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OpinionFrom the political to the completely pointless, memes have brought unending happiness to some of the worst days on social media

Friday, 20th December 2019, 3:54 pm

The internet is a dark, dank place that has, arguably, allowed the most awful traits of human nature to thrive. While this has become markedly worse in the last 10 years, the 2010s also saw the rise of the single thing that makes this hellscape bearable: the meme.

British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins first defined a "meme" in 1976 as a behaviour or idea passed from one animal to another through imitation. In online culture this word has come to mean an image, phrase or video - often humourous - that is rapidly copied and re-shared on social media with slight variations.

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From the political to the completely pointless, memes have brought unending happiness to some of the worst days on social media. Among the fractures of disparate online cultures, memes are one of the few things that connect us. It is the most community-like medium we have, uniting us through shares and lols.

A shorthand language

One of the most joyous things about memes is that they are essentially a constantly evolving modern language, shared and understood by people around the world, regardless of what language they speak.

Scott Wark, an associate researcher at the University of Warwick, agrees. Internet memes are undoubtedly the most important popular culture medium online, he tells i.

One key example of this was 2012's "Grumpy Cat" - an animal, and meme, so popular it subsequently sparked merchandise, a film and multiple consumer endorsements. The picture featured a cat named Tardar Sauce with an extremely unhappy expression caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism.

At this time, the main format of memes were pictures with text above and below the image, and "Grumpy Cat" took this form, with people adding pessimistic captions as if the cat were speaking.

Wark explains that this format continued to reign in meme culture for a few years, up until the emergence of the "Doge" meme in 2013 which was developed from images of a Japanese photographers dog found on a blog.

In the meme, a Shiba Inu dog is seen in various poses, but there is brightly coloured text in the Comic Sans font plastered all over the picture. The idea is that the text represents the innermost thoughts of the dog (or person posting).

This style was far more abstract than "Grumpy Cat", and the image looks more chaotic as the text and image interact with one another.

This was a big moment. From then the style of memes radically shifted, marking the beginning of our creative approach to them and a more abstract way of presenting thoughts and opinions.

Moreover, the way Twitter and Instagram users can immediately understand a memes message with very little context is extraordinary, especially when they are constantly changing.

There's something incredibly powerful about how online communities have created a smart, witty way to converse with and understand one another, wherever they are in the world.

Mental health

While memes can unite the masses, they also appeal to specific groups. For instance, the rise of mental health memes in the mid-2010s allowed people with mental health conditions to identify and confide in one another while partaking in some cathartic dark humour.

After this came the rise of astrological memes which, in the same way, became a sub-culture for people wanting to self-deprecate and laugh about their negative characteristics.

These were particularly happy moments in internet culture as they offered a vessel to self-reflect and laugh at yourself. Amid trolling, online cancel culture and general negativity online, these memes offered a positive alternative.

The image began recirculating on bulletin site 4chan in 2015, as Donald Trump gained popularity on the site. It also featured on Reddit and a year later, The Daily Beast published a piece entitled "How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol" outlining how an otherwise harmless figure had been turned into a symbol of monstrosity and vitriol.

It's fair to say this was one of the lowest points in meme history, demonstrating how innocent imagery can be adopted by the alt-right to perpetuate their messaging.

Next decade and the impact of TikTok

Looking into the next decade, it's clear that memes won't disappear - they will always adapt alongside online culture.

Wark believes TikTok, a video-sharing social network, has already laid the groundwork for this transition, and said it is essentially "memetic culture in overdrive".

Were seeing multiple versions of the same video but some go viral and others do not, and they have really slight differences separating them, he says.

We have already seen the crossover between Twitter and TikTok this year with the huge popularity of "Trying Kombucha for the First Time", in which stills taken from a video by TikTok user Brittany Tomlinson went viral and became a template for other memes. The first image showed her looking disgusted, while the other showed her looking more convinced, and the images paired together were used to highlight a pivot of opinion. It was an example of how users can take elements of videos and create a whole generation of new memes.

Wark adds that on TikTok, we're seeing users become even more creative with music and rhythm in a way the image format never afforded.

Whatever shape or form they're presented in, it's clear their ongoing transitions and transformations are a sign of their unwavering influence in modern communication. They don't disappear - they adapt. The 2020s will undoubtedly be a revolutionary and progressive time for them.

Ruchira Sharma is a staff writer at i

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From Grumpy Cat to TikTok, this decade belonged to memes and their ability to unite the masses - iNews

I only recently noticed that the advice column of Dr. Robert Wallace is no longer in the paper. It last appeared on Nov. 30. I assume it was discontinued either due to lack of reader interest or to cut costs. While I understand both motivations, please, I beg you: reconsider! Dr. Wallaces was a voice of reason in a world gone mad.

Dr. Wallaces column is or was vital to promoting understanding between generations. Young readers may apply his advice to their own lives, and their elders may gain otherwise unobtainable insight into the inner thoughts of young people without trying to promote a rap session that only embarrasses everyone involved. His zero-tolerance policy toward underage drinking is extremely valuable, especially in a world where such a simple point seems hard to understand, judging from the number of ways children find to ask him about it. He is very patient in reiterating that and other kinds of good advice.

Without Dr. Wallace, I truly believe, as W.B. Yeats wrote, Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ...

Think Im exaggerating? Check the Dec. 11 edition of The Star and think again. In the Dear Abby column on that date, Abby advises a septuagenarian woman to give in to her husbands wish to cavort in the buff at a nudist colony. Im no spring chicken myself, but let me just say, Ew. I know the current Dear Abby is a second-generation advice columnist and is more with it than her mother was, but I dont recall this kind of advice appearing before Dr. Wallace disappeared from the page.

Need more? In the same edition, Dennis the Menace pokes his head out of his dads home office and gleefully tattles to his mom about his dad talking to his buddies about some magazine swimsuit stuff online. Lest we not get the mental picture, in the background we actually see his dad at his desk, his one visible hand holding a phone to his grinning face, and a picture of a swimsuit gal on his computer screen. We see the mom in profile, receiving this news and taking in this tableau with a stony expression. With Dr. Wallace on hand, Dennis generally ran his mouth and bugged dear old Mr. Wilson; within two weeks of Dr. Wallaces departure, the column is covering a subject I hesitate to name in a family paper, but it starts with a p and it rhymes with cornography.

Whats next? Family Circus covering polyamory, or Dolly and Jeffy getting into a switchblade fight while wearing Pepe the Frog tee shirts? Good luck trying to blame ol I Dont Know and Not Me when youre in front of a juvie judge, kids.

Only a few weeks with no Dr. Wallace, and the centre has not held. Its anarchy in the pages of The Star. God help us all.

Chris Jones

Anniston

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Paging Doctor Wallace | Free - Anniston Star

The neighbors got together for drinks and carols at the weekend. As an English Jew, I love the carols all those old-time bangers from the time when midwinter really was bleak, all those Zionist lyrics about royal Davids city and kings in Israel. I consider it a mitzvah, a religious obligation, to spread the joy, because theres not enough joy to the world these days, so I play the piano, this year in an impromptu trio with an Irish American fiddler and an English literary critic who, it transpires, toots a mean descant on the trumpet. We spread the joy as a farmer spreads muck, but its the spirit that counts. Without rehearsal or premeditation, we turned Silent Night into a Dean Martin drunk song.

Two nights later, it was the first night of Chanukah. My three daughters lit three menorahs and we sangMaoz Tzur (Rock of Ages):

Furiously they assailed usBut Thine arm availed usAnd Thy word broke their swordWhen our strength failed us

The song has become associated with the Maccabean Revolt of 167 BC the first nationalist movement in history but it was written, like many of the carols, in the Middle Ages. Its impossible not to read those words without thinking of those who fought for their religious freedom against the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV and those who died for it in medieval and modern Europe as in a kosher market in Jersey City.

It may come as a surprise, but Jews dont spend most of their time thinking about anti-Semitism. Or rather, we spend as little time as safely possible thinking about it. We are obliged to choose life, and life and the making of joy and children mean we must refuse to be defined by a morbid shadow-play of other peoples projections. The tide of hate and violence is rising, however.

It has become acceptable to say appalling things about Jews some of them calumnies carrying the stale flavor of the Middle Ages, some of them more recent and carrying the Germanic taste of blood and iron things that remain unsayable about any other people. Especially online, which for reasons that elude me is considered to be a Casablancaof the media, where anything goes and no one is accountable.

It also appears to have become acceptable, in New York City in particular, for Orthodox Jews to be assaulted without the police or mayor doing much about it. And it appears that the strength of many Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League among them, is more devoted to sustaining the Democratic partys coalition than to doing their job of defending Jews. The same goes for many assimilated Jews, who keep their own heads down and complain that religious Jews make it hard for themselves and everyone else. But there are also many, including many people who are not Jewish, who do stand up for what is right and fair, and who fight against lies and incitement.

Furiously they assail us. This year was the first year I received anti-Semitic tweets, anonymous physical threats, notifications that my name was on a list for future punishment, Holocaust denial (on one impressively sick occasion in rhyming couplets) and, in an unneeded further proof of the collapse of our public discourse, images of the alt-right fetish object Pepe the Frog. This year, while the dimwitted online world argued about tropes, my younger daughters learnt to read trope, the ancient cantillation that they will perform when the elder of them has herbat mitzvahin May. Rock of Ages, let our song / Praise thy saving power.

So I refuse to give up hope, and I know that we will be here, and there too, for as long as we have the faith to do so. In many ways, we are living in an age of miracles. The United States, despite its balkanized society and demented politics, remains an island of tolerance between religions, despite the perverse hostility of the Democratic left, street thugs and a few college professors. The state of Israel, which did not exist when my grandparents families were murdered, is thriving and has never had such good diplomatic relations with some many states and peoples. This year, work began on the Abrahamic Family House, in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi, a development whose centerpiece is a common religious space, with a mosque, a church and a synagogue.

The year ended with what, for an English Jew living in the United States, was an almost overwhelming double gift. On December 11, President Trump extended the protections of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964) to Jews, as the George W. Bush administrations Department of Education had decreed in 2004 for Sikhs, Muslims and Jews, and the Obama administrations Department of Justice had confirmed in 2010.

On December 12, Jeremy Corbyn and a hard-left Labour party were demolished in Britains general elections. The elections were about many things Brexit, the National Health Service, the prospect of punitive taxation but a crucial factor was Corbyns foul politics, including his defense of the murderers of the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah, and his seeking out of the company of Holocaust deniers and those who rationalize a selective and obsessive hatred as anti-Zionism.

On the first night of Chanukah, Britains prime minister Boris Johnson sent amessage to Britains Jews: When the Maccabees drove the forces of darkness out of Jerusalem, they had to do so on their own. Today, as Britains Jews seek to drive back the darkness of resurgent anti-Semitism, you have every decent person in this country fighting by your side.

From darkness to light: from the prospect of a Labour government that promised to drive Zionists almost all Jews, in fact from public life, to a Conservative government whose leader sends a clear and moral message, albeit one in which Johnson, an Oxford-educated Classicist, mixed Antiochus III with Antiochus IV.

President Trumps Executive Order and the British publics rejection of Corbyn show that the Jews are not alone in these difficult times. They show that, for all the experts who complain about populism, decency is not inimical to democracy. They show that, despite everything, we should look forward in hope.

I pray that the coming year will be a better one for all of us, including the Kurds of Syria, the Muslims of China and thepeople of Iran, hundreds of whom have beenkilled in recent weeks for demanding their freedom. The Abrahamic family house has many mansions.I wish all my friends and readers a Happy Christmas and aChag Chanukah Sameach.

Dominic Green is Life & Arts editor of Spectator USA.

Link:
The hope of Chanukah - The Spectator USA

George Zimmerman, the Florida man acquitted of killing unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin in 2012, filed a lawsuit in early December against the boys family, their attorneys and the prosecutors for damages in excess of $100 million. Our Facebook post with the story had by far the most angry reaction emojis of any of our posts in 2019, a sign that people were not on board with Zimmermans legal action. His lawsuit alleges malicious prosecution by prosecutors, defamation by both Martins defense attorney and a book publishing company, and a civil conspiracy by Martins family and lawyer to put on a false witness with a made-to-order false storyline to try to fraudulently create probable cause to get a conviction. The Martin familys defense attorney responded by saying, I have every confidence that this unfounded and reckless lawsuit will be revealed for what it is another failed attempt to defend the indefensible and a shameless attempt to profit off the lives and grief of others.

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The 20 most read stories on SunSentinel.com in 2019 - Sun Sentinel

When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, an unparalleled decade comes to a close: one that saw everything from NASA's first all-female spacewalk to the aftermath of natural disasters and the death of Osama bin Laden.

There were times of real change and hope. The White House was lit up in rainbow colors when the Supreme Court struck down same-sex marriage bans. The world watched in awe as a Thai soccer team and their coach were rescued one-by-one by a group of brave diving experts after being trapped for more than three weeks.

And there were moments so shocking we were left feeling helpless. Twenty-six people were killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and eight parishioners and their pastor were gunned down during Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Revolutionary moments made history in real time as anger and passion turned into movements -- like the one made up of thousands of students who skipped classes worldwide to demand action from their leaders on the climate crisis.

Here's a look back at some of the news stories that defined the past 10 years.

The decade produced scandals that upended institutions from the Catholic Church to elite universities.

The controversies began less than a year into 2010, when the US State Department was pushed into damage control mode after WikiLeaks released thousands of classified documents on July 25. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is now facing charges related to the leak. Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst who helped the site get access to the classified documents, is currently jailed for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating Assange.

A year later, another release -- this time, a grand jury report made public in November 2011 -- marked the beginning of a scandal that would ripple through Penn State University and lead to the termination of the school's beloved football coach. The report contained testimony that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually abused eight young boys, a number that would eventually increase to 10, over a period of at least 15 years. University officials purportedly failed to notify law enforcement after learning about some of these incidents. Sandusky was found guilty in 2012. Football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier lost their jobs in the scandal.

Sexual abuse within the Catholic Church was similarly far-reaching. In 2017 and 2018, the church in the US spent more than $300 million -- including $200 million in legal settlements -- on costs related to clergy sexual abuse. The payouts were only part of the fallout of the massive worldwide scandal in which the church was accused of repeatedly covering up sexual abuse.

USA Gymnastics was likewise disgraced after Larry Nassar, a former USAG and Michigan State University doctor, was sentenced in 2018 to up to 175 years in prison after more than 150 women and girls testified he sexually abused them over two decades.

Earlier this year, about 50 people were accused in a college admissions scandal of either cheating on standardized tests or bribing college coaches and school officials to accept students as college athletes -- even if they weren't. Among those named by federal prosecutors were actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, the 2010s were shaped by activism, beginning in 2011 with the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. The demonstrations against income inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of money in politics began in New York but spread to cities across the United States.

Anger over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in 2014 gave rise to the Black Lives Matter. What started as a social media hashtag quickly grew into an international movement protesting against police brutality and inequality.

Another social media hashtag went offline when survivors of sexual abuse shared their stories with #MeToo. Although the hashtag was created years earlier by activist Tarana Burke, it caught fire after people in Hollywood used it to take down Harvey Weinstein. Not only did it spark a conversation about consent and harassment, but the global movement also contributed to powerful men like producers, actors, anchors and executives and politicians being called to account on harassment accusations.

The decade also brought catastrophic natural and environmental disasters to points across the world.

Haiti and Japan both were hit with the largest earthquakes ever to strike those countries. The 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and 9.1-magnitude quake -- followed by a tsunami -- the following year in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people dead and thousands more displaced.

The first year of the decade also saw an explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and released 168 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The strongest hurricane to strike the Bahamas made landfall in 2019. Hurricane Dorian slammed the island over Labor Day weekend and stalled there for more than 48 hours. It was one of five Category 5 hurricanes to form this decade. The others: Matthew, Irma, Maria, Michael and Lorenzo.

Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on the island nation of Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane and hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm in 2017, caused about $90 billion in damage and resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths.

The same year introduced a yearslong spate of wildfires in California, including the deadliest in the state's history.

Mass shootings in the United States shook the country's sense of safety as targeted places included an elementary school, nightclubs, colleges, a music festival and places of worship. More than half of the 10 deadliest US mass shootings took place in this decade, including when a gunman opened fire inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. At least 49 people were killed. In October 2017, 58 people were gunned down at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas.

The shootings raised a debate across the nation about access to firearms.

Violent attacks weren't limited to the United States. ISIS showed its global reach in 2015 with a terror attack in Paris and a series of attacks in Tunisia, including at a hotel where 38 people were killed.

At Garissa University College in Kenya, four gunmen killed 147 people and wounded scores more during morning prayer in April 2015, making it the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 United States embassy bombings. The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the terror attack.

An act of terrorism also devastated the city of Boston in 2013. Two bombs exploded 12 seconds apart near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring at least 264.

But bloodshed this past decade didn't only come in isolated attacks. The decade was scarred by humanitarian crises and devastating conflicts -- like the yearslong civil war in Yemen, which has taken the lives of more than 100,000 people.

In 2012, the American government came under fire after four Americans were killed in Benghazi, Libya. Critics said the State Department may not have done enough to protect its employees.

Back home, Americans faced a rise in extremism. A 2017 government report found far-right-wing violent extremist groups were to blame for the majority of deadly extremist incidents in the country since 2001. The total number of fatalities from far-right wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists was about the same. The words "white nationalism" began leaking into headlines after the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed as a car plowed through a crowd protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. James Alex Fields Jr., the man accused of driving into the crowd has been sentenced to life in prison on hate crime charges.

Across the ocean, Europe was fighting its own battle against racism. A CNN poll in 2018 recorded frightening anti-Semitic attitudes across the continent while many blamed a substantial amount of Brexit votes on a rise in racism.

With millions fleeing from violence in the Middle East and Africa, Europeans began taking measures against the influx of immigrants. A heartbreaking image of 3-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi shook the world and offered a glimpse into just how badly the European migrant crisis was handled.

Four years later a similar photo surfaced: a father and daughter from El Salvador lay face down in murky waters. The devastating picture offered a glimpse into the dangers and challenges migrants face trying to cross from Mexico into the US. The crisis at the border was center stage during the 2016 elections, with then-candidate Donald Trump vowing to build a wall to curb illegal migration.

Trump's administration would later draw worldwide condemnation for its practices of separating children from their parents at the border and holding migrants in overcrowded cage-like units.

The past decade's politics have been marked by polarization and division.

In a bitterly fought referendum, the United Kingdom voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union. The deal, called Brexit, eventually led to the resignation of British Prime Minister Theresa May and the election of hardline Brexit supporter Boris Johnson.

In another divisive decision, the United States elected businessman Donald Trump, a Republican, as president over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat in November 2016. Three years into his term -- and following dozens of controversial decisions and tweets -- Trump, this month, became the third US president to be impeached. The House of Representatives voted to charge him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Meanwhile, citizens of countries took on their leadership and protested for change. Thousands took to the streets in Venezuela in 2019 in failed effort to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from office.

In Hong Kong, protests began in June 2019 in response to a bill that would have allowed citizens of Hong Kong to be extradited to China. The protests have continued for months nonstop and resulted in violent clashes with police. The focus of the protests also has shifted to demand greater democracy and an inquiry into allegations of police brutality.

But among division and disasters, the world took major strides toward change.

In 2011, American troops pulled out of Iraq after nearly nine years in the country -- fighting a war over which many high-ranking officials were criticized for not putting an end to earlier.

In a landmark opinion, the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex couples can marry nationwide. The divided court's decision established a new civil right and gave a historic victory to gay rights advocates.

Later that year, in December, about 195 nations agreed to begin tackling the climate crisis head-on by reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- the primary driver of climate change -- and entering into other agreements. The agreement became known as the 2015 Paris Climate accord. In 2019, the Trump administration announced that the US would pull out of the agreement following the President's claims that it would punish American workers and benefit foreign countries.

And this year, the most diverse class of lawmakers to date took office in the US Congress, bringing greater gender, racial, religious and sexuality representation.

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The 2010s were relentless. Here are some of the most fascinating news stories that shaped the decade - KMOV.com