The pandemic has brought with it many things, but one thing we were shocked to see was the rise of the badly-made meme. Perhaps the abundance of these poorly made memes came from a design to spread our thoughts and messages faster than normal. More likely, they existed because people who had never memed before suddenly had time on their hands and didn’t know how to do it.
But these days, with the vast amount of technology at our fingertips, there is no excuse for a poorly made meme.
We got thinking about poorly made memes last summer, following a conversation we had with a handful of people about a particular fake meme that was going around that we had decided to use in the survey we conducted.
With Black Lives Matter protests in the news, this particular meme going around was asking the question about white slaves in America, as a nice little example of whataboutism. The image used in the meme was actually that of coal miners about to go down a mineshaft in Holland in the very early 1900s. There were so many things wrong with the meme:
- If we are talking about ‘white slaves’ from the 1500s and 1600s in America, they didn’t exactly have cameras back then, so why was no one questioning the photo?
- The meme was making reference to Indentured Servants, which is certainly not the same experience that kidnapped and transported Africans experienced
- Any rational thinking person with access to the internet (where else were they going to see the meme?) could do a reverse image lookup and would have found out where the photo originally came from, which as just mentioned, had absolutely nothing to do with America or slavery.
In our discussion, we tried to understand the mindset of those who were sharing the meme, especially as they seemed to want to be taken seriously about the subject on hand. One of them said, ‘I only shared this picture because I agreed with it. It’s easier to just share a meme that someone has shared. I don’t research a topic if I believe in it. And anyway, how would I even go about making my own meme?’
And this is when it hit us: Bad memes don’t spread just because of the knee-jerk reaction of the people who share them and don’t see that their message is wrong. Bad memes also spread because the people who share them don’t know how to make a meme!
Over the course of the last year, we’ve identified a few different styles of Amateur Meme.
1. The Photo of a Photo Meme
The example on the left is a photograph of an old email forward that appears to have been displayed on a computer screen, and the photo on the right is a mobile phone photo of a meme on Facebook that was displaying on another phone (notice how the screen of the phone displaying the meme has a crack on it). There are many more examples of this, but in all of theme, it seems as though the person who shared the meme was so desperate to share it that they couldn’t wait (or didn’t know how) to get the original image sent from one device to the other, so decided taking a photo of the other display was the quickest way.
2. The Screenshot Meme
In both of the above examples, the meme creator took a screenshot of something they found on their phone and shared it. While this is a very common practice of people who want to share something on Facebook that they saw on Twitter, we have seen more and more examples like the one on the right, where the person sharing the meme doesn’t appear to know how to crop a photo or doesn’t know how to save a photo to their device (always Android, in our experience), so finds the quickest way to share what they want is to take a screenshot and go. We particularly like the flag meme where the poster has really just flooded Facebook with their Image Search results.
3. The Microsoft Office Meme
This particular meme is a bit more rare than the others, possibly because more work has gone into them. They will be dressed up to look like official letters or an official report, but the information and data on them is always false or made up. This is a manipulative meme made by an amateur who doesn’t have the tools to make something look real, but has some rudimentary mastery of Microsoft Word. Typically, the logo they’ve copied off the internet has been squashed and misshapen in the creation and often the wording will read more like an Urban Legend meme than an official document. Besides, do you really believe that the Department of Veteran Affairs would send out an official letter with the text center-justified and ending with a message in ALLCAPS?
These are just some of the amateur examples that we’ve seen lately. There are many more out there, some of which you can see on our Survey.
So, you might be asking yourself, how do you make a good meme? There are so many out there, but do I have the skills to compete? I have funny ideas, too!
Well, fear not because you can make your own memes, and you might find that they aren’t as hard as you expect.
First, you need to assess what tools you have for the meme creation. Are you using a computer? Are you using a mobile device, like a tablet or phone?
If you’re using a computer, have a think about what software you might already have on hand. If you are an Office 365 user, you’ll have access to Powerpoint, which is a great resource for layering text over images. This could also be done using Word, but not with as much ease that Powerpoint gives you.
If you are a user of Adobe products, Photoshop would be the obvious choice, but we do realise that we are getting more into specialist territory here. You could use other desktop apps, some of which, like Meme Generator, is designed with the pure intention of allowing you to make good looking memes on your computer. And don’t forget that all major operating systems will come with their own built in image editor, like the classic program Paint, which will likely allow you to add text to your photos.
Most of us are probably using a mobile device these days, and maybe you don’t know where to begin. A quick look on the App Store shows that there are at least 20 free meme maker apps you could download right now and make use of. There are also websites like imgflip or kapwing which will allow you to upload your images and add text overlays.
So the next time a new meme pops up, you can join in the fun with everyone else. Or if there’s a point you want to get across, meme away! In a world filled with badly made or just divisive and manipulative memes, why not flood the world with your own brand of positivity and humour.
Just remember to always meme responsibly.
Don't Believe Everything That You Meme 