Meme Genres and Literacy

As mentioned in my previous post, I don't "get" memes. This is partly because I don't keep up with much pop culture, so I often do not get the references made in the memes. Even when I do, I don't always find them "funny." Today's article by Shifman further develops the complex definition he gave for memes - "a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form and/or stance, which were created with awareness of each other, and were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users" - to list and explain 9 major meme genres. Essentially, Sifman offers a crash course in meme culture for the meme illiterate, such as myself. The following chart provides the meme genres he mentions and how he defines each:

Meme Genre	Definition
Reaction Photoshops	images that have been photoshopped "in response to [...] photographs that provoke extensive creative reactions"
Photo Fads	"staged photos of people who imitate specific positions or actions in various settings"
Flash Mob	"a group of strangers gather in a public space, suddenly an simultaneously perform a particular act, and after that just leave the scene, quick as a flash"
Lipsynch / Lipdub	"clips in which an individual or group is seen matching their lip movements to a popular song"
LOLCats	"pictures of cats accompanied by systemically misspelled captions, which typically refer to the situation shown in the photo"
Image Macros	"pictures with overlaid text"
Stock Character Macros	a subgenre of image macros that "build on a set of stock characters that represent stereotypical behaviors"
Rage Comics	"amateur-looking comics featuring [...] a set of expressive characters, each associated with a typical behavior"
Misheard Lyrics	"amusing mistranslations of spoken sounds to written words" accomplished by "transcribing what the words sound like phonetically, regardless of their true meaning"
Recut Trailers	"a user-generated 'fake' movie trailer based on the re-editing or remixing of film footage" often "[displacing] the original film's genre with an utterly different one"

Although these definitions helped me understand what constitutes a meme, I became increasingly aware of the potentially problematic aspects of meme culture in reading the article.

First, and foremost, many of the memes Shifman referenced in his writing - even a few of the meme genres - originated on 4chan. This in itself is problematic given the extreme nature of the website and its association with far-right extremists, and deeply racist, sexist, and misogynistic rhetoric. Many in the general public might not understand where certain memes originate, resulting in a mass diffusion of content perpetuating some of the extreme ideas on the site and its forums.

Another problematic area is the creation of "in" and "out" groups. Those who understand the meme become part of the "in" group, and those who don't - which can include neurodivergent populations who may have difficulty reading the social cues and humor found within certain memes - become an "out" group. Meme culture, therefore, can be quite exclusionary.

I also noticed that some meme genres, such as misheard lyrics, developed from essentially a mockery of a language, particularly of Asian languages by speakers of English. If we are not careful, this can perpetuate harmful stereotypes of certain ethnic or linguistic groups and be quite culturally insensitive.

Finally, there are potential problems with remix culture, which Arola outlines in her article "Composing as Culturing." If we are not careful, remix culture can become a form of cultural appropriation.

As an educator, this is all something we should consider before utilizing memes in a classroom setting.