Blog Post 4: Losing control of memes

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Social media gives people the capability to make a copy of any conversation you have or any text that gets posted and can then proceed to create a ‘meme’, eventually blowing the text, post or video way out of proportion for the sake of attention, humor and sometimes for money. It was posted on the week 6 lecture slides that “Power is relational: you can have power over others or power with others.” (Luyn, 2015) In a way making memes about people’s mistakes, accidents, photos or statements can dis empower that individual or empower them depending on the memes. An example of a dis empowering meme was the popular ‘Bad Luck Brian’ meme that started on Reddit and was a portrait photo of Kyle Craven which dominated social media sites in 2012. “Authors do not necessarily have control over their own texts and where their images and words may end up.” (Luyn, 2015) After the ‘Bad luck Brian’ meme became popular Kyle Craven lost ownership of his photo as it was reposted and edited numerous times over.  

An example of an empowering meme was the Chuck Norris meme that was based around hyping up Chuck Norris into being an unnaturally powerful entity rivaling that of a god. Even in this circumstance whilst Chuck Norris loved hearing the memes about him he still lost power over his own videos and photos to the meme and people the people who made them.  Whilst memes can empower or disempower an individual or group there are always those who are going to exploit and try to make money from these memes with T- shirts and merchandise. A meme that has been used to make money is the Grumpy Cat meme which the owners have made the cat a travelling show and having TV interviews and selling merchandise at the cat’s expense.

References

Know Your Meme,. (2012). Bad Luck Brian. Retrieved 7 September 2015, from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bad-luck-brian

Know Your Meme,. (2012). Chuck Norris Facts. Retrieved 7 September 2015, from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/chuck-norris-facts