Looks like even if you aren’t already in love with pop art, at the end of this semester you’ll be in madly love with it. CT 101 is making me realize that half of the time me and my friends are laughing together online, are by sharing memes, gifs from the internet.

Host from The PBS Idea Channel Mike Rugnetta emphasized that anyone around the world can stay communicated by creating and sharing memes on the internet. Isn’t that awesome? According to this show, British historian R.G Collingwood said that, “Internet memes are the performance of emotion, and not it’s true expression, making meme makers ranters and ravers and not actual artists”. I halfway agree with his perception. According to what I perceive on the internet everyday, meme makers are the different kind of artists who like to share not only their emotions but also other sentiments as well using a funny tone, a humorous tone. This particular group of people tend to express themselves inserting texts through the image of an angry teacher, happy mom, annoying cat, or a joker. 

In the article “Are Memes The New Art Form of The 21st Century?” by Em Mampusti, the same idea was shared. For example, there are thousands of meme creators on the internet like Chloe Caparas who share important societal messages by simply making a meme using their own humor. Personally I think, serious issues can be discussed and brought upon without making it seem so serious. This method actually helps others to realize the depth of the issue more. For example, I found the meme below on the internet and it felt so relatable to me instantly.

What can I say.. I am a positive person and I like to start my day with a motivated mind. Then as always ⊂Life happens!⊃ Everything starts to feel so overwhelming that I’ll literally be dragging myself to complete my tasks. 🙂 

I loved learning about the painter and meme artist Lauren Kaelin on the article “Are memes the pop culture art of our era?” by Kate Knibbs. She’s the living proof that memes can be a form of self-expression. She loves to make memes following her own unique style. She’s so cool and she loves what she does! One of her extraordinary projects is the “Benjamemes” project. She sees a meme from her vision and that turns it into something extraordinary. She worked on a picture of a monkey on which she touched every details of it. It’s amazing how she gives her own work a value by turning it into something how she would like to see it. Everything she makes is unique as she said, “A successful meme is by definition reproducible, shareable, and recognizable. Benjamemes creates an aura where none previously existed”. Her style, perception, ability to see though details makes her memes different from the original. 

Lauren Kaelin isn’t the only person showing her passion, perception by creating memes. There are so many meme artists, gif artists all over the internet who feel comfortable sharing their unique thoughts by creating and sharing memes. On the article “Are Memes The New Art Form of The 21st Century?” by Em Mampusti, we learn about a Singaporean meme maker named Yu Tong Yap. She shared that she has to think of new ideas to make a meme in order to create an impactful message. I think this way someone’s creativity level boosts up as well. Self-expression and creativity work really well together in terms of making memes, gifs. You are making a simple still from a movie into something that you have imagined inside your mind. You are using that image to create something very thoughtful and useful for others.

This is another meme I recently found on Facebook and had to share with my friends. Not only me, this meme is relatable to almost every student out there. As much as we love studying what we chose to study, at times we feel overwhelmed by piles of assignments and want to give up. But I swear, this is not what I am looking like as I am doing this assignment. Honestly, even an hour ago I was stressing out by taking notes on what is required from this particular assignment (the video, the article, the article that I found). But again that’s me, stressing over everything. It was fun creating my first meme ever. And it’s fun doing this assignment, now when every information is sorted. 

The video and articles taught me facts that I never thought existed. We always think people do not think deeply about art as they do about science. We always think people are only serious about serious things like impeaching Trump and “Why there aren’t enough paper towels left on this supermarket?”. Art is a serious matter and many people live by being the cool artists that they are.  So many laughs wouldn’t take place if memes were not made and shared. The article enlightened me with the knowledge that there are passionate and courageous people out there who follow their hearts and never stop believing in the power of a creative meme. Projects like “Benjamemes”, studio artists displaying their arts, etc are brave steps towards a modern, meme-giphy-generated generation to me. On the video, Mike Rugnetta shared quotes from famous historians. We get to know what people like Leo Tolstoy thought about art.

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