RAnd0mc0re

Dadaism claims to be anti-art, yet is still considered an art movement. So, if randomcore/meme culture is a form of neo dadaism, what sort of things is it protesting? What are the flaws it wants to shed light on? Let’s take this picture:

which I believe is a variation of the bath bomb meme however it may be a variation of the aesthetic meme. Here is another example that I like a little less and I’ll explain why in a moment:

So, to explain, the bath bomb meme began as a reaction to mostly women posting pictures of their lush bath bombs, as seen here:

This is only one of many posts, mostly on twitter, about bath bombs that were posted in this format. From this, a meme was born where people in the same format would tweet several images of an object, or sometimes just the ending photo of the object in the tub:

So, within this meme the “artists” have decided to protest the frivolity of the bath bomb- an item which is very much a luxury rather than useful. So in this way, the posts protest the capitalist society that has created a culture in which we so proudly show off our material objects. These meme has also been subject to controversy, being called sexist. I would have to agree, it is very easy to make fun of things simply because they are associated with women and women feeling sure of themselves. Take this example of the meme:

But, let’s now refocus on this image:

1. aesthetic pepe

2. vaporwave pepe

3. Hey can I see your phone? Ya hold on a sec pepe

4. shrek pepe 

5. John Cena pepe

6. pie graph pepe

I touched upon memes earlier when discussing shitposting as memes are a common avenue to shitpost. However, memes deserve a posting of their own as they have had such an impact both on the internet and off. There are at least two things that should be inherent to a good meme, and when not adhered to make the meme a flop. 

Firstly, memes should be short lived. Here is the straight outta somewhere meme’s lifespan:

With the exception of perhaps pepe, which I’ll discuss more in a moment, memes get picked up quickly, transformed, and then quickly fade as another meme takes its place. When they last too long they become stale and people begin to turn on them (ex. people began to turn on the Leo Oscar meme which began spreading in January of 2012 and did not end until he finally received his Oscar in February of 2016.)

Secondly, memes need to be able to adapt. The post that starts a meme might not even actually be funny, but people see how they can apply it to other situations and in that they find the humor. For example, the idea that girls can’t be true fans of things without a show of extensive knowledge was applied to a common experience:

Lets quickly talk about pepe. Pepe began his journey as a reaction image, similar to the meme faces such as those classified as rage comics:

(notice how you cringe when you see this face? Thats because this face should have died long ago but people still cling to it. Reminders of it make people uncomfortable.)

His real start was with these two reactions: feels good man/feels bad man. This was most used on 4chan. Since then, he has had several memes within himself. Smug pepe:

angry pepe:

well meme’d:

and rare pepe:

It really has no value. I shouldn’t find it funny. Yet, something about it has me chuckling. Tumblr usually does this by reinterpreting memes:

In this example, I believe there are 3(?) different memes/meme style being used, the marge simpson meme, the four pic collage meme style that is often used on instagram, and then lastly intense quotes over a not intense photo meme. There are a lot of layers to this that you have to know the backstory of to fully appreciate the picture, but you can also enjoy it because it’s so ludicrous. 

Or this, which combines the bad ms paint meme, the meme where people talk about mental issues in a way that makes fun of how taboo a topic it is, and word art meme. 

This is not only true for pictures and videos, it’s also super relevant for text memes. 

These text post memes become super formulaic and a dimension of the meme is how it is quickly spread and slightly changed to topical issues. For instance here is another example of the marge meme being used in a different sense.

However, can the human aspect be taken out of the equation? meme generator bouts such as memelovingbot ? The creator of the bot puts new memes into the generator and has the algorithm smoosh them together in new ways. The results are sometimes hard to tell apart from human shitposting.