#Engl295 WhenMemesGoDigital

[harshalipadmanabh-blog]

When Memes Go Digital; Reflection Piece

Shifman’s piece titled “when memes go digital” explores the concept of how memes are ‘shared’ in the new age digital culture and highlights the attributes that make a meme successful. Being a ‘netizen’, I am aware how quickly memes can become viral and often, the successful memes are usually the ones which have longevity, fecundity and copy fidelity. If we consider these 3 attributes, success is measured in accordance to visibility of the meme across digital platforms, the rate at which people can reproduce this (which in the web culture is extremely high) and lastly, the ability to make accurate copies of it. Although, in recent times we have seen that some viral memes have been reproduced as a ‘tweaked’ version of the original one and it could be because everyone wants to “participate.” This participatory culture symbolizes that individuals want to be a part of this “web community” and ‘repackaging’ a meme is one form of validation for the same. This concept is discussed in the reading and it also explains that memes are repackaged by mechanisms of mimicry (redoing) and remix (technology-based manipulation). Lastly, successful memes are shared at a significantly high rate in today’s internet-era, be it on social media or any other digital platforms. This ease of sharing memes has made a huge difference in the visibility factor of every meme, we see different versions of the same meme repeatedly and the next thing we know, that meme has become the next digital trend. So to conclude, it is fair to say that the internet has truly helped ‘digitalise’ the concept of memes and has created a new dimension for how they are shared and perceived.