Popular memes in indie web of today(?)

[robotickyuu]

Hello! This is my first ever post after a long hiatus from the indie web, super psyched to be back!!

So, as the title suggests, I was curious about the meme ecosystem within modern indie web communities, like Neocities or Nekoweb, if there is any at all. Because back in the day, it were stuff like Nyan Cat or Rickroll that dominated the old internet (there are probably better examples than those but I'm actually not that old enough to remember the memes from the old web so yeah... but still you get my point) and I thought "hey, it'd be super cool if the indie web revival had this in it's revival list!!"

I was wondering, are there any memes like that that are getting popular? And if not, would you like to see new memes to emerge in the indie web revival community?

(Oh, and also, I wonder about other people's opinions on memes as well! It's a pretty interesting topic of discussion the more you think about it!!)

[cult_status18]

people don't really post memes here surface web memes are discouraged in the rules pages but their isn't anything in the rules that says we cant make any that are just for the forums my sister made this thing and she's posted it to her TikTok page but it didn't get any tracion she doesn't care about it she lets me do whatever I want with it so we can use it here if you guys want too its kinda a wojack style meme like pog face or chud face but according to my sister his name is "carson the carrot" so you all can call him that I think something better tho would be a meme based off an inside joke from the forums any ideas? Ive only now just been more active

[Melooon]

isn't anything in the rules that says we cant make any that are just for the forums

Actually there is The forum rules are that you cant use meme's as reactions or in conversations ~ in the same was as we don't allow very short replies like "thanks" I feel meme is a disingenuous way to engage with people as part of a discussion.

There's nothing against discussing them, except for that fact that a vast majority of memes are actually quite unpleasant or come from unpleasant parts of the web. Although I think the deeper reason is that the web revival and indie web are all about timeless content, where as memes are about timed content (most memes have a very limited shelf life while most webpages last decades).

In general I think that memes embody everything sick about the wider web, short format, heartless and shallow content that diminishes rather than enriches people. I know that's a touch harsh though, I do also think they they capture moments in culture and time and that is an important part of the web, and sometimes they are very fun! However for me they just don't stick as something I find personal value in.

[cult_status18]

Actually there is

ahh ok thank you for clearing that up and yeahhhh....I was just having a conversation yesterday with a friend about where the "chud face" came from

[You can look it up if you want but what that man did was very evil, so be warned.]

When I think of it like that it is really concerning that a lot of memes come from bad people or places or end up being racial dog whistles or things like that and something I found really annoying about discord was all the memes that ppl would not stop posting I never understood them and they would just chepen the conversations I Was in so I get that too and as cute as boy kisser is I'm still SO TIRED OF SEEING IT

the worst of it is on tiktok for sure my sister will turn her phone to me and show me some of the weirdist and most stupid things I have ever seen its really gotten bad people hardly even care about a punchline now its just who can do the cringiest thing on camera or here's the new lol-cow for the next couple of months knock your self out internet

Here's a picture of Joshua Block This poor man has been harassed on tik-tok for ages now to the point where he is a severe alcoholic, and people just leech off of him and are only around him to  record content of him.

its terrible and I hate it too but I feel like at least pre-Vine era memes had some heart in them, but after vine it was all downhill from there

[Corrupted Unicorn]

A vast majority of memes are actually quite unpleasant or come from unpleasant parts of the web. Although I think the deeper reason is that the web revival and indie web are all about timeless content, where as memes are about timed content (most memes have a very limited shelf life while most webpages last decades).

In general I think that memes embody everything sick about the wider web, short format, heartless and shallow content that diminishes rather than enriches people. I know that's a touch harsh though, I do also think they they capture moments in culture and time and that is an important part of the web, and sometimes they are very fun! However for me they just don't stick as something I find personal value in.

This opinion has stuck in my mind for quite a long time since I read it. One one hand, I can understand where you're coming from, but there was something that didn't quite click for me, and I think I figured out now what it is.

As a person with a "little to no social skills" background (getting better at this, I promise  ), memes are a tool of communication for me. The same way I write these posts with different colors, fonts and sizes (if you're not reading my posts as if it was a Geronimo Stilton book, I'm in rare shape  ). There's been occasions where I conveyed what I wanted to mean through images, videos, and sounds. The ways I express myself are multimedia beyond tone of voice and body language And memes are a part of that. I've been able to identify a feeling or thought on a meme or on someone's words before I realized it myself more than once. Plus I think they add fun  I believe putting a Morshu next time I post my Artefacts would really set the mood.

With that said, I admit that, in order for a meme to be enjoyed/understood, both the creator and the viewer must be aware of it in the first place. I disparagely use both old and new memes, whichever are the most memorable to me. But what if someone browsing my artefacts doesn't know who Morshu is and they only see this creepy wrinkly guy sitting on top of my collection for no reason But again, isn't that part of the Internet, of life? To engage with new, sometimes strange things? Maybe they'll get curious and they will learn of the Zelda CD-I games for the first time thanks to my post 

[Melooon]

memes are a tool of communication for me

Soo I can add a little to that last post because reading it back I can recognize the personal story that's missing in it; I'm not sure if its relatable to anyone, but it seems important to me!

I remember being a kid in school and I remember the ways we communicated with each other before language could fully serve us; we communicated with drawings and games and pretending to be characters we could not be in real life. I could not express that I wanted to be cool and dark and strong, but I could pretend to be Mewtwo (sometimes that wouldn't work and we'd just have tantrums but that was not so common!)

I also remember how that changed when we became teenagers; I remember how people stopped playing, and how communication became less about what you could be, and more about what you knew. As teenagers communication became about understanding the outer world instead of the inner one; for sporty kids it was about knowing all the details of a sport, for geeky kids it was about referencing movies and memes; what you said was less about you-the-person and more about you-the-group.

I never liked that teenage version of the world, and I suppose I was very left behind by it Of course as you grow up it all becomes nuanced and balanced and all those sorts of things; but so many people never find that ability to be confident in expressing themselves through creation and play again. It took me a long time to find it in myself, and I still forget how sometimes, but I'm always working on it

So I think your view on it is fully understandable, and I even think its prob the more relatable view for most people; just don't let that communication with an outer world blur your inner one too much.

[CyborWaffolz (dizzy)]

Should the memes be like the new definition or the old definition. Today memes usually connotate something funny, but back then it could apply to any kind of easily sharable and repeatable thing. The old definition is where the term animation meme comes from, and when the definition changed, people complained that they were called animation 'memes' despite not being funny, not understanding that it came from an earlier meaning.
Semantics aside, things like the "best viewed with open eyes" button might classify as memes. Theres also the "world is a fuck" copypasta which shows up a lot on anarchist type websites. "Cringe culture is dead" is a common trope and might classify as a meme.

Here's a picture of Joshua Block This poor man has been harassed on tik-tok for ages now to the point where he is a severe alcoholic, and people just leech off of him and are only around him to  record content of him.

I think i recognize that guy from back when i watched shorts about 2 years ago

[xero333]

The "generations" of memes are one of the most fascinating things on the internet IMO. If you look back, there are distinct eras of memes. I've seen them referred to as the following: Experimental era, Classic Era, Rage Era, Dank Era, Surreal Era, Post-Irony, Brainrot (current era). After the "Dank Era", it felt like memes got a lot more chaotic and didn't really fit a proper theme (for example Dank Era and Rage Era). For example in the Dank Era, I remember YouTube etc being absolutely filled with those dank gamer compilations / clips, whereas now everything just feels very random.

The meme landscape has totally changed too. Back in the day they likely mostly came from [auto redacted], something awful and similar places, then slowly filtered their way onto social media. Now, the majority are made on twitter, reddit, and TikTok, which end up slowly filtering to the more niche communities. It's interesting stuff.

[Solinus]

When I think of it like that it is really concerning that a lot of memes come from bad people or places or end up being racial dog whistles or things like that

Seconded. I wish there would be a comeback in cute/"wholesome" memes/edits, or at least memes that don't originate from internet cesspools. Might be rose tinted glasses, but looking back at Lessons in Meme Culture, the memes from 2020 or so appeared to be much more varied in origin and less edgy/brainrotted overall. Don't get me wrong, there have been some decent recent memes such as the triangle factory, but in general I think meme culture has gone more edgy since 2021ish.

[Paprika]

I liked memes a lot when they appeared, it was during my teenage phase so rage comics and rick rolls were seen as something cool. But as time passed, memes are now bland to me, I have a hard time appreciating what I liked before and I've seen too many reaction memes so I'm probably jaded/saturated by the fact there's memes for everything, everywhere, all the time. I've slowly stopped using memes but now I'm leaning a lot on emojis and custom emojis, it feels less invading than big pictures with a big meaning.

To each their own I guess.

However I will always accept and tolerate Rick Roll because I genuinely like the song

[milo]

I think what a meme truly is has changed over the years and @CyborWaffolz (dizzy)  got the closest to touching on what is happening with "meme culture".

A meme, by definition, is something that is passed around so much that it becomes widely known without really knowing its origin. The word has transformed over the last couple decades to be known as a "funny picture on the Internet". So people think a meme can just be "created" and sent off into the webosphere when really a meme comes from a handful of people passing a joke or phrase or image around and then it gets passed to another group, and another group until everyone is talking about it like they've been in on the joke the whole time.

For a long time, memes really were just little in jokes that originated organically on small community forums that spread to other corners of the Internet. I would joke with memes on forums and sometimes you might hear someone out in public say "All your base are belong to us!" and it'd be a huge deal. But generally memes were relegated to "internet humor". The first instance of a meme I can remember breaking out of the Internet and becoming relevant irl is the Rickroll. Suddenly people at my job were Rickrolling each other and broader Internet humor was starting to make its way into the mainstream.

I can remember being on reddit around 2011 or so and seeing the meme text template formats starting to take off where people were "inventing" memes and honestly that really irked me. I believe a created meme is a facsimile of a real meme that comes up organically. It does bother me a lot that the meme has been watered down to just "funny picture".

I guess the whole point of this post is to say that the meme culture here is whatever we make it to be. Any jokes or references developed here in Melon Land are our memes and when they escape our ecosystem and you see one on reddit or instagram you can say "hey, I was there for that!" and know that it is truly a meme. :)