Why memes are funny

Ever-changing pop-culture comedy establishes a unique camaraderie among members of younger generations, who frequently create, share, and reference popular posts.

The Benign Violation Theory asserts that humor occurs when a situation is simultaneously both a violation of established norms —including moral, social, and linguistic standards— and harmless to those involved. For example, a purely benign scenario, such as a person descending a flight of stairs, is ordinary and therefore not funny.

A purely destructive situation is not funny; likewise, if the person were to plummet down the stairs and become injured, onlookers would be concerned rather than amused. However, if the individual fell down the stairs and was unhurt, the mistake, according to the theory, would be perceived as comical.

His analogy, while so unfortunately untimely, explains meme fitness in terms of virus: ideas worth passing on are contagious. The fittest, most contagious memes allow us to feel and relate to others. Without feeling exposed, we empathize. But memes are so refreshing because they remind us to take ourselves less seriously.

When an online audience is constantly watching and judging, they render our every action a performance — an evaluation of self.

So choosing what information to disclose and how we should look on our profiles is in itself an act. Who we so carefully portray is a character. We take off our masks to laugh at the fact that we can be a mess.

This critique through parody is no novelty. Just as memes unveil a more authentic emotional and human experience, Goldoni eliminated the use of masks and replaced stock characters with more realistic personalities.

And like our trove of recycled meme images, Goldoni created a fixed set of these personalities. The If It Fits, I Sits meme is great for anyone who likes to look at pictures of cats in vessels that can barely contain them—which is to say, it's great for everyone. Even the largest cats, as you can see, are subject to this rule. Classical art memes prove that some human behaviors transcend the borders of time.

Those venerated artists memorialized in museums across the world had a sense of humor too, as their meme-ready work shows. The meme is pretty self-explanatory: Whatever is distracting you—and shouldn't be—is "the other woman" in the photo. Sometimes the best way to make a meme is to come up with the most literal, obvious caption possible and then present it like you're brilliant. Case in point: This DJ Khaled meme, which will forever be a classic.

Fry , from the animated cult classic Futurama , is never sure what's right and what's wrong. But when the joke's this good, the answer is both are correct. Fathers, can you relate to this? It's a condescending Wonka meme template meme. Condescending Wonka is good to pull out whenever somebody is getting a little too big for their britches. It's also good to pull out whenever you want to see Gene Wilder smiling. There are no memes on the internet with the same long-term appeal as SpongeBob memes.

They are timeless and ageless, just like the guy who lives in a pineapple under the sea. The world needs a Grumpy Cat to be our mascot every Monday , because Garfield doesn't hate Mondays quite enough for the modern worker.

The Drunk Baby meme is a hilarious reminder that all kids are like tiny, drunk adults. And they don't even have to be embarrassed the next morning! Whenever something makes you mad, you can use the Arthur's Fist meme to properly express your emotions. Singer John Legend , who's been mocked by his own wife for his resemblance to the PBS character, even recreated this one.

Good old Karate Kyle loves his vengeance. Fortunately, he looks fairly incapable of exacting revenge of any caliber. Chemistry Cat is the science nerd equivalent of Business Cat. So if you're wanting to take your puns out of the office and into the lab, he's your kitty. Every time you get upset at Whole Foods because they don't have your favorite unsweetened iced yerba mate, another First World Problems meme is born.

Every light side has a dark side—even Kermit, as evidenced by this series of funny memes. Actual Insanity Wolf offers extremely violent advice.

But Baby Insanity Wolf does things so small that only the person who creates the meme has any idea it even happened. All jokes aside, Philosoraptor asks some pretty compelling questions. Maybe the dinosaurs would still be around if all of their big existential queries were answered. For something to become a meme, it must be replicable. This means many people, beyond the first person to do it, must be able to do it or recreate it, whether it's a real-life behavior or a digital file. The Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral on social media during the summer of , is an example of a meme that existed both off and online.

Its replicability is based on the minimal skill and resources needed to reproduce it, and that it came with a script and instructions to follow.

These factors made it easily replicable, which means it has the "copy fecundity" that Dawkins says is required of memes. These also enable ease of creative adaptation, which allows a meme to evolve and increase its staying power. For something to become a meme it must spread fairly quickly in order to take hold within a culture.

The video for Korean pop singer PSY's " Gangnam Style " song exemplifies how an internet meme can spread rapidly due to a combination of factors. In this case, the YouTube video was widely shared for a time it was the most viewed video on the site.

The creation of parody videos, reaction videos, and image memes based on the original made it take off. The video went viral within days of its release in Two years later, its virality was credited with "breaking" the YouTube counter, which hadn't been programmed to account for such high viewing numbers. Using Dawkins' criteria, it's clear there's a connection between copy-fidelity and fecundity, the speed at which something spreads. It's also clear that technological ability has a lot to do with both.

Dawkins asserted that memes have longevity, or staying power. If something spreads but doesn't take hold in a culture as a practice or an ongoing reference point, then it ceases to exist. In biological terms, it goes extinct.

The One Does Not Simply meme stands out as one that has had remarkable staying power, given that it was among the first internet memes to rise to popularity in the early s. Originating from dialogue in the film "Lord of the Rings," the One Does Not Simply meme has been copied, shared, and adapted countless times over nearly two decades.