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Directory of Academic Meme Pages

What would a critical, thoughtful, and educational approach to viral content look like, in practice? How could those principles be translated into a bottom-up, peer-learning culture?

I've compiled a list of academic meme pages on facebook that in some way represent this spirit. This list is by no means exhaustive, or even truly representative, it’s just the tip of the iceberg—there are lots of other subjectsand niches that aren’t yet covered here and I will be adding more as time goes on.

Academic “memes” have always existed in various corners of the internet, however, in the past few years there’s been a noticeable surge of meme content about history, philosophy, and the sciences being created and spread across social media. In tandem with the general rise of the meme-population, hundreds of thousands of students, hobbyists, as well as serious academics are congregating around these academically-oriented memepages and their porous community structures, which function as hubs for collaboration, community education, and memetic experimentation. What is unique about this community is how it hijacks popular mass-media, turns it on its head, and uses it to spread educational, thoughtful and memorable content.

Table of Contents

Historical Alliteration Meme Pages

HAMPs flourished/rose to prominence as a community in early 2015, some individual pages are still going strong but overall not as active as a community as they were in their heyday. They primarily post edgy ironic content on historical/political/cultural themes, and also interact/roleplay with each other or even do attacks/raids(often based on historical antagonisms/alliances, but sometimes it’s just random people getting into flamewars). Pages typically follow an alliterative naming scheme: “Adjective(s) Country-Name Memes”.

Some background on HAMPs: http://freyathefrypan.blogspot.com/2015/04/please-read-very-important-historical.html

Absurd Aztec memes 6k+ Admirable Argentinian Memes 2k+ Agonizing Armenian Memes 2k+ Amazing American Memes 7k+ Ancient Mask Memes 27k+ Ancient Woodblock Print Memes 12k+ Angelic Anglican Memes 6k+ Astonishing Antiquity Memes 5k+ Austere Apostle Memes 2k+ Avant-garde memes from China - 中文的 ㄇㄧˊㄇㄨˋ 70k+ Backbreaking Bulgarian Memes 300 Bizarre Byzantine Memes 29k+ Brilliant Brazilian Memes   4k+ Campestral Chinese Memes 2k+ Capitalist China Memes 2k+ Cantankerous Confucian Memes 3k+ Charismatic Chinese Memes 10k+ Comparative Indo-European Mythological Memes 1k+ Crazy Cool Celtic Memes 3k+ Cunning Carthaginian Memes 11k+ Cute Confederate Memes 6k+ Drunken Irish Memes 42k+ Edifying Etruscan Memes 3k+ Edgy Egyptian Memes 60k+ Energetic English Empire Memes 4k+ Germanic German Empire Memes 20k+ Glorious Andalusian Emirate memes 4k+ Glorious Gothic Memes 5k+ Godlike Georgian Memes 19k+ Greasy Greek memes 24k+ Haunting Hellenic Memes 1k+ Handy Yet Halal Memes 17k+ Heterodox Hunnic Memes 2k+ Inappropriate Italian Memes 5k+ Incautious Incan Memes (now Transandinian V a P o R W a V e 玻利維亜)  1k+ Jammin' Japanese Memes 11k+ Majestical Moroccan Memes 3k+ Marketable Mayan Memes 5k+ Marvelous Majapahit Empire Memes 7k+ Machiavellian Medieval Memes 4k+ Mischievous Mesopotamian Memes  1k+ Ostentatious Austro-Hungarian Memes 6k+ Outrageous Ottoman Memes 21k+ Perfidious Persian Memes 4k+ Polished Polish Memes 5k+ Powerful Portugal Memes 2k+ Prestigious Prussian Memes 33k+ Preposterous Persian Memes 1k+ Protestant Roman Empire 88 Radical Saracen memes 2k+ Rough Roman Memes 220k+ Rowdy Redcoat Memes 5k+ Saucy Spanish Empire Memes 3k+ Salacious Samurai Memes 2k+ Sensational Scythian Memes 3k+ Sensual Swedish Memes 3k+ Sly Seleucid Memes 2k+ Spicy Spanish memes 8k+ Spectacular Seleucid Memes 4k+ Stern Saxon Memes (has since been rebranded for advertising some band) Stoic Roman Memes 1k+ Tenacious Teutonic Memes 6k+ Tenacious Three Kingdoms Memes 400+ Tough Templar Memes 24k+ Turbulent Tuareg Memes 1k+ Violent Viking Memes 14k+ Voluptuous Venetian Memes 12k+ Whacky Western Memes 3k+ Wholesome Holy Roman Memes 4k+ World History Memes: Ironic Memes for Historical Teens 7k+ Zesty Zulu Memes 5k+

Arts

Classical Art Memes 4m+ Normie, not highly informative but very popular/generic humor page Adorno memes with Frankfurt School themes <1k Art Memes 12k+ Art Memes 2k+ Deconstructed Memes 3k+ Modern Art Memes 1k+ Articulated Architectural Memes 198 Alright Architecture Memes 174 Neo-Dadaist Memes 1k+ Minimalistic Memes 27k+

Philosophy

Outgrowth from HAMPs, often have alliterative naming scheme too

Altwoke dank accelerationist c u l t u r e j a m page 1k+ Anglosphere Ironically Studying Existentialist Philosophy in the 28k+ Analíticas Pop 3k+ Being Nihilist After Taking An Entry Level Philosophy Class, Also Sad Memes 37k+ Bollywood Existentialist Memes 60k+ Bork Into the Void 16k+Crunchy Continental Memes 45k+ Dialecticz still wilin 8k+ Ｄｉｓｔｕｒｂｉｎｇ_ｂｏｏｋｃｌｕｂ 190k+ The doggos are unhappy with your ceaseless petulance 48k+ The Death of the Admin 2k+ Ｅｓｏｔｅｒｉｃ // East 中文Memes 侍の死. 6k Esoteric Buddhist Memes 6k+Effluent Existentialist Memes For Esoteric, Excommunicated Monotremes 16k+ German Idealism Memes 4k+ Hyman's World 5k+ I love jouissance <1k Krumby Kierkegaard Memes 7k+ Material Memes and Dialectical Dreams 42k+ Memes Formosos de Formal 3k+ Millions of Dead Philosophers <1k Monstrous Metaphysics Memes 60k+

Also has a discord channel for educational discussion and banter Non-existent existentialist memes 500k+ Nihilist Memes 1.6m+ Normie, not highly informative ironic nihilism page Phantastic Philosophy Memes 4k+ Ph.D. in psychoanalytical and philosophical shitposting 48k+ Philosophy Memes for Fantastic Philistines 56k+ Philosophical theses you have never seen because they're extremely weak 9k+ The Philosopher's Meme 200k+ Post-postmodern memes for symbolically castrated teens <1k Postmodern Philosophy Memes 3k+

Prolegomemes 600+ R E A D Y T O H A N D memes for T H R O W N teens 2k+ Rememe Dankartes 18k+ Rigid Philosophical Memes 13k+ Self-Referential Memes for Strangely Loopy Teens 371 Spooky Stirner Memes 7k+ Stale memes for normie has-beens 98k+ Structuralist memes for socially determined teens 72 Texts From Your Existentialist 101k+ T H E O R Y is my ""praxis"" 37k+

Also has a discussion group:Dialectical dialecticzposting for big others and negated absolutes 4k+ The Same Portrait of Max Stirner Every Day 4k+ Trolley problem memes 197k+

Also has a discussion group Transgressive Memes for Apocalyptic Teens <1k Undecidable memes for indiscernible teens 1k+ Welcome to the desert of the meme 8k+ Well-typed Constructivist Memes 1k+ Zlazloj Zlizlek 149k+

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Educational Potential of Memes

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Educational Meme Techniques

In academically-inclined online communities, memes are a type of grassroots edutainment made by learners and hobbyists to pass around between each other and enjoy. What makes them very potent as tools for learning is that they require the maker to distill complicated concepts into simple visual formats. Also, their propensity for comedy makes them accessible and great for remembering things. Memes combine humor with explanatory power, and when used thoughtfully, creatively, and critically, they have a lot to teach us. 

However, since they rely on common conventions of humor and often hijack or build upon pre-existing jokes, they are actually quite easy to make -- you don’t need to be an expert comedian or a spontaneously witty person to make them, if you take some time to understand how they are made and follow some simple guidelines.

Memes are a visual medium of communication, and the way they convey meaning can be studied from a graphic-design framework. Obviously though, given that they are meant to be amusing rather than aesthetic, they operate by slightly different principles than regular design. Nevertheless, some principles are universal -- in order to be informative and understood, good memes need to communicate clearly.

I’ll go over 3 relatively simple techniques that focus on creating educational memes that are both funny and informative. 

But first, a small note on humor...

Humor

...and maybe a small caveat:

Caveat

At this point, you might be skeptical of whether or not silly images on the internet can be all that informative. Let me explain my thoughts on this:

A meme is not a textbook. A meme cannot substitute a “real” education, and it cannot ever be a substitute for actually reading the material. You cannot get a bachelor’s degree only from browsing memes. And it’s unreasonable to expect these things from such a concise format in the first place.

However, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be helpful supplements to learning.

I’ll be writing more about the educational potential of memes [ here ]

And now, onto the techniques:

Analogy

Comparison

Similar structure

Good for explanations

Analogies work by comparing two things. If you get the first comparison, you get the second one by proxy. Memes already often take the form of humorous comparison or juxtaposition anyway, so making them into educational analogies is really simple. For example, this one uses spongebob to illustrate the ideas of two famous political philosophers. The relationship between the two characters embodies the differences between the political thinkers. Of course, this is a somewhat simplistic comparison, yet it has staying potential because it is a memorable image. 

Dissonance

(here is a static version for reference) -->

Repetition with Variation

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the very first meme being made

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Remix Process - Learning Process

The power of memes lies in the way they lend themselves to remix and elaboration. Often, the process of creation is non-linear and unplanned -- what comes off as a cohesive, integrated whole can actually be an idea scraped together by multiple independently-acting individuals, without any deliberate coordination. It also doesn’t have to start out in all its ultimate complexity: even the most complicated, multi-part meme sometimes starts out with just a simple funny image, which then experiences several iterations and additions until it gets to its “final” stage (if such a finality exists in the grand scheme of memes). 

I would like to illustrate this process using one of the images from the exhibition. The above image started out with only the middle part, stuck together as a simple image + caption unit without any additional plans for its future by its initial author: 

This image is pretty amusing in and of itself due to the comically thoughtful expression of the person in the picture, and the vaguely serious present-progressive caption. However, its vagueness begs for it to be applied as a contrast to something else.

Thus, another participant found that there were other images of the same person, and related words that could be added to it. They added a picture to either side to form a sequence, and now the middle portion is not simply a captioned image, but it functions as a dividing line, delineating an activity or process happening between the “before” and “after” on either side. This is not the same as simply tacking on an image at the end, but rather it reincorporates and re-contextualizes the original into a new and greater whole.  

Afterwards, they added a title caption, which again re-contextualized the entire set. 

Before the title caption, the set of three were clearly related, but their relationship was ambiguous -- what is the actual intention of the image? Is it contrasting three different activities? Is it presenting a chronological sequence of events? Is it commenting or criticizing someone or something or is it simply describing it? The caption clarifies the relationship between the images and unifies the assembled parts into an integrated whole.

In order to document the process real-time, I added a note explaining the development of the image (also someone appreciated the meme and added a smiley face).

the final product:

Here is an abstracted diagram of the development process of this meme:

This graphic illustrates how I think people experience the learning process -- it’s not simply tacking on new information to a list of things you know, but constantly re-contextualizing the previous information in light of the new, and integrating it into a cohesive, holistic understanding. Additionally, documenting the development is important in order to track your own progress, as well as to leave a trail of crumbs for others to follow. 

The learning process meme was made “collaboratively” by two people, yet it did not require them to be present at the same time, nor to communicate any other information than what was given in the meme. As a part of the exhibition, it then became available for everyone to view. These simultaneous factors of collaborative creation + public display facilitate learning on multiple levels -- not just the initial person making it, but the remixers, later contributors, commenters and everyone who views the image afterwards are hence involved in a public conversation about learning, with the opportunity to contribute their own opinions. 

As a final point, I’d like to discuss the message of the image itself. It is markedly different from the typical conception of learning as memorization or processing and retaining information. It describes an active and participatory activity of creation and experimentation. The creation of the image itself embodies the principles it espouses--learning through process, refining through trial and error, collaboratively exploring an unknown, and finally, a synthesis of multiple people’s ideas into one coherent understanding, all within the public eye where it can be seen, shared and experienced by a community of learners. 

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How it Works

For the past few months, I’ve been researching how digital communication has transformed the practices, habits, and structures of communities of learning. With this installation, I am exploring how these insights can be translated back into physical learning environments. 

The mechanics of the installation are simple--requiring no digital skills or extensive background knowledge--so that anyone can participate with a minimal learning curve. The tools and techniques are those of collage, but with a twist: participants are encouraged to tweak and remix each other’s work and not to view the composition as a stable visual. The changes and development of the visuals are documented with photos as well as explanatory notes.