The topic of memes and GIFs is quite interesting because it's part of many people's daily lives. Interestingly, I researched the origin of memes, and the AI-generated answer was: "The concept of a meme originated in 1976 in the book The Selfish Gene by biologist Richard Dawkins. In the book, the author used the term to define any unit of culture—an idea, habit, or piece of music—that spreads, replicates, and evolves among people."
It's interesting that if we think analytically about the origin and compare it to what memes are today, we can see that it hasn't varied much, and there's something more that some people might not realize: the other functions of a meme beyond entertainment. As you may have noticed, in the thumbnail itself I already demonstrated this first concept, which is simply being a way to cheer people up, to bring fun to the environment. This would perhaps be the most direct idea a person might have when asked: What is a meme? Let's find out more!
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The Age of Memes + GIFs!
Starting from the origin of the concept, we notice that memes go far beyond being something funny. In society, memes end up portraying part of the culture. An event that happened in the region, country, or world is depicted with some kind of caricature, serving as a form of criticism and the person's opinion on the event. In this way, memes could be categorized as a form of art, in which people express themselves about an event, someone, or something.
It's quite curious that this issue of memes spreading, like an image, a text, a video, or a GIF, is very viral. When a new meme becomes popular, the tendency is for it to become even more so because it spreads – "that which propagates, replicates, and evolves among people." Nowadays, with social media, memes become trends, and as the concept itself explains, people use them as a topic of conversation, becoming part of society, especially among younger people.
Furthermore, within social media, as memes become trending topics, they end up becoming a subject for influencers to give their opinion and create their own variations of the meme. One of the biggest examples is the dance craze, which starts with one person doing it, and soon after the feed is full of replicas, variations, and becomes part of the entire community. Therefore, as we are more connected than ever, knowing about trends and memes ends up becoming an obligation because it gives meaning to the jokes.
There's such a close connection between memes, the internet, and social media that it seems we're living in the age of memes. You can even see how entire periods can be portrayed through memes. Think of a meme, and you can immediately get a sense of when it started and what your friends were talking about at the time, even though the meme itself had a whole context to emerge.
Overall, I believe that memes and even GIFs make the internet more relaxed. GIFs, for example, make everything more "animated." There are situations that can't be expressed by a single image, and that don't need audio to become a video; a GIF is perfect. An animated graphic, a simple step-by-step guide, multiple uses, and space-saving.
