Welcome, Tom! Good to have you here.
It will be exciting to have intellectually-minded memepage admins discuss memes together in a forum setting, especially its "phenomenology" (i.e. how it feels to meme).
hello all, my name is jay.
my background is in philosophy. mostly topics in mind, epistemology; overlap with cognitive science & evolutionary psychology; recent interest in philosophy of art.
my present thesis is on the ontology & [social] epistemology of memes. i began with the question of how it is that, sometimes, one can learn something from a meme. if anybody is interested, i would be delighted to share the current work with you & to receive your feedback.
the social media vantage point is limited mainly to facebook meme groups, but i've diversified my portfolio within this niche.
you may know me from such classics as:
–jay was here!
last meme saved:
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Welcome, Jay. Good to have you here. I share many of your philosophical interests, and there's several cognitive scientists in our community as well (I'm struck by how many cogsci people there are from TPM community. I'm not sure why, but it's cool), like @laura. It would be fantastic to have you share your current research and exchange feedback. It's one of the intended uses of the forum!
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Hello all! I'm Jyohomson. I was a Physics Philosophy double major, now pursuing a PhD in Religious Studies. I currently work as a content manager for a company that makes mobile games. I'm Nepali but I will be in the US starting September.
I don't have an academic interest in internet memes as pertaining to my field of study. I instead find them as a pleasant reminder that academics are also human. I also like text based puns and other textual tomfoolery, which is why you'll find me spamming the described memes [TEXT ONLY] group quite a bit.
My meme related hobbies are translating popular English memes into their Nepali variants. I host a small community of really funny people on twitter that I constantly share these with. They seem to be particularly obsessed with weird interpretations of Hinduism in the online meme community, and I am too.
My favorite place to find memes is on Facebook. Unfortunately a lot of pages here seem to be run by edgy 15 year olds (cough Nietzsche Internet Defense Force cough), they sometimes have good content. Oh, and I absolutely love shaman boys.
As the last meme saved into my device, I have a Nepali variant of the YES meme (OC).
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Welcome, Jyohomson! Your described memes are so consistently good and I find the combination of your academic interests fascinating (I've actually been reading about the Vienna Circle's interest in physics recently and wondering what studying philosophy in the 21st Century would be for a physicist; many of the Circle's physicist participants didn't consider themselves to be philosophers, though for all intents and purposes they were doing philosophy).
I love the story about you translating English memes into Nepali. That's actually fantastic, and I would love to talk to you about it in the Research or General subforum about it. We need an International Meme Studies, and creating translations of memes would certainly be considered a viable research methodology.
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I'm Elias. In 2015 I wrote my undergraduate thesis, "Postmodern Analytic Memetics". I studied philosophy and mathematics, which shows in the text. I should caveat that I no longer really agree with the argument I was making in that paper which is a very sort of optimistic Hegelian take. My current interests are largely in ancient philosophy and history and political philosophy. I'm much more of a meme-pessimist now.
You can find some of my more recent writing on my medium page.
I also used to run a number of Facebook meme pages, most notably Dialecticz Still Wilin (RIP) and groups like Dialectical Dialecticsposting for Big Others and Negated Absolutes (since renamed as Dialectical Bananaposting for Big Bananas and Negated Bananas). I still prefer Facebook groups to other platforms.
My main hobby outside of books is making music, which has it's share of memes.
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Welcome, Elias! Good to have you here. I enjoyed your thesis when you first released it in 2015, as well as your memepages and groups. I think we are all a bit less naive than we were 6-7 years ago when it comes to memes. Pessimist or no, you're quite right to have pointed out in your thesis that we need a standardised and coherent way to cite memes. We should revive the initiative and develop a standard!
Hi everyone! Just gave a quick glance around this thread and the forum and it already looks so great 
I am a visual artist from Mallorca (Spain). I'm now also working as a web designer and I teach painting lessons to old women at a social center.
My interests and artistic practices are really diverse and I haven't figured out if that's a blessing or a curse. I'd say my main focus has been digital culture and technology, but for the last few years I've been also working about tourism (coming from a place like Mallorca and having lived until recently in Barcelona, two places very affected by tourism), aiming to read the local perception of this economic model mainly through Mark Fisher's work.
About memes, I've been intermittently developing a series of artworks for some years now, they're sort of meme-collages based in internet meme aesthetics dealing with media and meme theory. I've barely posted any of it (posting anxiety maybe?), so not really memes if we define them through circulation. From this background, I'm now preparing a creative contribution to the second Critical Meme Reader published by the Institute of Network Cultures. I'll share when I'm further in the process.
My memes come from facebook and twitter, though I feel the content from fb has been gradually getting worse for me, maybe all the pages I liked have died and I haven't bothered looking for new ones. TPM is the most interesting place to me.
Last meme in my phone depicts an elden ring encounter a friend of mine just played the other day so I sent it to him
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What are your research interests and background?
I am a lawyer and PhD student, I have a personal and professional interest in both memes as a medium/conceptual understanding (we are pretty close to getting it universally), and how they may be regulated automatically or through law in the future and currently.
Are you working on any projects relevant to meme studies?
I wish. Maybe later, I think applying law really boringly to it is fun.
Do you have a hobby or interest with a related memeculture?
Nah, but have been following intensely along from the sidelines for many years, but the less free time I get for this, the more boomer I become (was one already probably).
What’s your favourite platform to observe memes on at the moment?
The dark hellscapes as always, and nowadays very much /r/NonCredibleDefense/ and associated stuff.
Favourite from this week (but the rate they move is insane):
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Hi, I'm Jacob, I was fairly active on several facebook meme groups as an effortposter, and some of my own art has memetic elements within it. I am mainly interested in memes as a kind of uniquely subconscious art form.
The last meme I have saved is one I made in a facebook groupchat:
Hi I'm Omar.
I don't actually have any experience related to meme studies other than really enjoying lurking in the TPM group on Facebook. I'll probably mostly be a lurker here, as well.
I think Facebook and Discord are probably my favorite platforms to observe memes at the moment. The former because a lot of OC (surprisingly considering how few of my peers use it) gets generated there and tiny group subcultures generate shit tons of in-joke memes, and that's really fun and interesting to see; the latter because I'm in enough active Discords that the sheer volume of memes I see in a day makes it an easy memestream platform.
Here's the last meme I saved to my phone.
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Hi my name is Adrian, I am from Australia and I am in the process of finishing my PhD in the School of Design. My study is about vaporwave, specifically how we can use co-design as a research methodology to gain a better understanding of it as a living culture instead of constructing grand political narratives that exaggerate its subversive potential. I am interested in how participatory creative projects can create shared spaces for researchers and community members to explore lived experience of culture/community online. And in theoretical terms I am interested in how theories of affect can help us frame the significance of everyday lived experiences as political by studying how participating in internet subcultures manifests new material, social and creative possibilities for people.
In addition to my academic interests I make weird plunderphonic glitchy noise music out of viral junk media/memes and I help run a Twitch channel called Headless Blood Idol that puts on regular streaming event showcasing a pretty diverse range of cool and interesting internet music weirdos. We also release an annual compilation featuring out friends and associates.
My favourite platforms to observe memes are probably Twitter and Reddit.
OK and the last meme I saved on my phone is...
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Hi everyone, my name is "Grace O'Malley" a.k.a The Prankquean. I have a Masters in English with a fair amount of Visual Art / Culture stuff mixed into that background. I specialize in Modernist literature/arts in general and James Joyce in particular. I currently teach high school TOK in the IB program, and next academic year I'm shifting back to teaching IB English.
As for Meme Studies related projects I have two major interests / hobbies
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Firstly, I'm interested in memes as a learning tool. I've used memes in my TOK class in the past (without much success, if I'm being honest), and I'd like to try again in my English classroom next year. I have lots of thoughts about the value and potential of memes in the classroom that I'd love to share and discuss, and of course I'd like to learn from you all as well.
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Secondly, I run a Finnegans Wake meme page on Instagram (@real_finnegans_wake if you'd like to check it out). I see this as both a hobby of mine and, in its own strange way, as a research endeavor. I see a lot of opportunity to explore how the Wake functions using similar principles of communication as memes. But it's also just fun to shitpost what is arguably the most sophisticated Literary Shitpost:tm: of all time
I mostly look at memes on Instagram, since that's the platform I use to post my own memes. The handful of Discord servers I'm in also tend to share good memes, so I'll check on those channels too.
Here's the last meme I saved to my phone:
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Hello! My name is Conner and I am a PhD student at the University of Stirling, Scotland. I'm originally from the US, but I've been in the UK now for several years.
My field is linguistics and my postgraduate research has been all about memes, trying to reconcile memes with established linguistic conventions and approaches. There so much interesting stuff around memes and meaning construction and modes of communication!
I've actually just recently submitted my thesis, which proposed a linguistically-based theoretical model for defining memes. Hoping to spin off some of that research into individual papers I can publish!
I love film, tv, video games, etc., and they all have their associated memes, which are great 
I've really gotten into DnD memes lately.
My primary sources for memes are probably Facebook and Discord (with my friends doing most of the legwork on finding new memes). I've been avoiding getting into TikTok (I'm an old man at heart), but I think I'm going to have to take the plunge given all the meme-content it's produced.
And last meme I saved:
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Congrats on your submission. I also just submitted so now commences the nail biting wait for examiners comments. Good luck, may your assessment report arrive swiftly and your examiners be kind to you!!!
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Hi memers, my name is Helen. I'm a doctoral student at York University in Toronto, Canada. Like many of you, I study memes, but from the perspective of graphic design. (yes, I think memes are designs!) I'm currently trying to combine education theories with design making, encouraging design non-majors to start making designs by making memes in the classroom/studio.
Here is a meme persona I create for myself. You can also find my work on Instagram @nihilistpotata
Have fun!
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Hi, everyone!
My name is Eduarda. I'm based in São Paulo, Brazil. I'm graduated in Visual Arts and currently on a Master's on Artistic Processes and Methodologies. My current research is on how memes can naturalize political content (ideology) through humor. Since I think there is a strong interest in memes on humanities in general, overall in Brazil (and I think in Europe and US to a certain extent) approaches to memes have been based mostly around sociological, anthropological or cultural studies frameworks. I'm interested to develop a systematic approach that draws from aesthetics, which tends to be rather overlooked in most researchs. I think Art History might be illuminated through memetics, and meme studies can be better analyzed looking at their forms, how they are visually presented and sort of establish a peculiar visual vocabulary. My project is going in the direction to devise if it's possible to have a basic visual syntax to images, elaborated by aesthetics and memetics in conjunction.
My research draws from Warburg and a tradition stemmed from his thought and practice (maybe the most popular form of his thought can be traced to Gombrich, in an academic case Panofsky's iconology). I'm particularly interested in structuralism, philosophy of the mind and consciousness and ideology. I've been looking for more systematic approaches to memes, so if anyone has any readings or ideas on this, I would be love to be sharing and discussing them! I am hoping to build an archive/plataform for meme studies in Brazil as well, so fellow brazilians are more than welcomed to talk about this so we can articulate it together!
My favorite plataform to observe memes are niche facebook groups. I also use Discord Servers and feel that there interesting production there, but I feel it's harder to follow and navigate through it. I'm curious about Tiktok memes but I don't use the plataform that much. I keep an eye on Instagram, especially for the theorygram accounts, because I'm curious on how philosophical ideas and concepts are treated by memes, even though the approach is usually more traditional or not that creative as it could be.
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I would love to read excerpts from your work, Jay!
Hi, I’m Lucie 
I’m a data analyst with a passion for memes.
I created my website www.memeologica.com to try and document my ad-hoc research into memes and meme culture. Although it’s had to take a backseat recently because I just started a new job, it’s still very much an ongoing project!
My favourite kind of meme is absurdist memes, and the platform I use most frequently to keep on top of meme trends is Twitter.
Here’s the most recent meme I had saved on my phone!
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nice to meet you eduarda! very interesting & broad array of interests you have. i'd be delighted to get your opinion on my developing work. i'll post a draft of my thesis very soon!
–jay was here!
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