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Popcorn meta meme1/1/2024 This has been called an “ asynchronous, massively multi-person conversation.” Meme makers and sharers participate in this conversation to bond and maintain social cohesion through humor and wordplay-even shared with countless millions of complete strangers. The chaotic creativity of remixed internet memes and the new linguistic structures that rapidly evolve from them allow us to express certain states of mind and have others immediately get it and respond in kind. ![]() Since many already associate “eating popcorn” with entertainment, using the words in context can stand in for what might have been depicted wordlessly with images. From their literal meaning, the words “eats popcorn” can come to refer to observing drama or gossip. ![]() While we’ve always had conventions for describing our actions and reactions online linguistically, such as *eats popcorn*, psychologist Sam Glucksberg suggests that we can process literal meanings in the words that are present while simultaneously conveying figurative meanings by alluding to words that are absent. The more common reaction gifs can then later take on verbal forms that reference them without the need for the gif itself, such as “facepalm” and “side-eye.” Like emojis, the classic reaction gifs of split-second slices of life taken from popular culture have long been used as virtual gestures to signal other kinds of expressions-a kind of knowing, meta-emotional state that users can pass on just as they are or attach other, similar reactions to them. ( Even if people can get pretty creative, strings of emojis can be hard to process and decode.)īut how can we better express deeper or more complex states of emotions online? True, emojis and emoticons let us express less complicated feelings, but they are just one type of affective communication-perhaps a more limited kind. As Humphrey Bogart never said, we’ll always have emojis. There are, of course, other ways of conveying simple emotions and accompanying gestures online. Stagnant, unfashionable memes eventually go extinct. Idioms are purportedly well-worn clichés that usually can’t be altered without losing their meaning, but the remarkable thing about internet memes is that without constant mutation through wordplay, they become, ahem, meme-ingless-less successful linguistic fads. If bonding through figurative language sounds similar to the work of idioms, it’s because good old idioms and memes are somewhat related, in the way we cognitively process their words to get from their literal meaning to their figurative one. The remarkable thing about internet memes is that without constant mutation through wordplay, they become, ahem, meme-ingless.įor many internet users, one way to actively engage in a wider community is to play with words-through seizing the memes of production, as it were.
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