Remixologist

I’m lucky enough to have a little sister who keeps me in the loop on modern memes, so I tried to pick one in a format I don’t see a lot. I like Hannibal Buress, too, so it’s an added bonus. Context: in a skit on The Eric Andre show, Hannibal Burees taste tests a few brands of pretzels before declaring, “pretzels is the same.”

Before I get into the technology aspect of what I did here, I think it’s important to touch on why I created this particular image and what I hoped to convey with it. Like a great deal many of you, I’m assuming, I find myself increasingly worried about the direction the world (and our country, specifically) is heading, and I often struggle to put my feelings to words. So that sort of trepidation about the state of things, and how much of current political rhetoric depends on rhetoric of former fascist movements has been on my mind a lot. Which is why I chose to bring some historical and modern propaganda into the meme format to underscore, with a sort of implied frustration, that fascism may change its colors a little, but essentially send the same message.

Personally, I’d really like to spend some time unpacking the images I used within the meme to foster discussion about the way white victimhood is portrayed so often in similar rhetorics, but I’m also not trying to get fired in my first semester of contracted teaching.

To make my meme, I downloaded a template from Google and then opened it through a program called Photopea. Free, pretty intuitive. From there, it was easy to edit additional images into the meme and sloppily alter the text. Boom, done. There’s not really much to be said for the technology, so instead I’ll elaborate a little on memes as a means of communication.

I love that it taps into a common culture on the internet, and I love that a series of familiar images can convey a particularly nuanced emotion or sentiment without words. It’s definitely a unique text in that regard, and I think a student’s ability to utilize one effectively often shows advanced discourse and showcases their knowledge well.

That being said, when you try to tackle complex issues (like I did), I think you run the risk of trivializing something important. So, teachers, do you have any advice on that? How do you go about asking students to engage with a meme-culture without undermining the content that’s being meme-d? Also — anyone have any research for staying abreast of new memes? Because a simple talk with my little sister has revealed that I have no idea what memes are like anymore.