KYM Insights: How People From Different Demographics View Video Game Memes, And How Their Reactions Differ Compared To Other Meme Topics

Coinciding with the launch of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 last month, video game memes have been more and more prevalent online as of late, especially with the slew of new titles dropping during the holiday season.

Whether they are memes revolved around the endless console war between Xbox and PlayStation fans, Cyberpunk 2077’s perpetually delayed release, gaming brands themselves using memes on social media or any of the other trendy topics floating about the web, video game memes are easily one of the most dominant categories of today’s meme culture.

Despite their presence, how do people viewing and consuming these memes generally respond to or feel about them? In order to gather what knowledge we can garner from such reactions, KYM Insights conducted a series of polls through CivicScience over the last two months to understand how gaming memes are viewed online. We posed an array of questions on the topic and learned that the answer to this question depends heavily on age, income, social media usage, how closely one follows technology trends and more.

Of the over 2,000 respondents we received, answers were weighted according to U.S. Census figures for gender and age, focused on those who’ve actually seen video game memes recently. For these participants, 58 percent were male, 42 percent female. Ages included 35 percent under 18 to 29, 20 percent 30 to 44, 24 percent 45 to 64 and just 10 percent 65 or older.

First off, we’ll look at the overall reception of video game memes from the entire sample of participants. With almost half of all respondents expressing “neutral” reactions, it seems the majority of people don’t especially have strong feelings toward gaming memes, with 35 percent “mostly positive” and just 16 percent “mostly negative.”

Now let’s break down each one of these groups and determine what trends, behaviors and similarities they share with each other and their counterparts. Since the “neutral” group is nearly half at 49 percent, we’ll begin there and work our way down.

Neutral

As the largest group by far, the “neutral” respondents were perhaps the most boring answer, but their behaviors prove to be interesting nonetheless. This group’s key differences lie in their relation to shopping habits. Results of the poll showed that people who feel neutral about video game memes were less likely to price-conscious when shopping, especially for electronics. For demographics, they were more likely to be 55 or older, skewing much higher in age than the other groups, less likely to be under 18, as well as being more likely to own their home. So, as it seems, this group is mostly comprised of older, wealthier individuals who don’t really give a crap about video games or their memes.

Mostly Positive

As the second biggest group, the “mostly positive” respondents also had some curious differences and similarities. People in this group were less than half as likely to be 55 or older, but more likely to be 18 to 34. Additionally, this group is more than twice as likely to live with their parents, while also being much more price-conscious than the “neutral” group. Regarding technology usage, those who answered “mostly positive” were more likely to consider themselves “digital device addicts” as well as closely following technology trends. They’re also more likely to actively use Instagram and to choose electronics based on social media influence.

Mostly Negative

The “mostly negative” group comes in as the smallest overall, with some key differences compared to the other more popular groups. First off, this group skews somewhat younger compared to those who feel neutral about gaming memes but a bit older than those who responded positively, with 35 to 54 less likely to answer “mostly negative” but under 18 more likely. These respondents were also more likely to manage their money better. In terms of their tech use, the group was less likely to be heavy social media users or digital device addicts, as well as being unlikely to follow technology trends.

What It All Means

Compared to other broad topics for memes, such as politics, video game memes warranted much more positive or neutral reactions overall. Back in October, we conducted a similar study that proved political memes were typically received poorly by almost every demographic, which is a drastic difference from this category. Although this isn’t surprising since politics, especially now, is a divisive topic, the poll shows that people seem to enjoy memes about gaming far more.

Taking a step back to gather what we’ve learned from all this, results show that those who respond neutrally to video game memes are generally much older, have more money to blow and don’t have strong opinions on such internet humor. The positive group, however, is much younger than the other two, particularly in the high school or younger demographic, much more in tune with technology and use it frequently, but also have less money to spend. Lastly, the negative group fell more in the middle in terms of age, didn’t follow tech trends or use a lot of social media, but were generally better managers of their money.

In the end, the biggest takeaways are that younger generations tend to be more positively receptive to video game memes as well as play them and consume such content through digital devices. Those who react negatively were a bit older but far more diverse, so perhaps they have nostalgia for older games of their past and dislike newer titles more common in meme culture today. The neutral group being so much older leads us to believe that they simply don’t play video games very much, so their opinion on them is less one-sided. Plus, since they’re also the wealthiest of the bunch, maybe they just don’t have time to game in-between all that frivolous spending.