My name is Kent, I am currently in my final year of undergraduate study at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. My majors are Philosophy and Psychology, and I'm planning to do further postgraduate study into philosophy.
I am excited to be a part of this forum and explore the cultural phenomenon of memes with a diverse group of people. I think that one of the most interesting aspects of memes is the reactions that we have to them. My broad philosophical interests are phenomenology, post-structuralism, complexity and systems theory, and as well as what ever area I am reading into at the time. More than anything, I am just trying to have interesting and nuanced conversations with people in the hope of mutually broadening perspectives.
I thoroughly invite you to discuss anything with me, whether that be your ideas, my ideas, or someone else's.
Hello everyone, this is bit of late introduction since I've been in this forum for a while, just not active due to personal busy things I had to take care.
My name is Daniel. I studied philosophy in college, then suffered in law school in US and now am suffering in Canada.
I'm not doing much in meme studies, but I still frequent many meme groups and pages on Facebook to keep sane and entertained. I used to converse and read a lot of philosophical and meme discussions in the past but these days became more braindead where I prefer to watch streams and play video games.
I like different kinds of memes, most of them make me laugh and think. One particular type of memes I love these days though are ones that are niche and related to one form of topic. Atm for me these are fighting game memes since I have delved very deep into fighting game community. Other memes of particular topics are fun for me as well, as many meme groups I follow on facebook are groups based on one franchises or genres or topics. I love it when people come up with memes that are very situational and based on one particular thing.
And as I said above, I get most of my memes on facebook, sometimes discord, and sometimes just straight messages from friends.
I don't have a background in meme research. However, I am a long-time appreciator of memes dating all the way back to the early rage comics, and a web developer who wants to build a better web than we have today. My hope is to build a web that self-archives its public cultural memetic output so that we can look back to study and re-live old memes.
My favorite platform to observe memes currently is probably TikTok and Discord.
Ciao! I'm Pietro, PhD student at the University of Milan. My background is in Sociology, Communication, Behavioural sciences and Media studies. I'm currently involved in a research project that aims to empirically test the effects of memes on individuals' opinions and behaviors. More precisely, I want to understand whether Memes can polarize news interpretation of young adults on social media. Briefly, my research interests range from digital to behavioural sociology, passing through media & communication studies (thus: digital culture, disinformation, media effects, polarization, social influence, trust, signals, and affective heuristics... and all the other stuff that trigger my sick curiosity). As it is clear so far, I've got a special interest in political memes, and in those memes' pages commenting and providing news on social media like Instagram or TikTok. Running experiments is my guilty pleasure (both Lab and online), so if anyone here wants to do some experiments is more than welcome, I'm super willing to help and collaborate!
Hello, I am very happy to find this forum. It is a gold mine!
My name is Jehad, I study psychology (2nd Bachelors degree). Right now I am interested in humor and memes, and I am conducting a study on memers and meme enjoyers, which would be nice if you participated in
Previous research show that creative individuals, like musicians and writers, have higher rates of psychopathology. When I learned that I was like "I wonder if memers are mentally different too!". So my study's topic is "Mental health and personality traits of memers and meme enjoyers". This is the survey's link: https://forms.gle/LpzZTxgcoLBxSujp6
I am not aware of any similar studies yet, if you do I would really appreciate it if you provide me with titles or links
I do run a meme page, and thats probably where the interest came from.
I mostly use instagram to observe memes.
Sadly I dont have memes on my labtop, I make and save memes on my phone only.
Once again, I am happy to find this forum, and happy to join you guys.
Hello, I am Sourav from India. Currently doing a Visual Studies MPhil (thesis due the end of this year).
But my ongoing and future research interest for PhD is the online LGBTIQA visual culture in India after the repealing of Section 377 in India in 2018 (a British-era law that criminalised homosexuality). It's a very very wide field and I am considering to delve into Meme Studies to get a foothold. I really don't know if it will work. But I like the vibes in Meme Studies academia so far. Not a big fan of academia otherwise.
My academic interests / trainings are in Art History, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Communication Studies and Gender Studies / Queer Studies.
Hobbies are collecting images from the internet (after removing their metadata) and writing collaborative texts with visual artists and photographers and translating books. I also draw and paint casually and work with visual artists to promote their work through writing.
I was a regular in Critical Meme Studies reading group in its first version and do the excellent readings from Seong in this version. The timing doesn't suit me anymore.
I watch and save memes on the above theme from Facebook and Instagram mostly.
Attaching a recent meme I saved. I am not good with forums. Hope this will be a good place to hang around.
The text is in Bangla. It reads: My dream in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022...
Hi Nivedita. I am interested in hyperlocal memes too. Especially those from India on LGBTIQ issues. What do you usually do for language translations in case of these memes? Just ask a friend? Or you only look at English ones?
We are happy to have a "meme analyst/researcher" to assist in bringing new trends from different cultures! I think we typically use english ones but if we find something intriguing from another culture that is translated for us we can examine that.
Please share any insights from a hyperlocal standpoint, we would love to hear different perspectives!!
Along with English, I have been only a Bangla language meme observer (not all are 'hyperlocal') rather than a reseracher/analyser. The humour is different even though the templates are often similar.
well, you don't need credentials to try and analyze memes here! Feel free to make a post if you found an interesting trend. In addition, feel free to post if there is an existing trend that you have thoughts on!
Hiya! I’m posing as a succinct succulent for this forum but I’m actually a recent BA grad who spent nearly two years of its life writing a thesis about meme usage in college students. Did I spend way too much time on an undergrad thesis? Yes. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. My research interests are mostly how memes affect offline behavior as well as relationships both online and off. Somewhat unrelated to memes, I am also interested in how the Internet generally affects core beliefs and again, real world actions. I’m hoping to take the PhD route in the future to keep researching these topics!
No current meme projects although I do want to write a paper here soon on generational theory and why it’s become so prevalent in memes.
Hobbies I have with related meme culture include gaming, fandom, and martial arts.
Currently I view memes most regularly on Pinterest and Instagram.
Welcome, SuccinctSucculent. Good to have you here. The research sounds interesting; is it available anywhere? You are encouraged to share it in #research:share-your-work !
My research interests are similar to yours! I recently finished my thesis on how college students use memes focusing on a colloquial definition of memes and how memes were used in personal communications and offline instances.
Do you have any published works that I could read? Would you be willing to discuss the methodology you are using to frame your study? My methodology was mostly rooted in traditional anthropological methods because those were the methodologies I was most familiar with.
Hi Skyler, nice to meet you, and thanks for your interest!
I see that our research interests have a lot of commonalities. I haven't published anything yet except my MA thesis, but it was just theoretical work and was never submitted to academic journals. I think that having a chat might be more fruitful, I would be more than glad. We can do it here or via Skype, Zoom, Google meet, whatever you prefer.
Hi guys, I'm an engineer so my academic interests don't really align with memes in the slightest but I enjoy studying subjects outside of my immediate purview. I can't really contribute much in terms of meme theory outside of long years of "amateur interest", but I do have the (unprovable) honour of predicting the meteoric rise of the "chad: yes" memes to be the defining meme of the late 2010's.
Hi,
my name is Miron and I've recently got a master's degree in cognitive science. My master's thesis (which could be accessed here: Pragmatics of irony and post-irony in internet memes - Prace - Prace - Katalog - Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie - AP ) was on irony, post-irony and memes from the perspective of philosophy of language. Currently I am on doctoral studies in philosophy and will definitely try to publish articles based on my thesis, while also working on some related ideas. My last saved meme:
