “Meanwhile In X”

The Back Story: The Meanwhile X meme uses the old redirection from the silent movie era where if you wanted to redirect the story to a different location a slide would come up that said something along the lines of “Meanwhile, back at the ranch”. Sometime in February 2010, a flipped image of a Holden Commodore with the caption “Meanwhile in Australia” appeared on 4chan for the first time. An allusion to the age-old joke that everything in Australia is “upside down”, the image quickly became a favorite re-blog material on image board sites, blog networks and aggregator services. Since then, multiple variations with countries or locations and their stereotypes have been posted.

The set up: Take any picture that can illustrate ridiculous and absurd situations that are easily identified as stereotypical of a certain ethnicity, nationality, occupation or subculture and add the captions.


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Meme Of The Week 6-10

June 10th, 2010

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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Meme Of The Week 6-3

June 3rd, 2010

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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Meme Of The Week 5-27

May 27th, 2010

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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