It's a meme meme world...

So about a year ago I was sharing a story with a teenager regarding something that had recently happened to me and it seemed like he was intently listening because afterwards he said, "Cool story bro", which lead me to believe that he was actually giving said story validation.

The next week I was surfing the web in my continual efforts to be "relevant" and I was lambasted when this phrase came up as word of the day on Urban Dictionary...

cool story bro

An appropriate response to a story that went nowhere and/or was completely uninteresting.
Example:

Person 1: "This one time me and my brother were eating sandwiches and he was like 'dude, I hate mustard' and I was like 'yeah.'"
Person 2: "Cool story bro."

 

I was a little shocked, and then I laughed, and then I was amazed that I had been punk'd by one of my own students because of my lack of meme knowledge.

 

Now some of you may be asking yourself, "What is a meme?"

 

According to Wikipedia it is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."

To sum that up in layman's terms, "just about any popular catch phrase or joke from the Internet".

With that said you can break things down into all sorts of sub-categories of memes.

There is the "Spoof on Pop Culture" family of memes. One of the best examples of this right now is Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Call Me Maybe", which plenty of people have ad-libbed on. Here is an example that I had made up before...

 

 

 

Another class is what I refer to as the "Constant" meme. There are lots of memes that people create off of a theme/character that have a constant feeling about them. Some of the most popular (including Socially Awkward Penguin, Bad Luck Brian, and First World Problems) can be found at http://www.quickmeme.com. What is great about this site is that it does not only let you see the latest renditions of these classic memes, but it also lets you create them, which can be a powerful tool in the online realm for youth ministry. Take a look at a couple of examples I have made...

 

 

 

 

There is one more grouping of memes that I can't really describe other than "Dumb". They are stupid, they don't try to make a point, and often they don't even make sense, but they circle around the Internet like a turd around the toilet bowl. Most of these are phenomenon on YouTube, but they don't necessarily have to be videos. A good example would be the video "Nyan Cat" which took up such popularity that it has spawned variations and remix videos that last anywhere from 10 to 100 hours. I would say that these almost have no purpose in using as ministry tool unless you are trying to keep middle schoolers with A.D.D. occupied while you are getting ready to start an event.

 

So there you have it! An introduction to the worlds of memes! It is by no means a comprehensive education, but its enough to get you started from no longer being left out of the joke to using them as stepping stones in your ministry. If you want to learn more about the nature of memes or the backgrounds of individual ones try visiting http://knowyourmeme.com/.