Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

So I work in a college counseling center, and a lot of the staff is having trouble relating to some of the students because they don't really know anything about memes and internet trends and stuff. They've asked me to put together a presentation to give them a crash course on what I guess we can call internet subculture.

Wondering if anyone out there has input. I'm really starting from scratch with some of the older staff. Most of them didn't know what a lolcat was. I want to focus on some famous memes and currently popular ones. There's a lot I can do, but I want to know what you guys think is most important. Any help would be appreciated!

I wouldn't say that there is any important meme. It's all pointless. But I would say knowing the more popular ones, i.e.; rage face, Skyrim Quotes, Keanu, and others in that area. It's better to know a wide variety of memes.

I guess I mean important historically. Like lolcats made captioning anything really popular (look at the whole cheezeburger network), and advice dog has a million spinoffs, rage face too. But like, is explaining an older meme like Leroy Jenkins or Boxy really going to help the staff relate to college students?

If you go back to this thread from awhile back, we worked out some major categories for memes and internet culture.

1. Rage Comics (Rage Guy, Trollface, Me Gusta)
2. Advice Dog Spinoffs/ Advice Animals (Advice Dog, Philosoraptor, Scumbag Steve)
3. Viral Videos (Rebecca Black – Friday, Double Rainbow, Jessi Slughter)
4. LOLcats (Happy Cat, Longcat, Serious Cat)
5. Exploitables (Strutting Leo, Sad Keanu, Reaction Guys / Gaijin 4Koma)
6. Internet Slang (LOLspeak, 1337 speak, Fail)
7. YTMND (Stop The Rock, Future Conan, I Can Break These Cuffs)
8. Youtube Poop (Guile's Theme, Stu Makes Chocolate Pudding at 4 AM, Pingas)
9. Snowclones (X All The Y, I Gave That Bitch an X, X, X Everywhere)
10. Media/Subcultures (Minecraft, MLP;FIM, Adventure Time)

There's a lot of other helpful categorization and explanation in that thread too.

Thanks, Doc! This thread is super helpful.

Must also mention "trolling."

Just because it's so prevalent, no matter where you go on the internet.

you could argue the most important one, politically was the 99 percent protests, but if you count this as a internet meme or not is up for debate

you could argue the most important one, politically was the 99 percent protests, but if you count this as a internet meme or not is up for debate

Definitely gonna agree with Thomas Nair. In order to help them understand that morals don't actually exist on the internet, you'll definitely have to include trolling. Help them understand the difference between Cyber-bullying and Trolling. There's a HUGE difference.