How Memes Communicate Humor

Wait for a MEMEit! What’s going on in the world?

We have talked about where memes came from, why they work, and how they are shared. Now this week, I want to take it a step further and working on where specific memes come from, how recent news stories help attribute to the meme community. Also, this week I am going to break down the humorous aspect of this meme and what this all means.

The Meme of the Week

This week I will be focusing on the memes that stem from Hurricane Florence. The reason I selected this news story is that although this storm caused horrible damage, and took lives, we are still able to create memes and make jokes of what otherwise may be known as a tragic event.

These memes for Meme of the Week specifically look at the memes that were pre-Florence specifically. Before Florence struck, we knew that she was going to be dangerous and was striking fear into us, and yet here we are making jokes of the danger.

Is this really funny? Yeah, I guess so…

Credit: X

In this first example it a play on the name Florence, this features Florence from Florence and the Machine, a famous musician reciting her most renowned song Dog Days Are Over. In this meme, we are seeing that Florence is coming, and we need to run away from her because there’s something massive coming. However, as scary as Hurricane Florence was predicted to be we were still laughing at this storm.

Now, Shenfield (2013) explains that there are different forms of humor: playfulness, incongruity, and superiority. With each different types of humor come different interpretations and reactions to the memes being shared. In this first example, we are seeing the content creator utilize playfulness primarily. In which the meme is intended to be humorous which is evident by the use of play on words of the singer’s name and the hurricane’s. Also, this has some depth and has “a multilayered perception of social situations” (Shenfield, 2013, p. 79). This is showing the intensity because it is one making fun of the name, but also saying how people should evacuate from the storm’s path as quickly as possible for safety.

Credit: X

The second example of the Hurricane Florence meme set is this one of Patrick Starr from SpongeBob SquarePants and a Facebook event saying that we should merely push the hurricane somewhere else. This is based off a SpongeBob episode where Patrick suggests the residents of Bikini Bottom take the town and push it somewhere else to avoid dangers lurking around them. This meme is saying that we can stop the hurricane and its damage jokingly if we join together and push it away. The meme is stating that we can prevent the damage and making light of how strong the storm actually will be.

Once again, I believe that playfulness is the principal use of humor in this example. We see this depth of the meme if you think about how there are some who underplayed the storm before it hit land. Some believed that the storm would not be as severe as it was forecasted to be, hence why pet owners left their pets or some refusing to evacuate. On a lighter note, it is utilizing a childhood icon (for most) and playing with it. Also, it is ironic in the sense that it is not the event itself being shared, but the image of the event.

Credit: X

The final example of pre-Hurricane Florence memes I want to discuss this week is one also utilizing another popular meme format. So, is this meme-ception? I vote yes!!! The third example is based on the Nike campaign which went viral with former QB Colin Kaepernick. This example is referencing the dangers predicted when Florence hit land and uses the tagline from the campaign referencing how Kaepernick believed in something that ruined his career (equality and bringing awareness of police brutality).

This final example I believe still utilizes humor as the other, it is timely in its reference and has consumers chuckling in response to something that in the end took multiple lives. Also, this really reaches the numerous layers aspect in the sense that the campaign is representing some massive and vital issues right now.

Wrap It Up!

So, this week I talked about how there can be different types of humor memes utilize in order to elicit reactions from consumers. In this week's Meme of the Week, I focused on pre-Hurricane Florence memes and what people were creating and sharing before the storm hit, and how they typically used playfulness. I truly do believe this was used to help cope with the fact a major storm was hitting and we knew that there was going to be serious damage from it. I do this is it ironic in how we utilize playful humor to perhaps hide behind the severity of events to make us feel better, even if it is just for a little bit. 

References: 

Shifman, Limor (2013) Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT 

     Press. ISBN: 9780262525435