A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online.
Per Wikipedia, emphasis on what I consider the relevant bits. What way do you use it?
By your own highlighted parts, the cards in the OP are not memes. People don’t alter pictures of those signed cards and they don’t mutate. They don’t change via selective pressures as we don’t see new versions where people change the image or the text. Additionally, those pictures of the trading cards are not remixed. They’re shared unaltered. The OP is missing key traits of being a meme. The OP is a picture of some funny jokes that Mark Hamil wrote on some trading cards he autographed. They’re certainly entertaining, but they’re not memes.
I don’t think you understand what the concept of mutation/remix is then. “A horrified Luke sees his family killed” and then writing over it something cheeky about newfound freedom vastly alters (mutates) how the image is interpreted. “Selectice Pressures” could be something like a topical joke based on current events, in this case it’s the fact that he was signing cards at a convention, so the fan boy joke was informed by that situation.
A meme doesn’t need a multitude of variations to be considered a meme, that’s just going viral. It also doesn’t need to be a photoshopped image, changing the text is creation of a new meme, think advice animals. Simply changing how the image is received by a viewer is enough to be a meme, it’s nothing more complicated than that.
I use the first definition. To use the word simply to mean a picture that is shared doesn’t really match the original usage of this word. The act of sharing pictures is a meme. Some pictures that get shared a lot are memes. Mark Hamill writing on a picture is something obviously some people call a meme, but I think those people are using a new, and as far as I can tell, pointless, meaning of the word.
For it to be a meme, other people should also be doing something similar optimally in different variations - either before or after he signed these. For example to burn a funny message + signature in wood.
If this happened, idk. Potentially, this was/became a meme
I am pretty sure you still fail to understand the difference between the original meaning of the word and the meaning that you are using. www.tfd.com/meme.
By the original definition, no, it’s not a meme. By the definition that you appear to be using, an image that has been modified, then sure, it’s a meme.
I think you’re getting really tunnel visioned on a single definition and not taking into account the context to which we are interacting, which is on the internet. An internet meme is not the same exact concept as what Dawkins originally was conveying when he coined the term meme. I’m not out here in academia so you’ll have to forgive my shorthand of internet meme to just meme. In my defense before all you meme Scholars got on my case, the internet was included in my thesis title. Are the card signatures memes in a generational sense? No, but yet here we are discussing them four decades later, so maybe?
An internet meme has two defining characteristics in reproduction and intertextuality. Were they reproduced? Before today not to my knowledge, they could have been as I have demonstrated. However not every gene strain reproduces, are they less of a gene than others that do? If memes are the cultural analogues to genes then the capability to reproduce is what is needed. If the original image is a template then do his jokes count as a single reproduction? As for intertextuality well Mark did that by changing the context of the original image.
Per Wikipedia, emphasis on what I consider the relevant bits. What way do you use it?
By your own highlighted parts, the cards in the OP are not memes. People don’t alter pictures of those signed cards and they don’t mutate. They don’t change via selective pressures as we don’t see new versions where people change the image or the text. Additionally, those pictures of the trading cards are not remixed. They’re shared unaltered. The OP is missing key traits of being a meme. The OP is a picture of some funny jokes that Mark Hamil wrote on some trading cards he autographed. They’re certainly entertaining, but they’re not memes.
Is it a meme now?
I don’t think you understand what the concept of mutation/remix is then. “A horrified Luke sees his family killed” and then writing over it something cheeky about newfound freedom vastly alters (mutates) how the image is interpreted. “Selectice Pressures” could be something like a topical joke based on current events, in this case it’s the fact that he was signing cards at a convention, so the fan boy joke was informed by that situation.
A meme doesn’t need a multitude of variations to be considered a meme, that’s just going viral. It also doesn’t need to be a photoshopped image, changing the text is creation of a new meme, think advice animals. Simply changing how the image is received by a viewer is enough to be a meme, it’s nothing more complicated than that.
So, just so I understand, you are using the word meme to mean images that are altered?
Is it a meme now?
I use the first definition. To use the word simply to mean a picture that is shared doesn’t really match the original usage of this word. The act of sharing pictures is a meme. Some pictures that get shared a lot are memes. Mark Hamill writing on a picture is something obviously some people call a meme, but I think those people are using a new, and as far as I can tell, pointless, meaning of the word.
Is it a meme now?
For it to be a meme, other people should also be doing something similar optimally in different variations - either before or after he signed these. For example to burn a funny message + signature in wood.
If this happened, idk. Potentially, this was/became a meme
Is it a meme now?
I am pretty sure you still fail to understand the difference between the original meaning of the word and the meaning that you are using. www.tfd.com/meme.
By the original definition, no, it’s not a meme. By the definition that you appear to be using, an image that has been modified, then sure, it’s a meme.
I think you’re getting really tunnel visioned on a single definition and not taking into account the context to which we are interacting, which is on the internet. An internet meme is not the same exact concept as what Dawkins originally was conveying when he coined the term meme. I’m not out here in academia so you’ll have to forgive my shorthand of internet meme to just meme. In my defense before all you meme Scholars got on my case, the internet was included in my
thesistitle. Are the card signatures memes in a generational sense? No, but yet here we are discussing them four decades later, so maybe?An internet meme has two defining characteristics in reproduction and intertextuality. Were they reproduced? Before today not to my knowledge, they could have been as I have demonstrated. However not every gene strain reproduces, are they less of a gene than others that do? If memes are the cultural analogues to genes then the capability to reproduce is what is needed. If the original image is a template then do his jokes count as a single reproduction? As for intertextuality well Mark did that by changing the context of the original image.
Is it a meme now?
These are really bad. Please stop.