Memes: Nonsense is Nothing New

In the future when people cast their gaze back in time to analyze our generation, memes will undoubtedly be one of the flagship artifacts of our culture. First of all, what is a meme? Of course, most of us will just know. We’ve seen them, we’ve shared them, we’ve created them – new relationships exist because of them. However, despite their prolificacy, coming up with a way to define a meme is actually quite difficult.

Most results from a quick search roughly explain memes as pieces of media that spread for humorous or political/social commentary purposes via the internet. Different sources cite different “pieces of media” among the first memes, including Pepe the Frog (2005), the Hampster Dance Song (1998), or the Dancing Baby (1996). Some people claim a meme has to send a message, but if so, what message is communicated by the Hampster Dance Song? Or Johnny Johnny memes? Certainly some memes send clear messages, especially those featuring the classic bold white text, but clearly some of them do not – at least not in any easily recognizable way. I was amused to find that the Wikipedia page on memes includes a subsection on “dank” memes, which describes them as pieces of media that are “so nonsensical that they are hilarious.” And what about “meta” memes – yet another subgenre of memes that are in some way self-aware and self-referential. It was when I was introduced to this baffling subgenre of memes and tried to make sense of what was happening before my eyes that I first started thinking about some of the striking similarities between our culture’s memes and the artistic/communicative expressions of other eras.

Unsurprisingly, our generation is not the first to enjoy ironic, nonsensical humor and self-referential forms of expression. During the interwar period of the early 20th century a new movement in art and philosophy called Dadaism emerged as a kind of artistic anarchy or anti-art. Where previous art movements sought to create beauty, the Dadaists created aesthetically offensive images. Where others wanted their art to have a great purpose, the Dadaists pushed the boundaries of what was required to be meaningful. Where others looked at Dada creations and cringed, asking, why? the Dadaists responded with an avant garde, why the heck not?

Most famous and perhaps most representative of the Dada movement is a, uh, “readymade” sculpture by Michael Duchamp, created by turning a urinal on its side, and entitled “Fountain.” Other Dada works include collages of magazine and newspaper clippings, industrial scrap twisted into semi-human figures, and, also by Duchamp, a parody of the Mona Lisa where the famous woman is featured with a mustache and goatee. Classy. I dare you to look up this “painting.” It gets even better. But this was exactly the kind of nonsensical twisting of traditional values that the anti-bourgeois, anti-institutional, anti-art Dada movement was aiming for. Although, like memes, some Dada art was decidedly more serious, aiming for a sarcastic commentary against the war, a different strain of the same social/political angst also led to the subgenre of art whose only message, if it contained any at all, was directed at the medium itself. Why make a urinal into a sculpture? Precisely because it doesn’t make sense. The audience wouldn’t know what to do with it, but ultimately, that is the very reason they would love it

So are memes the same as dada art? No, there are several important differences. We do not have a manifesto or great studios, and I doubt any of us are intentionally anti-establishment when we share memes. Dadaism was a movement (ironically) of an artistic, intellectual elite, while the sharing of memes today is a ubiquitous part of popular culture.

However, I am suspicious that there are a few significant similarities between us and the Dadaists, despite the one hundred years between us and the revolutionary advent of the internet. In the same way that avant-garde Dadaist conceptual art pushed the boundaries of beauty and meaning, our own forms of expression leave some people confused. It is ridiculous. We love the nonsensical. We love expressions that don’t take themselves too seriously. We love badly animated videos of semi-human creatures doing ridiculous things. We love memes. They don’t have to be meaningful. Part of us loves them even more if they are not. Like sideways urinals self-referentially commenting on the power of art, if memes like the Dancing Baby and Johnny Johnny have any meaning at all, it is to comment on the power of the medium: the internet itself.

So if you like dank memes, maybe you will like some Dadaism as well. And, as a side note, while you’re in the art gallery, perhaps you can take a quick gander at other kinds of art. Don’t be surprised if you see other sides of ourselves reflected in parts of the past.

Gabi is a senior majoring in intercultural studies and English.