The case for memes as a new form of comics

Summary

"Obviously with a meme, they're not the size of a city block," she continued. "So it occurred to me that they are infinite, but almost like you're peeling sheets off a pad and the pad just has an endless number of sheets. You can just keep redoing it, redo, redo, redo. That's memes. They get revised and repurposed and re-imagined and redone and recirculated over and over and over again. The template gets used inexhaustibly, which is what makes them fun, what makes them go viral." Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflp Just what makes a good meme image? Abate has some thoughts about that, too. "It has to be not just the image, but the ability for the image to be paired with a caption, a text," she said. "It has to lend itself to some kind of verbal element as well. And it also has to have some elasticity of being specific enough that it's recognizable, but also being malleable enough that it can be adapted to different forms." In other words, a really good meme must be generalizable if it is to last longer than a few weeks. The recent kiss-cam incident at a Coldplay concert is a case in point. When a married tech CEO was caught embracing his company's "chief people officer," they quickly realized they were on the Jumbotron, panicked, and hid their faces—which only made it worse. The moment went viral and spawned myriad memes. Even the Phillies mascots got into the spirit, re-enacting the moment at a recent baseball game. But that particular meme might not have long-term staying power. "It became a meme very quickly and went viral very fast," said Abate. "I may be proved wrong, but I don't think the Coldplay moment will be a meme that will be around a year from now. It's commenting on a particular incident in the culture, and then the clock will tick, and folks will move on. Whereas something like 'Distracted Boyfriend' or 'This is Fine' has more staying power because it's not tied to a particular incident or a particular scandal but can be applied to all kinds of poli...