DISCUSSION #4
Why Do Memes Matter?
Oct 3, 2022. By Sierra Zhang
I would like to share this meme I made earlier when the heatwave hit Berkeley, and my friends and I joked about finding “elite air conditioning” on campus. The contrast between two environments on one campus makes it funny, and the character in the suit just makes me laugh every time.
Read the Original Articles
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Limor Shifman is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Department of Communication and Journalism. I think this book is a scholarly monograph as Shifman focuses on insights into a single topic — memes. As Shifman claimed in her introduction to Memes in Digital Culture, it is to address three issues before memes “can be integrated meaningfully into digital culture,” including its precise definition, interchangeability, and concepts underlying their creations (7). This book includes memes (3, 147) and diagrams (95) to either add context to her description or summarize while reinforcing ideas by visually presenting them. In the “Future Directions” chapter, Shifman explains some limitations of this book and then encourages readers to continue exploring down four promising paths she proposes. I am very interested in the “viral and memetic success” direction (Shifman 174) not only because I wish to research the story behind viral marketing cases like the “Will It Blend?” series but also wish to understand the stories behind my ability to make some memes go viral among my friends (the most iconic being the “really-really-hard”
video clip used to express how challenging a task is. For example, I would post, "the module exam is..." + this video). I often make memes to express my feelings towards some events in my life. According to what New York Times editor Jennifer L.W. Fink argues in “The Role of Memes in Teen Culture,” memes are used to “celebrate, mock or satirize current events” (Fink). Memes are like shocking projects conceptual artists create to convey their attitude towards social events, but it is a simplified “everyone can create” version that is quick enough to create but at the same time does not lose the satirical power.
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I selected the article “Experts’ judgment on the much-hyped Tesla Bot: Elon Musk speedruns robotics 101” by The Verge senior reporter James Vincent. Personally, I love many cool projects Elon Musk and his team are doing, but sometimes I think he goes too far. I was extremely hyped about the new Full-Self Driving innovations that were also announced alongside the Optimus humanoid robot but instead worried about a future with robots around us. Unlike Vincent, who doubts that the Optimus robot was just “intoxicants of hype and misdirection” (Vincent), I do not question the team’s ability to make it come true ultimately. But that is what makes it scary for me. Just like how algorithms can help push helpful information to us but can also act as methods to track us, I suppose we might lose more privacy with robots — imagine humanoid robots with cameras standing by every day and recording everything you do. If the Optimus bot ends up being profitable, other companies would also produce similar robots, and while Tesla has relatively better credibility for personal data management, many others are not.