The two readings this week focus on memes and how they came about within the century, but also what art means to people when we move out of the digital age into a new era that is unknown. I am not educated on these topics but reading this journal and article really brought up a lot of questions. The first paragraph in the memes journal states that memes are infectious units of culture and while I do agree I would not state it like that. While we move into the middle of the digital age we see that trends and popular opinions, terms, phrases and images get so popular and “blow up” rapidly because of the easy access to post and promote something. So yes this online culture is infectious it's also our new normal to how younger generations live their lives today.
A response and thought I have about memes reading the first few pages is that I think of myself as a visual learner and so memes definitely help us and others understand what is going on with the accompanied text. So while a text message that is popular can only be read by someone who can read that specific language, a meme can be interpreted by more people in a unique way. I think that social media has to do a lot with the image based responses where more people can participate in the conversation and while that is more inclusive you also have to understand there is also a lot of misinterpretation if a message has other intentions that stating the obvious and that is where controversy can come into play.
Looking into today’s culture of how big memes are used daily my roommates and I got a game called What Do You Meme. It’s very similar to apples to apples where you get cards, pull a photo out of the stack and put down the best text to go with the meme chosen. This not only creates and generates new memes people can make, but when we look at the game it is crazy how memes can become a game. And this is where having a similar reaction and understanding with the people you play with will determine the outcome of the response. Because we all come from different backgrounds, the way you play the game determines humor and if people get the joke due to similar views on life.
The article talking about the post digital age brought up an idea that while data and images are in cyber space and people can retrieve it. Because it was put up on the internet and someone must have saved it. Like hyperlinks, why all of a sudden do they not exist. And yes people are saving only links and websites, but why can’t they be up on the web forever. But also why does it cost money to keep them going, who controls it and how much space does cyberspace have?
Those are all questions that I don’t know the answer to but it leads to the past and present to why we use the internet, why it was created and how we use it today. While the views and outlooks might be different, each person using the internet and world wide web spahes it to what it is today. People use it for a purpose and we have these links because people want to use them. What might it look like in five decades and what do we think will change?
Lastly, how did we get the internet to look like it does today? Who pushed those changes and why do we think that white space is so important? Yes, there is an aesthetic but like this article stated, it loses personality.