NFTs and AI killed the organic growth of memes; it’s less endurance, and more stagnation.
Yeah, the first thing that came to mind was stagnation.
Do the kids even know how to use Paint these days? Paint has become less user-friendly, though admittedly I don’t have a reason to have kept up with the changes.
Can we bring back these? (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
I think the origin source for pepe memes has unfortunately gone extinct? Only rare encounters of hopium and copium still seem to rarely be observed but the memory is almost fainted completely. In this era of epstein shock, I would have though “the bear meme” would have resurfaced a bit, but nothing. Did 4chan die off?
I miss rage comics and advice animals. I miss when memes had a shelf life measured in years. I also miss the golden age of YouTube in 2009-11, when creators were starting to find their feet. Stuff was genuinely entertaining as opposed to just quaint, but it still felt authentic and personal.
I still remember r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu or r/f7u12 fondly
Rages faces were funnier, though.
I think the reason for this is that there has been a palpable shift in the content of what people are communicating… and the old rage faces are poorly suited to what people are using them for. They provided a different “visual vocabulary”.
The old rage faces served the purpose as shorthanding feeling and emotions visually. I’ll leave this as an exercise to the reader as to consider why 4chan users may have found an emotional shorthand vocabulary very appealing.
They were used very generally for storytelling.
Wojaks are primarily used to cue the reader to who is “good” and who is “bad”. Who is the cuck. It’s primarily a mechanism to lay out some type of disagreement and visually diminish one side. In this way, they’re not fla mechanism for storytelling, they’re a mechanism for persuasion.
“General storytelling” NOW comes in the form of a Twitter screenshot.
Anyhow, tl;dr: ragefaces and wojaks serve a different communicative purpose, and for some reason Twitter screenshots ejected ragefaces from thier niche
I’d argue that as wojacks became more mainstream they have partially evolved to be used as story telling devices as well, but the meme types themselves kinda fractured as the internet grew and evolved. There aren’t that many big chunky categories like “rage faces” or “advice animals” anymore, wojacs and pepes are used in a wide variety of things and also fused with something else
Wojaks are primarily used to cue the reader to who is “good” and who is “bad”.
For that I still prefer the virgin walk vs. the Chad stride meme mutations.
Spot on.
I find memeology fascinating. It really has shaped our world more than people might realize.
That’s really interesting and I think you’re right. I like your term, “visual vocabulary”. Rad reply
I also like the term “nonverbal markers”
I’m sure there’s a real English linguistics term but in sign language we use the term nonmanual markers (nonmanual like non-hand-al)
And I contend that rage comics convey way more variety and emotion. I really want them back :(
Pepe memes have far, far more variety and emotion. Customized pepes for days like sad child pepe, star trek nerd pepe, angry pepe, pepe merged with other memes, etc.
Rage comics always ended in rage and got old fast.
Note: I don’t like pepe memes because they are pepe, but a lot of the better memes happen to have pepe shoved in. They would also work with nearly any other cartoon character.
why you no like pepe, what did pepe ever do wrong?
I don’t like or dislike pepe, I am neutral to pepe. I like the memes that pepe is in but pepe doesn’t really add anything pepe specific context to them.
Ew yuck, no. Way too many incel takes and cringe content.
That’s how they have been used, yes, but if you want to use them you are not limited that way.
Just like that is how I presume my message is going to be prejudged if I use wojacks.
Oh no! There are incels and cringe content on the internet! We shouldn’t use the internet!
Are you conflating rage comics with the entirety of the internet?
Yes, because they’re a cringe incel
as opposed to pepe and wojacks…?
tbf we’d be fine without both
It’s because they’re also popular with right wingers and those folks love running a joke into the ground.
Oh you’ve met Lorne
I personally hate Wojaks. They’re so fucking ugly and have no personality unlike the rage comics that at least had their own unique (also ugly) style. Each rage comic character was different too, you can’t confuse Me Gusta with the Cereal Guy or the NO. Guy.
It’s amazing what a journey Pepe has taken. From being associated with the 2015 MAGA movement to being a symbol of 2019 Hong Kong protests.
I thought the associations with the alt right movement would’ve killed Pepe as a meme, but he managed to wash those bad associations away.
there was a whole “pepe is for everyone” campaign, that was successful imo
only the most terminally online leftist would have negitive connotatioms about pepe
… Rage faces are out?
