Memes have been a new development in pop culture and, as anime fandom is a part of pop culture, they are very common in the anime community. I would like to start this in-depth look into memes as a sort of commentary on what these memes mean to the shows themselves and how this adoration, with the use of memes and meme-like tropes, can lead to a show developing and growing in popularity. However, to talk about the memes of today and to speculate the memes of tomorrow it is important to discuss the memes of the past.
Meme culture has grown a lot since its sort of birth in the early days of the internet and has been a way for fans to let other fans in on their one large inside joke. With the connectivity and anonymity the internet brings it is easy to see how people who enjoy anime would want to use it to talk about their favorite anime at the time, especially if they felt they were the only ones in their community who enjoyed anime or felt ostracized by their peers. This combined with advent of memes is how two began to flourish especially in the late 2000’s.
The most common meme of the late 2000’s, aside from rage comics, were demotivational posters.
Demotivational posters, like the one above, were a common sight for people around this time as they were easy to make and a common template for jokes that everyone could easily understand. And when I refer to templates it is the same thing as using a prefabricated template for a resume as it is for making a meme. The internet at large creates a setup for a joke and the meme maker simply inserts the joke into this template. This made converting them into in-jokes in the anime community fairly easy to do. These memes usually were very unrefined and not well thought out. They were usually shown as a way to tell other anime fans “hey, I like that show too” and to spawn a joke from there. Not a lot of the jokes were made from the show itself unless it was to poke fun of the characters themselves.
Now this is where we will start from, old late 2000’s memes that can be easily looked and laughed at, not because of the joke they are making, but because of their sheer age and lack of any true comedy. I would like to make the argument that the memes above are like a lot of more modern memes, like the one that is shown below, because they have the same amount of creativity and humor to them.
While this template is more original, it has the same problem that the above memes have that, instead of being a joke spawned from the show itself, it is just used as a tool to laugh at the character or to show that they themselves has watched the show. Now I am not saying that the above meme is bad, but it is important to think about the progression of memes, especially in this project I want to think about the future of memes and what that means for the anime community today.
I would like to hear what you guys think though, as I am not the meme king I believe myself to be, but I would like to hear whether you all think that memes have gotten better, stayed the same, or even regressed. Another thing I would like to leave you all with is if you all have any ideas for anime memes I should comment on/look into/critique. I have some plans in place already for what I want to talk about next but that can change if anyone has any good ideas.
Thank you all for reading this discussion on memes and I hope you all follow me this semester as we all come to better understand memes and meme culture.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people-die-if-they-are-killed
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/504121752021865300/?lp=true
Cinema Anime 
We are currently living at peak meme culture there are no rules anymore. No more masters. We live in a godless wasteland and I’m living like one of the War Boys waiting for my glory. Long live memes
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Best comment of the blog.
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You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.
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Nice first post, man. While I can’t speak for anime memes specifically because this class is my introduction to anime, I think memes in general have been going downhill for a long time. There’s a severe difference in quality between the classic bold-white-font memes like Bad Luck Brian, which at least have an element of irony to them, to the new-age memes that don’t make any sense on purpose. Not to think too much into this, but the devolution of meme quality almost resembles what happened with post-postmodern literature (Side note: I can’t believe no one has come up with a better term than that yet). Like literature, memes started out being well-crafted and meaningful in some way — in other words, some work was actually put into them. Now, though, it’s as if people are experimenting with how little work they can do and still appear to have some merit. For example, there’s a novel called The Mystery.doc that came out a few years ago. Here’s the thing: it has literally dozens of pages of asterisks and other computer symbols separating the narrative. I’m talking “**************” for pages upon pages. The novel is around 1,600 pages long. That kind of “what even?” is exactly what I see in memes these days. Just lazy experimentation for the sake of hopefully seeming funny or insightful, whether that be ironic or sincere. Sorry for ranting, I just really liked your post. It got me thinking.
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I completely understand the sentiment here. I do feel like there is something sweet in the old impact font memes and their pure innocence in the modern internet age. But I disagree that the modern trash of memes that because there is a sort of reason for this devolution of memes as you state because it seems to be a feeling of weariness with the pure emotions that these old memes had. I don’t want to go as far as comparing it to dadaism because that is just absurd but there is a sort of artistic importance of ruining a piece of art as much as there is in creating it. So if not for this destruction there would be no need for a rebirth of new, fresher memes. While I see the feeling of distaste for experimentation, there has to be a lot of spaghetti thrown at a wall until something sticks.
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This is a very interesting project. It is strange to look at memes and how they change over the years…. what was an acceptable meme in 2011 probably isn’t funny anymore in 2019. It’s particularly interesting to relate it to anime. Good luck on your project!
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Thank You! I hope I can use this project to look at both memes and tropes in anime and how they create things that the average anime audience can relate to and create a lot of well designed and well thought out memes. I also want to make a few commentaries on anime tropes as well that way I have a few more things to discuss with this project.
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I love memes very much. There are some good and bad memes out there. When we come across them we can relate it in our daily lives or understand on what it is saying which most people can’t if they haven’t seen it or watch it like anime or cartoons or it may be different for others. It is a very interesting project and have fun with it
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Ok I absolutely LOVE memes so this is so cool! I literally don’t go a day without sending at least 2 or 3 to family and friends. Memes have created an entirely new subculture within our generation, it’s pretty dope.
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Haha I agree. I enjoy this subculture a lot and I thought it would be good to try and peel back the comedy of memes and try to understand them from a cultural perspective.
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