The Power of Memes
Understanding The Most Powerful Tool for Expression on The Internet
Introduction
Even if you have only met me once, it is impossible not to know that I love memes. I do most of my online communication in memes or gifs, and will often custom make my own to make sure the message is just right. Many people might understandably see memes as juvenile and silly, or think they are just funny internet things without any real purpose, but I think memes are orders of magnitude more complex, interesting, and powerful forms of expression than one might first assume.
In this blog post I am going to explain The Challenges of Communication, How Memes Revolutionize Communication, and The Power of Memes such that you can better understand the most powerful tool for expression on the internet!
Challenges of Communication
The journey to understand the power of memes really starts with understanding the challenges of communication. We don’t often recognize these challenges because the systems we use to communicate are actually very effective and practical for the vast majority of the communication we need to do. But these systems often have difficulty when we are trying to express very complex ideas quickly, especially if these ideas are novel or nuanced.
To start, we should recognize that language is extremely low fidelity. And while that might seem like a problem if you want to be able to express yourself clearly, it actually allows for an extremely effective way to communicate. Think of words like “dog” or “phone”; these words are very general and yet, very practical. We all understand what they mean and that makes communicating using those words very effective. If we ever need to communicate at a higher level of detail, we can always add other, also low fidelity, words to be more specific. For example “big fluffy dogs” or “Sara’s phone”. So by using low fidelity words that are easy for everyone to understand and combining those words in different ways, we can actually express fairly specific ideas quite simply.
We also communicate in more ways than through language alone. We often use verbal communication tools like tone, emphasis, and pacing to more effectively convey meaning. We can also use visual tools like body language, facial expressions, and gestures to bring even more clarity to what we are trying to express. We can even leverage mutual knowledge to better communicate through use of analogies and references when explaining new concepts.
But despite using all of those powerful tools for communication, I am sure you have had many conversations where you wanted to express a specific feeling or idea, but no matter how hard you tried, you never really felt like you were getting that idea across. Especially if you are limited in the tools you can use by your means of communication, like when having a phone call or writing a text message. Communicating ideas will always come with some, if not a very large, loss of fidelity as no communication system is perfect.
I want to quickly note that we can also leverage other powerful methods of communication such as drawing, story, music, video, humor, and other forms of art to express ourselves when conventional methods fail. Art has a way of breaking through and expressing something that is beyond words alone. And I would argue that art should always be searching for more and more powerful ways to communicate the complexity of the human experience.
How Memes Revolutionize Communication
As I mentioned earlier, when we communicate in person, we not only use language, but also verbal and visual tools to enhance our message. We can also leverage someone’s existing knowledge base to make analogies and references to more effectively convey ideas. It would stand to reason that methods of communication that can utilize multiple tools at the same time can be extremely effective at conveying ideas clearly, quickly, and effectively.
And that’s what memes do. Memes are not just a combination of pictures and words, but leverage symbolism, body language, shared culture, and artistic style to create the most powerful method of expression on the internet.
The Power of Visual Communication
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and that idea is more true than you think. While language is limited to mostly low resolution words, visuals can be as low resolution or detailed as the creator would like. We can even leverage one of the oldest and universal forms of expression, body language, to express nuanced feelings and emotions. And just like we can reference common ideas or shared knowledge through language, with visual communication we can utilize common understood symbols to evoke specific meaning.
Using The Ancient Software of Body Language
It would make sense that as social creatures, humans have needed to evolve powerful ways of conveying how we feel and understanding how others feel. Visual expression through body language, gestures, and facial expression is one of the oldest systems of communication we humans have. This system is so deeply ingrained in us that we rarely realize we are using it. You don’t have to think about how to read someone’s facial expression to understand it. And you often never even notice when you are displaying how you feel through your own body language. It is amazing that, from even the smallest of movements in someone’s face, we can intuit extremely complex emotions. Body language is an ancient and powerful system of communication we are very intune with and we can leverage that software in modern communication.
This is why emojis are so commonly used in online communication. I am sure you have had someone misinterpret your tone in a text or message, and emojis solve that problem by adding a much needed level of clarity around emotions and feelings. And by tapping into our ancient knowledge of facial expressions, no one needs to be taught what different face emojis mean. We all just know.
Reaction gifs are also built on body language. Instead of trying to text using low resolution words like “happy”, we can find the perfect reaction gif that expresses the exact flavor of happiness we actually feel. This is because reaction gifs tend to be very potent expressions of a very specific and relatable feeling. And so many reaction gifs are from movies and shows because actors specialize in expressing themselves effectively through body language. Additionally, movies and shows are more accessible and widely known, making those reaction gifs easier to create and more relatable.
Harnessing Culture
Just like we can use someone’s existing experience to better explain ideas with tools like analogies and reference in written and spoken language, memes can leverage our shared knowledge of culture for better expression. In the modern age of the internet, there are many experiences from shows and movies, to news and events that are widely shared. When almost everyone has seen, or at least heard of the marvel movies, using clips or pictures from those movies allows you to instantly reference very specific situations which can give clear context when presenting new ideas.
Symbols
Another element of our shared culture is symbols. These can be as simple as a heart ♥ or a light bulb💡 or as complex and old as Jungian archetypes like the young fool, or the wise old man. Regardless of the complexity, symbols' power lies in that they are universally understood and can be leveraged to easily give more complexity to an idea you want to express.
Style
Finally, all of these pieces can be combined in a seemingly infinite number of ways, allowing all types of creative choice and expression. Just like any artform, different memers will have different styles and those styles will evolve as they learn how to better express themselves. They can work with different content, tools, and techniques, and try to express a wide range of different ideas.
The Power of Memes
So we understand that memes can use both written language and visual elements while also taking advantage of shared cultural knowledge to convey complex ideas, but what makes that so special? Well, in the age of the internet, when people have very short attention spans and like to get their information quickly, you need to be able to pack as much information into an easily digestible bit sized format as possible. And from that necessity evolved the next evolution in communication: the meme!
So let’s break down the three elements that make memes so powerful: density of information, ease of understanding, and speed of understanding.
Density of Information
As just as we covered before, leveraging multiple communication methods adds depth of meaning, such as using tone, volume, pacing, and emphasis when speaking. Memes can leverage written language, visuals including body language and symbolism, culture reference, and also style to construct its message. Meme videos can even bring in the added tools of auditory communication. It is that combination of all these different communication methods that can create extremely high fidelity, nuanced expression.
Ease of Understanding
Memes are not just able to convey high fidelity messages, but those messages are extremely easy to understand. Typically, if you want to convey really detailed information quickly, you need to rely on a high level of pre-existing knowledge. You can use complex vocabulary or make analogies to relevant examples, but if the person you are communicating with doesn’t have that knowledge, the message will be lost.
The magic of memes is that while they use multiple communication methods to obtain that high level of complexity, they draw on the most universal and easily understandable knowledge we have. Memes tend to stick with common vocab, use pictures with very clear body language, and use references from popular culture most everyone knows. Just like we don’t have to work to read a facial expression, our brains immediately interpret the meme because all the elements are familiar and easy to understand.
Speed of Understanding
Typically when we want to express something with a high degree of clarity, we need to increase complexity and length. Maybe you can’t capture exactly how you feel in a single word, but you can get pretty close in a paragraph, or by using more complex vocabulary. The problem is that understanding that message will take time, but on the internet, speed is king.
Because memes harmonize multiple methods of communication and keep each easy to understand, your brain can use different processing centers simultaneously, combining that information into a very clear and nuanced message. This is like how computers solve complex computations by running multiple processes at once. The increase in speed we get by chunking the information in a meme makes it the fastest way to convey a very specific message on the internet!
Conclusion
Memes are the next evolution in communication. A beautiful harmony of multiple communication systems that leverage both ancient software, and current cultural knowledge to express complex ideas with speed and effectiveness. Memes evolved on the internet and are perfectly adapted for fidelity of information and speed. A well crafted meme can spread ideas more powerfully than any book, song, picture, speech, or video alone and this new tool of communication will only become more prevalent and powerful. Now that you understand the complexity and power of memes, I encourage you to work on your meme game and start expressing yourself more effectively on the internet!
