/r/DankMemes and /r/MemeEconomy vs. BuzzFeed

Let's talk about BuzzFeed. In the world of meme culture, BuzzFeed is a textbook case of The Kool-Aid Point in full effect: extremely popular, reviled by many, but for the most part, harmlessly mainstream--unless you are a regular patron of Reddit's /r/MemeEconomy or /r/DankMemes forums, in which case, Buzzfeed is the f***ing antichrist.

Recently, Buzzfeed cited both subreddits in an article about "Cracking Open A Cold One With a Boys", describing them as "places where it's decided if a meme deserves to take off or not." Pretty charitable, right? Well, once the daytraders of memes on Reddit found out about this shout-out a few weeks later (three full weeks after the post, for the record), all hell broke loose. As of yesterday, /r/DankMemes moderator wazowski_kachowski made his stance on BuzzFeed's Invasion of the subreddit very clear.

The amount of support from the community for Redditor wazowski_kachowski's brave post overflowed in the comments. The top comment from a fellow moderator breathlessly reads:

"Buzzfeed terrorism is eating up large portions of the meme community. They've become rich. We have to do something about this. Buzzfeed must be stopped."

The thing is, there's no evidence of "BuzzFeed normies" trying to "invade" the subreddits at all, or at least no more than outsiders from other communities flocking to the ever-growing hubs for meme-spotting. All through the first half of this month, the subreddit has operated as it normally has, with edgy, borderline or outright racist, sexist, and transphobic memes regularly hitting the top of the subreddit. Nevertheless, at their moderators' call to arms, the /r/DankMemes speculators have taken it upon themselves to flood the subreddit with the edgiest memes they can think of (which typically tops out at 9/11 jokes).

For its part, /r/MemeEconomy has reacted in its usual idiom, satirically crying "SELL SELL SELL" and lamenting the impending collapse of the meme market, which sounds like just another day on the subreddit. Nevertheless, the whole kerfuffle provides an illuminating look into the elitist psyche of those whom we consider the meme-bearers of the Internet. When even mentioned in passing by a website deemed too mainstream, an entire subreddit can explode, when nothing of consequence has changed at all. As my colleague put it: "12-year-old Thinks His Secret Play Fort Is Invisible. It Isn't."

But then again, meme elitism isn't anything new. There was the Eternal September in 1993, and 4chan's raids on 9GAG and Tumblr. So long as there are memes being driven to the mainstream, there will be a dark corner of the internet doing their damnedest to stop it from happening.