Meme Culture: the global infectant we should actually be concerned about

In the last 20 years alone, the establishment of contemporary global culture has seen dramatic acceleration in an ever digitized, technologically entrenched world. Yet, while culture on a global scale has certainly thrived alongside widespread internet use, the value of borderless interconnectivity that the internet brings to the table has, in reality, enabled countless users to starve others, and themselves, of the necessary attention--and appropriate response--toward people enduring ongoing crises and tragedies worldwide. Indeed, the inherent free-to-roam aspect of the internet has seen users blindly portion-controlling treatment of an issue that they deem fit, also identifiable as everything wrong with the internet mainstay at work: “meme culture.” 

Kara Rogers, a member of the National Association of Science Writers since 2009 and writer for Encyclopedia Britannica, says that, “Within a culture, memes can take a variety of forms, such as an idea, a skill, a behaviour, a phrase, or a particular fashion. The replication and transmission of a meme occurs when one person copies a unit of cultural information compromising a meme from another person,” Rogers continued, “and those memes that are most successful in being copied and transmitted become the most prevalent within a culture,” according to her article for Britannica.

Within precisely what Rogers discerns to be the “successful” catalyst behind memes, internet users--college students included--prioritizing the ability to copy and transmit cultural aspects of memes often brutally undermines the realities facing people on a daily basis within said crises and tragedies. This aspect is still ingrained well across meme culture to this day. In fact, the most prime, recent example arises in the case of the Wuhan coronavirus. 

Reaching initial outbreak in mainland China on Dec. 1, 2019, the coronavirus--and those infected, especially those of Chinese ancestry or descent--has received comparable treatment online as Ebola and the people of Africa enduring the outbreak therein just several years ago.  

Yet, as parodying the suffering endured by any cultural group is never ‘okay’ nor excusable, the looming activity of meme culture--with no direct blame attributed to any one group, thread, or person due to the ‘masked’ value of the internet--has egregiously assigned self-excusal to these issues. 

To make matters even worse, the rising scope of the coronavirus outbreak has injected an even broader sense of hysteria as it is, as Ben Westcott, Adam Renton and Angela Dewan of CNN report, “Another 89 people died in mainland China on Saturday (Feb. 8), bringing the total death toll around the world to at least 813.” 

Now, while the scope of the coronavirus has well surpassed that of the Ebola outbreak (enough to be considered a pandemic), heightened hysteria around the virus is also readily puppeteered by the circus-like showcase of meme culture online. And, in what has carried equally egregious implications: for those who are -actually- affected by the virus at this stage, especially at its source in China, an onslaught of xenophobia at the hands of meme culture has been on careless display. 

One example arises in a Spongebob Squarepants meme that has surfaced since the turn of the year. While the meme is broken up into four pictures, scenes from the beloved Nickelodeon show are pulled to individually reflect major issues around the world. Spongebob and Patrick are depicted in two of the four boxes; One of which showcases the two drowning in a bed of water, with the caption “Venice:” underneath (referencing the floods) and, in the other, posing in a military-esque fort with a machine gun, captioned “Iran and USA.” While the third shows Spongebob on fire, captioned by “Australia:” the fourth and final box reigns as an up-close shot of Spongebob appearing deathly ill and nearly zombified, captioned with “China,” clearly, in reference to the coronavirus. 

Importantly, meme culture operates and thrives in a seemingly boundaryless comedic realm, and for those who view comedy, much like comedians themselves, as rightfully ‘blind’ to sensitive issues, tragedies and crises alike, indifference leads--and leads well. Yet, regardless of whether or not one is suffocatingly indifferent to an issue simply because it does not pose an immediate threat to him or her, it is beyond worthwhile--no matter who you are, or what your social location is--to harness values of one’s own subjective culture. While myriads of memes have surfaced across the internet satirizing the coronavirus, people affected and even an entire ethnic group, those who are “replicating” and “transmitting” the memes, in Rogers words, would undoubtedly act differently if it was on a basis of subjective culture, or inner-culture, like one’s moral codes.  

Instead, as meme culture exists as objective culture, or surface culture, millions of people around the world deem its activity as inherently acceptable, without question, no matter the case. Ultimately, people must begin to question why they do the things they do, especially on the internet--and for whom? 

Meme culture is just as pervasive across high school and college demographics and students alike must stop and ask themselves, ‘at what point am I going to draw the line on mindlessly conforming to a moral-less showcase of disregard for other people?’ And, for that matter, other cultures?