What is Internet memes?
Novice on the Internet is sometimes difficult to understand"Old-timers," because sometimes the world-wide network seems to be a separate world with its own rules, traditions and even its own language - in general, with its culture. A huge part of the Internet culture is the so-called Internet memes.Remember the anecdote about prisoners who, for the sake oftime savings replaced all anecdotes, already a hundred times retold each other, ordinal numbers? You call a number - and it's immediately clear what kind of anecdote you had in mind. Internet memes are somewhat similar to these ordinal numbers - seeing a certain phrase or picture, the "raw" Internet user immediately understands what his interlocutor meant.
Internet memes are a kind of information (words and phrases, images, videos, concepts), which spontaneously gained popularity on the World Wide Web. Internet memes are transmitted from mouth to mouth (andmore precisely, from user to user) via e-mail, instant messaging systems, blogs and forums (including anonymous image boards).
In general, the term "meme" appeared in 1976. Richard Dawkins called a meme unit of cultural information, capable of reproduction. Journalists writing about the Internet quicklyhave picked up this term, and it and has got accustomed in the Internet environment. An Internet meme is not any information, but only one that "captures" users, leaves them not indifferent.
All Internet memes are divided into several large groups. The first group includes words and phrases. Perhaps, one of the most famous memes in thiscategories are IMHO (an abbreviation of English In My Humble Opinion - in my humble opinion), which is sometimes written in Russian letters and deciphered as "I Have Opinion, Horseradish". Another example is the question "How to patch KDE2 under FreeBSD?", First set on the anime channel in the IRC network. In the same category can be attributed and the notorious "Preved".
The second group is Internet memes, which are media files (videos and songs). For example, a video with the performance of Eduard Gil, a famous Soviet pop singer, sold on the Internet under the title "Mr. Trololo." This, by the way, is not the only example of how a rather old record becomes an Internet meme: the same fate befell the Czech song "Yozhin z Bazhin", recorded in 1978. Two more examples of such memes are the Finnish "Polka Eva" ("Yak tsup zop") and the Swedish song "Caramelldansen", launched at an accelerated pace and accompanied by a recognizable animation in the anime style.
The third group is Internet memes in the form of pictures. For example, the image of a person closingface by hand, called Facepalm and means shame. Often the picture shows Captain Picard, the character of the series "Star Trek: The Next Generation", but other characters also meet. Instead of a picture, you can simply write facepalm.jpg or * facepalm * - you will understand. Still to such memes are photos with signatures, for example, a photo of the manuls with the call "Stroke a cat" or a white owl, as if asking: "O RLY?" (Distorted "Oh, really?" - "Really?"). This includes advisors, demotivators and other "serial" Internet memes.
Some Internet memes are characters. They can not be attributed to any of the three groups,because such a character can be a hero of a picture or video or even exist "in text form". For example, if Captain Obviousness was remembered in the Internet conversation (KO, Cap), then someone impressed everyone with a revelation from the series "Guys, and the grass is green!" Or "And the sky is blue!". Sometimes even real people become memes, say, very popular on the Internet, Anatoly Wasserman, whom the regulars of the Net call Panibrates - Onotole. Or an unnamed Witness from Fryazino - a man in a leather jacket and sports pants, sealed in a photo next to the newlyweds opposite the Fryazino registry office.
Perhaps, in one or even several articles, all Internet memes can not be listed - there are a lot of them. Memam dedicate whole sites (Lurkmore and Netlore in RuNet, EncyclopediaDramatica - in the English-speaking segment of the Internet). Lurkmore is more designed for seasoned and seasoned Internet users, and Netlore is suitable for starting acquaintance with memes.
Attitudes to memes are different: someone considers Internet memes as information garbage, someone with joy picks up each new meme. But it can not be denied that Memes became an integral part of Internet communication, a kind of jargon, the knowledge of which helps to become "one's own". It is not necessary to know all memes and always use them, but knowing a couple or two memes can facilitate communication on the network.
