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:
Hi there! My name's Anton. I study English linguistics at the University of Oslo, Norway, and am currently writing my master's thesis on relevance-theoretic analysis of post-ironic memes. It is very close to the area of study mentioned by the author of the previous reply - Miron Markowski, who also wrote his thesis on pragmatics on post-ironic memes.
My non-academic interests include gaming and music production.
As a matter of fact, I will be referring to your thesis in my own work, Miron! So thanks for laying the theoretic basis and some historical background for post-irony! Appreciate the good work!
I see what you mean now. In my experience on Facebook there is not a lot going on in the desi LGBTQ community that is inherently desi. I have many queer friends and I am also in the community but I have not yet seen many renditions of queer memes online with a local or hyperlocal take. Most of my queerfriends are very immersed in American and Western culture sadly.
I have seen many homo erotic memes with MLM, notably from Emo Bois of India and Reptiles of Kurla. The exact references I do not have at hand but you can go through those pages and I am sure you'll find something.
Yes, Facebook Indian LGBTQ+ memes are mostly in NRI groups.
What FB has a lot of is, 'straight-passing' content aimed at general users (even from LGBTQ+ creators who often post more LGBTQ+ focussed contents on IG). Their queer coding is very interesting.
'Emo Bois' and 'Reptiles of Kurla' are very active in Instagram. Yes, you are right.
It's not that I am specifically looking only for memes, the surge and change in Indian LGBTQ+ online content post 2018 (post 377 cancellation) interests me (working on a research plan).
Besides just desi-fying the firang templated content, I see genuine 'local-ness' in Tamil and Bangladesh memes only. (only understand Tamil memers who post in English, Bangla I can read.)
if you have any questions or want to discuss something let me know 
to fellow community member.