Not Sure If Brilliant or Merely Pedestrian: Toward a Rhetoric of the Meme by Phill Alexander

Image of Frye with the caption 'Not sure of starting this conversation with a meme is clever or awkward'

Figure 24: The MemeCenter contributes a Futrama Frye for the Moment

Starting a meme is both simple and complex. One part of a meme “working” is beyond the control of the author; the meme has to capture the imagination of others and inspire replication. A quick look at 4Chan or Reddit will show that not every meme lands. But creating the image meme itself is quite simple. I suggest here that even the six points of evaluation I’ve proposed here can be condensed into a three part heuristic for composing, if it is thought of like math equation. The equation:

Photo + bedrock concept + changing concept = image meme


In other words, in each image meme there needs to be a photo. This will usually stay the same over iterations of the photo meme, though it is possible that the meme could use a different image under special circumstances. It will then have some part of the text—a key phrase, a concept, a theme, an idea—that is bedrock and never changes. The last piece will be the part that mutates, the changing concept from meme to meme. Taken all together, these constitute an image meme. And when creating a new meme to deploy, it is necessary to either hook other users with some description or to create several so that the rules become apparent to the audience.

Let me offer an example. Perhaps, after a particularly difficult day of offering friends tech support, I choose to create a humorous meme about how easy Mac products are to use but how many people can’t seem to figure out simple things. I then decide I want to incorporate the hipster know-it-all nerd perception of Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace), the now deceased head of Apple. I also want to make a play on his name, so I recall that the name for wrestlers who get paid just to lose (to make the others look good) are “jobbers.”

So let me stop there.

We have a set of bedrock ideas that form our bedrock concept:

1) Steve Jobs represents Apple and Mac.
2) Apple products are easy to use and understand
3) Jobs is hip and could be a little on the sarcastic side
4) A loser (at least in pro wrestling) is a “jobber”


Now we need our Photo. As I mentioned before, the photo in a meme CAN change, as long as the bedrock element of it stays the same or can be identified in different ways (for example I could have a different image of Steve Jobs). I chose this particular image because it’s high definition and Jobs looks mildly annoyed. It was on Imgur, but with it's massive rollover, I can no longer find the source.

A photo of Steve Jobs
Figure 25: RIP, Steve Jobs


We now have Photo + bedrock concept.

Our changing concept is going to be a specific form of “something a person cannot do with their Apple product that is easy.” One thing that people often have trouble with is getting iTunes to recognize and sync with their iPhone. I’m not sure why, as every time I go to help someone, it’s as easy as plug-and-play with an occasional reboot. This leads to the creation of Figure 26:


A photo of Steve Jobs with the caption 'can't plug phone in with sync cable and wait for iTunes? Jobber!'
Figure 26:Jobs judges your phone skills


Maybe saving as PDF is a problem? See Figure 27.


A photo of Steve Jobs with the caption 'can't plug choose save as and scroll down to PDF? Jobber!'
Figure 27:Jobs drops PDF saving Science



Notice this last one is a touch mean spirited; that’s not a requirement for a meme, but many successful image memes are, as I’ve illustrated in other places here, quite rude. Here’s my last one in the series, for people who can’t read the box and know their product features, Figure 28.


A photo of Steve Jobs with the caption 'still looking for the DVD slot on new MacBook air? Jobber!'
Figure 28:Jobs Needs to clear the MacBook Air



Again, the equation works: Photo + bedrock concept + changing concept = image meme. By observing the equation and seeing the three Jobber memes here, if someone in the audience is compelled to make another, it should be simple.

Were you compelled to make one? Here’s the Jobs photo. Email it to Phill and I’ll post an archive of reader creations on my blog.