In the summer of 2012, Olympic fever was running high. Everyone was rooting for their favorite athlete to win gold. As we watched the winners take gold, and second place champs get silver & bronze, we never expected one of those second place champs to steal the spotlight for a bit. But, like all things unexpected, it happened. And we loved it.
I'm talking about that famous smirk US gymnast McKayla Maroney displayed after she won her silver medal for vault.
She wasn't happy with her achievement, and she let it show. And to all of us who have ever known the disappointment of getting second place, we sympathized BIG TIME.
And then it happened.
Somewhere, some person captured McKayla's thoughts, and gave life to her frozen expression of utter annoyance. And the world freakin' loved it.
It's not that McKayla was annoyed at the second place "victory." No, McKayla had proved herself to be quite the little prissy little princess during her time in London.
And princesses don't get disappointed, or annoyed. They simply are "not impressed" with their score. Not Impressed.
But users of the internet didn't care what the reasoning was behind McKayla's "not impressed" facial expression. It just worked. It was funny. It was perfect. It was priceless. And so it went viral.
McKayla started showing up in the most random pictures, standing there in her silver jacket, reflective of her silver "not impressive" win. She traveled all across the internet, inspiring other memes. It was quite the phenomenon. But like all good things that go viral, her fierce five weeks of fame, eventually came to an end. I'm pretty sure was "not impressed" about that.
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| A man on the moon. McKayla Maroney is not impressed. |
Meme's, like McKayla's meme, feed off of recent events. At the time, in 2012, everyone had Olympic fever. The "fierce five" were everywhere. Consumers of internet culture wanted to know every last thing about their whereabouts. As such, we all appreciated McKayla's cynical smirk. But as soon as the Olympics were over, and something else became more relevant, the world's obsession with McKayla's "not impressed" expression faded out, and other meme's took over.
A Few of My Favorite Meme's:
McKayla's "not impressed" meme is the meme that got me to pay better attention to meme's. Prior to seeing her smirking face plastered throughout my twitter and Facebook feeds, I hadn't been the type to pay attention to meme culture, or re-post my own meme's.
And then "not impressed" happened. Suddenly, I wanted in on the action. I wanted to post meme's too, because meme's had this awesome ability to reflect my own thoughts without having to physically type the emotions I was feeling.
Meme's are fun! They're fun to share in social media posts. Personally, what I love about meme's is how they take parts of pop culture and offer a new interpretation through remediation & remix culture.
The "Condescending Wonka" meme's are a perfect example of that. In the "Condescending Wonka" meme's Willy Wonka gets a sarcastic, snarky makeover. The movie is being remixed to create meme's that offer a viral sensation. Internet users love these meme's because they love Willy Wonka. Willy Wonka is a part of pop culture, and the fact he has been re-worked into this condescending, patronizing jerk.... internet users, especially Millennial internet users LOVE it.
I love how the Condescending Wonka memes come in all shapes & sizes.
This one is so solid. I love how he mocks all the users of Instagram.
My personal favorite: (Sorry, Starbucks drinkers, but Starbucks is seriously overrated)
While the "Condescending Wonka" memes typically feature Gene Wilder as Wonka, some people choose not to forget that Johnny Depp also embodied the iconic character in the 2005 remake.
Both the Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp Wonka meme's remix the original movies, by editing an existing material to create a new product (the meme) They also serve as remediation.
Meme's are ideas, behaviors, or styles that spread from person to person within a culture. Meme's are usually spread via social networking, or blogs. While there is a fine line between image macro's and internet meme's, the main difference between a macro and a meme is how viral the image goes. In the case of Condescending Wonka, the image is viewed as a meme because it's been a viral sensation for the past 2 years.
Another meme I LOVE are the LOLCats meme's. I have been guilty of re-posting these meme's within my own social media.
But NEVER-THE-LESS, I've been a big fan of the LOLCats meme's, so even though I've covered a lot of ground in this post, I figure it's necessary for me to share some of my favorites.
There are countless others, but those a few of my faves. LOLcats plays off the internet's obsession with cats. Alternative punk band, The Nearly Deads, used the internet's obsession with cats in their music video for their song "I Said" The lyric video features a bunch of LOLcats, playing off the popularity of the meme.
Check out the video and see for yourself. This band is awesome:
In my opinion, Grumpy Cat is the meme response to LOLcats (which by the way got so popular, you can even buy LOLCats merch.)
Grumpy Cat is another meme the internet loves.
Yup. GC is awesome.
The internet is awesome.
This post has been longer than I expected, so type for me to "meme" out.
