Are memes art?

When I heard this question, I was so surprised because I never really think that way. In fact, I took it in a sarcastic way. But from this video, I just learned that there was actually an exhibition of memes held in LA in 2017!! The organizer of the exhibition said in an interview that they did this because he wants to bring more legitimacy to memes as an art form.

Whenever I see memes, I ignore most of them because I do not find them funny or don’t really understand their meanings. Sometimes they make me laugh, and if I feel related to the memes, I might share them with my friends. That’s all about it. I never really pay attention to the fact that “Can Meme be art?”

However, while doing research for this assignment, I just realized that it’s a form of art indeed!  Although Google did not classify it as art yet. As per today’s internet culture, it’s a form of art, because memes contain stories through visual representation, just like an art piece. Another direct connection would be arts are often used as subjects for memes.

I consider memes are a good form of communication.  In this fast-moving world, nobody has time for reading a joke or post, but memes are really great in this case. They are really fun and eye-catchy.  I don’t think all memes are simply just a form of self-expression. Creating a good meme requires a great sense of humor as well as creativity. Otherwise, people don’t find those memes funny.

Besides that, memes are widely used as forms of storytelling and those are my personal favorite types of memes. Here one of the storytelling memes that I find funny:

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