Memes, memes everywhere.
A meme on the internet, according to the wikipedia, is a concept that spreads via the internet. It is most commonly seen in a derivative work form such as pictures and videos etc., and it can easily go viral in the internet through popular discussion boards like 4chan and Reddit or sites like tumblr.
Well, it is hard to understand what a meme really is just by looking at the definition above. So let’s see an example.
The above image is a viral internet meme categorized as rage comic called “Watch out, we got a badass over here.” featuring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. This image was originated from a video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about how Sir Issac Newton invented calculus before his 26th birthday.
(Skip to 1:30 if you are too lazy to listen to it)
People on the internet found his expression so funny (and “epic”, according to what they said) that they drawn the comic of him, and then it started to go viral. People often use this image for mocking or being sarcastic to those boastful statements, pictures or comments.
This badass meme is actually a very good example of the digital remixes that we have learnt during the lecture. The creator of the “watch out, we got a badass over here” image created a new picture out of an existing video, people on the internet then used this image to put it in a different context, give it a new meaning and create new pictures. This kind of remix is “a process of altering or re-engineering aspects of an existing work” (Jones and Hafner 45).
This kind of creation can be considered as derivative work which is very popular nowadays as almost everyone is on the internet now. Certainly, this has provided a lot of fun to the internet users. And it also encourages and provokes creativity. Every one can make these kind of pictures, every one can be the artists, creators (whatever you want to call them) behind all these. The American legal scholar Lawrence Lassig has also pointed out more or less the same thing, he said that the barrier of publishing has been removed as the internet becomes popular, so that thousands and millions of “amateur” publishers can contribute to the creation. Also, people on the internet make these remixes because they love doing it, they are not asking for any monetary return or registering any copyright stuffs. Lassig also mentioned that those people who are involved in these kind of productions for the love of it, not asking for any monetary return. In most of the time, what the creators want is just making people laugh, discuss, or share the image to others.
Lassig proposed a system called “Creative Commons Licensing”, it basically is system to protect the creators in which it describes what intellectual property rights the creator wants to reserve. Copyright stuff. But the fact is, creators of internet memes, pictures or videos etc. seldom use this system or any other licensing system. They don’t care about copyright of their works. They mostly post their works on internet discussion boards or image sharing sites without specifying the terms of sharing because they want people to share it so that the work can go viral on the internet. The more people share their work the better. This again proved what I’ve mentioned above that the creators make these images because they love to do it.
Most of the time, the owners of the original contents are upset when the contents got remixed and spread around and some of them even see remixes as a kind of stealing. This maybe true in some ways. But just think about how many people are browsing the big forums like 4chan and reddit, MILLIONS, and I’m talking about people from all around the world. So having your work remixed and posted on these sites is actually is a very good publicity and a huge opportunity to promote yourself or your products. There is no such thing as bad publicity, all publicity is good publicity.
See how Neil deGrasse Tyson took this whole meme/remixes thing? He is cool with it. And it actually gave him tons of publicity that his book sales has gone up and became more famous.
Of course, not every one is as badass or as awesome as Neil deGrasse Tyson. There are a lot of people who are not happy about all the remixing stuff. They tried to stop this by proposing treaties called SOPA, ACTA to restrict a lot of actions on the internet. The internet users, however, are not chickens. They stood up against these treaties and raised huge concerns. It is impossible to say who is the winner since the treaties were signed by numerous big countries while the remixes on the internet are still going viral. But one thing is for sure, the internet will never surrender.
Further reading:
Curiouser and curiouser 
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