Art has a different meaning for everyone. I think internet memes are art because they are being created. The YouTube video shows how Tolstoy, Aristotle, and Warhol might agree with memes being art while Immanuel Kant and David Hume might disagree because they’re definition of art is something that is beautiful. Once again in my opinion memes are “beautiful” because they bring people together. A group of people will like certain memes over others because of the context it contains. For example the essay talks about the Grumpy Cat meme, cat-lovers will be more drawn to that meme, and also the different memes that were created with the cat. So in other words they take a certain image but include different captions and/or make different styles of that one image. Memes  can be created from traditional art not just trendy topics which makes possible creations infinite.

 I found an article that expressed what I thought perfectly about how memes are able to have many forms and are shared in many media spaces. Memes are good for art because they’re a form of expression, during difficult times many people cope using dark humor and memes give them that release. Memes are definitely good for communication as the article states “ordinary people could understand this new art, because it reflected their world, not some unrecognizable other.” Memes are sometimes even considered the street art of the Internet world which is why some might say it’s not art at all but memes can include real world problems and occurrences. 

After reading another article my opinion of memes being art just grew stronger because the article explained how much thought goes into making a meme.  Memes have to be ‘short and sweet’ because society has a short attention span. In other words we want new content every other hour. Memes also give us new points of views on current topics. To close up the article summary “memes are a universal form.”

The definition of meme will be different for every community. Memes are usually humorous and contain popular culture. The way the word meme came to be was very interesting but made so much sense and it’s crazy to think of the comparison it had to the word gene. Memes were not always understood which is unbelievable to a certain point because like I mentioned before people have different interests so not everyone will understand a meme that has to do with let’s say one particular movie scene.

Side note: The first and third meme I made by using Imgflip which I found the most helpful page to use. It allows you to insert a picture within the meme template that you want to use. The second meme I just took from google and the last “meme” represents the first viral meme which I downloaded from Giphy.

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