Edited by Chaoqun Xie
[Internet Pragmatics 3:2] 2020
► pp. 145–173
Internet memes we live by (and die by)
In the internet age, memes are at once products and driving forces of social practices. A meme contains a memetic message and a meme output, and boasts, if guided by a pragmatic way of thinking, several features, including but not limited to salience, frequency, adaptability, argumentativity, sociality, embeddedness, embodiedness, locality, relativity, emotionality and dynamicity. The current global COVID-19 pandemic serves as a fitting and timely touchstone to testify how human beings are surrounded by numerous good and evil memes in the online world, and how internet memes, as can be seen from the illustration of two specific memes, namely, the ‘stay home, stay safe’ meme and the ‘wear a mask’ meme, are impacting human life-worlds, online and offline, with their transformative power, be it constructive or destructive. Moreover, researching how memes plays a decisive part in internet-mediated interaction provides a lens of insight through which ‘deep states’ of human nature of both self and others can be uncovered and through which what Nietzsche called “a revaluation of values” is possible.
Article outline
- 1.What’s in an (internet) meme?
- 2.Internet memes are in!
- 2.1The COVID-19 pandemic
- 2.2The ‘stay home, stay safe’ meme
- 2.3The ‘wear a mask’ meme
- 3.We are in internet memes!
- 4.Concluding remarks: Internet memes we die by?
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00066.xie
References
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 02 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.