Once upon a time, it was the norm to email or text your friends to see how they were doing. Now young people mainly send memes that reflect their feelings and condition. As you know, those humorous pictures or videos that are frequently shared, manipulated and imitated on the Internet. But where did they come from? My own introduction to the phenomenon was in 2012, when I stumbled upon my first online meme on a meme 9GAG.com.
An open world for me. What the BA in its heyday meant for words, 9GAG in its heyday was an early internet meme. The site was created in 2008 in Hong Kong. It consists of a huge collection of Internet memes that are either created or copied and pasted by the users themselves.
Memes are everywhere
In the early tens, 9GAG has grown into a gathering place for enthusiasts around the world. In Dutch secondary schools, young people often browse through several pictures for hours during class, and then discuss the best pictures with friends during the break.
Nowadays, memes can no longer be avoided. They are everywhere. Even online shopping giant Bol.com only advertises with memes Instagram. This is what a rubber duck from Gandalf says: “Stop passing. You must not pass.” This meme is inspired by the Lord of the Rings character’s famous phrase: “You won’t pass.” A popular text you’ve been reading regularly for ten years Face it in 9GAG.
When a fire destroyed the Royal Library of Alexandria, 9GAG inevitably suffered a similar fate. Only this time the attack came not from Caesar’s armies but from science. In 2014, linguist Albin Wagner published a devastating article Scientific article About the online platform. He concluded that the platform brought people around the world together, but that it did so through heterosexual masculine and sexual symbols and the exclusion of other groups.
Infinite scroll
I myself have seen my relationship with my first meme platform dwindle as messages increasingly trade their wits for pure hate. The obvious sexist, discriminatory and homophobic messages spoiled the fun for me. I wasn’t the only one who turned small Twitter poll.
9GAG was with Internet forums 4chan employment reddit The mother of the meme culture that has become dominant on Instagram and TikTok. This endless scrolling through pictures where you chuckle at one more than the other. That’s thanks to jokes that respond to current events, you don’t have to open a newspaper to know what’s going on in the world. But the glory days of 9GAG are over. The fact that he is still alive is mainly due to his following of his users on other social media. The platform has more than 57 million followers on Instagram. But the site itself has lost its luster.
Forty thousand books were lost in the fire of the Library of Alexandria during the siege of Caesar. With 9GAG, things are different: yesterday’s memes multiply endlessly.
