A few weeks ago I had to do a group photo shoot for a leadership project and we were judged on creativity amongst other qualities. One of the things that came to my mind was how we could use memes to enhance the creativity of our photos. Now most of us know memes all too well but a definition would be of essence so that we are all on the same page.
Meme: An image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (Wikipedia.)
Hate them or love them, I think memes are going to be around for a while. Every time there is a new event anywhere, one gets to see the memes sometimes even before you get the actual information. If you see a meme doing rounds on social media, you’ll be prompted to do your homework and find out what the underlying story is. At this point, I’m even tempted to think that meme’s should be incorporated in the school curriculum so as to encourage attentiveness and creativity and increase the involvement of students. Students may eventually want to do their homework if it means researching on the facts behind an educational meme. Besides, photographic memory is more reliable so if creative pictures are used to learn then maybe students can perform better. Even children in preparatory classes rely greatly on pictures for their learning process and if the laptops become a reality, then memes should definitely find their way to class.
Memes give an interesting twist to a story. They bring humor to pictures that would otherwise be dull and though you may not heartily laugh, at least they intrigue the mind. Sometimes they just spice up a story or keep you interested. We cannot deny that the Tujuane memes, for instance, arose great curiosity and popularized the story. And now that it has come up again, we should probably give the girl a break, right?
We did not end up using the memes due to time constraints but since no other group did, it would obviously have given us an edge. Well, memes are more likely to remain in our memories longer even if we outgrow the physical ones. They will probably remind us the story behind a photo years from now so you had better start the Ha-ha!’s, Aww!’s and lol’s when you see them. Or better yet, learn how to create them; make money out of them because they’re probably here to stay. And great ideas are made of these, right?
Here are some more interesting memes.
