I’m an Australian currently living in the USA. My online background is through forums long ago and then facebook groups of varying interests from cars to music to memes to tv show memes with member bases 1k up to 230k. Admin/mod/creator. My main interest is the logistics of a successful group. Spurring initial growth. Controlling the flow of content. Leading from the front with OC to spur more content. Etc. Etc. Facebook groups are pretty dead due to the algorithm and the way reach works and i ended up with too many groups to actively manage so now I’m just some oldhead that enjoys a good meme, plays some video games, delegates to qualitys mods when im needed, and is trying to live this new American life.
I wrote about there being no possibility for “new” memes years ago but that doesn’t mean we can’t still create and enjoy everything about memes. The gist of my writeup was that every meme we now see is just a refining or mashing over of everything we already achieved by january 1st 2017
Looking forward to learning new things or perspectives from within this group and maybe i can have some input too!
Hello!
Research interests and background: American gothic literature and comic book studies, especially superhero comics, but pop culture studies as well more broadly. My background is that I got my BA and MA in English and am now starting my PhD in English.
Projects: Not particularly relevant to meme studies, except I have a draft of a conference paper on reception of Wonder Woman actresses that of course has a bit to do with the Internet (there's other work on that that deals more specifically with Internet things). I would like to do more with Internet culture in the near future though.
Relevant interests with memes: Superhero comics have a lot of memes, but literature has a lot of memes in general. I follow a lot of comics meme pages, and comics are good for meme-making because a lot of time it's just a screenshot of a panel that makes up a meme.
Since others seem to be responding to the Discord prompt, I'll copy most of my answer here: "I am in the US; mainly I use Facebook and Discord (and Goodreads and Letterboxd but those don't really have memes themselves); meme studies is relevant to my studies because I work a lot in pop culture studies; probably the most recent thing I've read relevant to memes is Women and Power by Mary Beard as it discusses misogynist memes in relation to the classics; and my main research studies are American gothic literature and pop culture studies, especially comic books and related media! To answer the questions listed in this channel: I found this lovely place because Seong invited me and we know each other via LLM." (Also I will post a meme once I figure out how to post images here).
Hey I'm Felix, Australian living in Sydney, studying cultural anthropology. Still slogging my way through undergrad so no particular research interests as such, but I spend a lot of my free reading time on pol-phil, libcom, poststructuralism, specfic, and increasingly Chinese history, culture & language. I'd love to develop Gothic Marxism more as an idea/aesthetic, feel like there's a lot of scope for that in the wake of Fisherwave (which is already a phantasm) and the current growing intersection of class consciousness and occult interests. Not a lot of scope for digital humanities / meme culture stuff in my current degree but maybe someday, til then I'm just along for the ride. Very rarely use Discord but happy to add people on Letterboxd, Goodreads, Storygraph. Most recent meme:
Running the early Gondola.Space with you was pure magic, and I miss your artworks. Perhaps you'd like to make some more art (of any kind) with me in the Creativity subforum?
I think religious concepts fit exceptionally well with meme studies. My personal hypothesis is that much of the psychological and cultural tools that we use for religious practices fit perfectly with memeing, and we frequently apply them without realising.
Welcome, Niko! I can't believe that mollusc lied to me.
Hi fluff, welcome! Do you still do both CS stuff and literary stuff? This is such a great setting for a crossover between the two, and it seems like many of us are doing something similar.
Hey Oscar, welcome! I would love to read about your thesis. I read Derrida's essay on Kafka's "Before the Law" not too long ago (through the LLM reading group led by @Ginia) and that was quite the challenge. The metaphysics of law and bureaucracy become much more of a real concern in an age when increasingly more things are as much a part of the Internet as the Internet is a part of them; code is law after all.
I remember that talk! Welcome, Stephen. And your thesis sounds really interesting, too. Was there something about philosophy as "first performance" too?
Try using the forum as a place to take notes and muse as you work on the paper, if you like. I've been testing out the idea and the forum format seems to work exceptionally well for putting down notes.
Welcome, Megan! I really love the way that you take new ideas, new creative tools, and new platforms and simply jump into playing with them in an earnest way. It's inspiring to me.
Welcome, @ViscousLinguini! The thread you made about this was fascinating. I still have some more thoughts to post into the thread. Post more of your existing posts and writing if you have anything else you want to discuss here!
Welcome, Ginia! Half the memes that exist are just edited comics, and memes are structured much like comics anyway, so it's a perfect fit. I think if you understand comics, you can also understand much of what makes memes effective.
Welcome, Felix. Good to have you here.
What is "Gothic Marxism"? I'm really into polphil as well but I need to catch up on postleft stuff and other meme-political materials. It would be cool to discuss Fisherwave in the Research subforum too.
I was never actually involved with Lospec tbh, we had met on an earlier forum called The Spriters Resource. One of my besties also has a feud with a guy on Lospec over what an acceptable color palette is, so he started his own website in protest. I figured I'd just remain on the outside to avoid side-taking (I haven't had a computer to pixel art on in years anyway tbh)
I have 0 background in formal research, i just enjoy thinking about thinking, and niches. So dissecting internet culture fits this. Also a reason why my 'research' is fragmented , messy and unexact, the way i like it.
At the moment i don't have any structured studies, i just chime in, and try to help where i can. In the past i did programming for a project which never really came off the ground, but it's the journey that counts.
If anyone needs a programmer, shoot me a message !
Favorite platform is Facebook, the combination of boomers, good meme game, underdog status and the fact the website is unusable most of the time creates something very unique and beautiful.
I'm Alistair, at the moment I'm a consultant in Melbourne. Most of my previous research has been physics related, but in my undergraduate I spent a fair bit of time examining linguistic trends on 4chan. I'm not currently working on any meme related projects, but have recently been expanding my range of meme consumption. Most of my hobbies and interests have some form of related meme culture, including math/physics, linguistics, games, movies, and meme studies.
I do most of my meme consumption on facebook and instagram (though I've been uninstalling/reinstalling insta quite a bit recently). I've been debating getting TikTok because I've heard that the algorithm is really good at curating content for you, but at the same time I've been enjoying the distance I've managed to put between myself and social media recently.
Last meme I saved to my device was actually when insta DMs were down, so I was screenshotting them to send after everything came back.
Welcome, Yoshi! And yes, the community is gonna need a lot of developers working together to build all the stuff that we can use to research with, so this would be perfect!
Hi, Alistair. Welcome! It seems like there's multiple physics researchers in the community. It's very cool. I'd love to discuss physics memecultures and your thoughts on linguistic trends in memecultures in the Research subforum!
Also LMAO the screenshot to send later is just too cute and pure
Hello! I'm Nivedita, 22, from India and no I'm not a pajeet. I've been online since 2010 and I run a few hyper local meme pages. One of the notable ones is South Bombay memes for class riddled teens which I've run since 2018. I like the genre of hyperlocal memes because it is an interesting experiment to observe what otherwise "normie" meme consumers resonate with and what they don't interact/engage with. I have since understood that I can make the same joke again and again with different templates and people have been reacting to them since 2018. I try to innovate with templates rather than the made with mematic tier of memes. I would not say I am as well versed with meme theory like some people here but I am happy to be invited to be here and I hope to contribute to discussions!
I think hyperlocal memes are really interesting and valuable to study at every level right now. Well-documented case studies by an insider from the memeculture will be invaluable as primary research material. It's amazing to hear about how long you've been running your memepages. Merely outlining their history would be valuable research in and of itself.
Also, I love thinking about and discussing meme crafting techniques and cannot get enough of it. I don't think we really had the right place to discuss that until this forum. /tpmg/ and the memetic-engineering channel on the TPM server were good, but the functionality was too lacking. I can't wait to get into memeing together in the Creativity subforum. I think that researchers knowing how to meme will make a world of difference in ways we can't even really predict at the moment!
I'm Tim (he/him). I used to work in politics but now I'm trying to finish my undergraduate degree. Right now I'm studying land use changes in Yunnan China and dam construction geography in Laos. I am interested in memes as political speech, education agitation, information, disinformation, misinformation, and so on. I enjoy making described memes remixing other meme formats.
Right now I have a couple articles for the meme wiki that I'm working on about intellectual property. I also try to engage in the meme research group. I would also be interested in starting/joining a meme posting or distribution collective.
I usually look at memes on tik tok. I used to like Facebook but the algorithm is strangling itself these days!
hi i’m bethan. i’ve had internet since about 1991 and it was very formative of who I am. I love memes and meme culture and the way it intermeshes with pop culture. I currently run a few facebook groups that are meme-adjacent, the biggest one being a really cool community of about 800 people. I am an aspiring youtuber working on a show that will focus on deep dives, meme lore and internet history. I’m currently working on my first episode discussing the history of cuteness in horror video games and how it’s turned from a fun juxtaposition in games for adults to making games specifically designed to be marketed to kids (merch, kids youtubers etc)
I am a rich and famous meme lord and I make dumb oc. I also run a small meme insta @bethanmemeface. I like to farm memes from tumblr, facebook, twitter, instagram, and a couple meme discords I’m in
here’s the most recent OC I made about my giant baby (i’m currently re obsessed with the sue Sylvester toxic environment meme)
Hey everyone,
I'm Sam, and I will be starting my Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Arizona this fall. I'm a bit unusual here in that my theoretical work has little to do with memes, but I nonetheless enjoy memes to a large degree. One thing that separates me from a lot of people here is that I generally don't keep with the ebb and flow of memes on Facebook. Rather, I create and consume them mainly on Twitter and YouTube, where there are structural and algorithmic incentives to be short and pithy.
Welcome, Tim! It goes without saying that this is an important and interesting topic, and I would be delighted to discuss how it connects up with your present degree and the politics specific to the regions you're studying. Also, TikTok's algorithm is amazing and impressive. I recommend looking at it to anyone currently studying memes!
Hello Bethan! I love the sound of this so much, and can't wait to see what you make! Please post about it in the Creativity subforum! I'm interested in making some videos for YouTube as well, but there's so much involved in making video content that I have no familiarity with.
It's really cool to hear about how many different sources you have for your memes. That's the way to do it!
Hi Sam, welcome! It's good to have you here. What's your PhD topic? I also study philosophy and would love to chat more about it. Also, I always mean to use Twitter and YouTube more but it hasn't clicked for me the same way that Facebook, Discord, or TikTok have. It would be great to hear about them some more from a subculturally aware perspective.
My name is Mateus! I live in Sydney, Australia, and I'm particularly interested in how platforms and technology both create and are created by cultures. I studied creative writing, and I also write sci fi with a similar scope. I used to repair photocopiers (and briefly ran a meme page about it until I realised I can't post pictures of the proprietary guts of laser printers on the internet). Now I'm in general tech support for a media company.
I've been around the TPM and LLM communities for years and my favourite memes are ones that connect very disparate ideas in deceptively simple ways. I tell myself this this is 'Deleuzian' but have never enough of him to actually know if this is the case.
Other hobbies include making instrumental electronic prog metal, puddle reflection photography, videogames and martial arts!
It moves me.
