The Internet in and as culture

This week’s theme is all about memes and culture. So, for today, let’s think a little about how culture is reflected in memes.

Remember that culture is a huge idea, and contains many of the things that make societies different, and the same. But some of the cultural features you’re looking out for are…

• Art/Music/Movies/Literature
• Knowledge
• Beliefs
• Traditions
• Laws
• Customs and Social Practices
• Habits
• Values and Morals

Is English-speaking internet culture American culture? (Click in A)

Clearly, memeing isn’t limited to the US, and in the world of the internet, borders matter less than ever for information exchange. Even thinking about English-speaking memes, there are meme creators and sharers from all over the world. So, it’s a bit imperialist to assume that memes are an American phenomenon and reflect an American cultural world.

To this end, let’s think about ‘meme culture’ generally, and, with your group, ask…

1. What features of mainstream American culture are clearly reflected in the general English-speaking meme culture?
   • Put differently, how is American culture represented or used in meme culture?
2. What cultural features of English-speaking internet meme culture are different from those mainstream American culture?
   • Put differently, how is meme culture at odds with mainstream American culture?
3. Is English-speaking meme culture the same as American culture?
   • Using your answer from above, make your argument
4. Is it even reasonable to consider ‘culture’ to be different than ‘internet culture’ in the 2020s?

Take a cultural inventory (Click in B)

We’re going to assume that all of you have some familiarity with the mainstream American culture, taking a class in Southern California. But with your group, go around the table and discuss:

1. What other cultures are you familiar with?
   • I’d prefer you focus on cultures which are maximally different from Mainstream American culture in terms of cultural features, rather than focusing on social subcultures within the US (e.g. gamers) where many of the above features are inherited from the mainstream.
2. Are you familiar with memes from those cultures?
   • ‘No’ is acceptable, but if you have a group member who lives and memes in another culture, that’s a great candidate.
3. Make a list of the different cultures which are either shared by a number of folks in the group, or which has a group member who feels comfortable offering direct insights and perspectives from that culture?

Cultural differences in memeing? (Click in C)

Now, thinking about your list of cultures which your group is familiar with, and for each cultural context, discuss:

1. How do memes differ in these cultures, relative to the mainstream English-speaking meme culture?
2. What elements of English-speaking meme culture feel extra foreign, relative to that culture?
3. Are there specific cultural features which are present in memes from that cultural context, which you think would never be found in American memes?
4. What elements of meme culture are still reliably found, even in memes from that culture?
5. If your group is working in one particular domain, are there cultural differences in this particular domain?

Are cross-cultural memes just iconic? (Click in D)

Finally, a trickier discussion question: One problem with memes as language is that they’re often profoundly visual, and thus, more likely to be iconic (that is, their meanings are carried by the image itself, not by linguistic understanding). So, one could argue that the use of shared templates across cultures is simply because they’re iconically understandable, and thus, identically useful in most contexts.

1. Can you think of non-iconic elements of meme culture which are still reliably found in other cultures’ memeing?