Monday, February 12, 2018

who needs JOBS when u have SELFIES and MEMES, said every millennial ever

i'd be lying if i said i wasn't excited for this week's class. last class proved to be engaging, both in conversation and creation, as we explored memes. tomorrow, we get to take on the selfie culture. the real reason i'm looking forward to the discussion is because this is the culture my peers have created with the technology we've been given - i want to hear what people have to say about these forms of expression in a more academic sense. in the meantime, i'll give you my take on it -

memes. truly, they're works of art - and, at times, i'd argue they are some of the most pure forms of human connection we have today. maybe you think i'm over-exaggerating, but what's a better way to try and connect with someone than having a funny picture with an overly relatable  caption on it? especially if said picture features, say, an adorable kitten. needless to say, memes are something are typically accessible (if one has internet / smartphone), and something that everyone can make and contribute to the world. however, like we said before, you do need to understand context when meme-making. that is, you need context of human self-awareness, the world around you, and context of the meme itself.


with that being said, i'm gonna dump some memes i made for our wonderful class (including the above image). all were for the self-aware memes for the Makes we did.





i can't say i have a personal favorite meme, but i'll use some drag race ones to get some more #NetNarr memes out there (you're welcome.)


(just some light shade :P i'm only jokin')



anyways, i'll stop with the memes (for now). moving on to the next hot topic - selfies.

i'll keep my piece on selfies short, because that conversation can be a bottomless barrel. what i didn't like was that none of the articles addressed how selfie culture is affecting everyone, including guys. somehow, all the journalists i guess forgot that men like to take pictures of themselves and are just as "vain" that they think teenager girls all.

can selfies be empowering? of course they can be, but it shouldn't be judged on the fact if you're a Marine or a 13-year-old girl. if it's empowering to the individual (subjectively), then let them take the pictures and post them online. you don't know if the 13 year old is posting it because she feels nice in a picture and wants to share it (not for validation, but for her own personal terms) - hell, maybe the Marine is the one posting the picture for validation of  "doing something great" above others. the basic gist of this is we don't know why people are posting. sure, of course, people post because they're dependent on getting likes and hearts and all that from their peers in an effort to perform their most perfect life on social media. that, for sure, is a big problem - but only the individual can come to terms with that. only they can reach a level of self-awareness where they can realize what is dictating them to share so much of themselves online. but hey, it's not your life, so stop commenting on it. also, be fair - don't just blame selfie culture on young girls. move the conversation to how it also affects young boys, too, if you're so keen on talking about it.

some people like taking selfies because it's an expression of art - and why not? people from 15th century europe had grand paintings of themselves created, and we look back and consider it "art." so why not a picture? again, art itself is a broad and subjective concept - people will like & dislike it, you can't please everyone, but screw `em. in the spirit of this week's class, i took some selfies as well. i don't enjoy taking pictures of just myself (i like it when other people in my pictures! but hey, that's my own personal and mental struggle of sorts). if i do share pictures of just myself, it's because i feel very good about myself, & that there's an aesthetic to the picture. i either like my makeup, the lighting, or a combination of other artistic elements that seem to present themselves in the pictures. for example, theses selfies i took for this particular blog post are an expression of experimenting with this fake nose ring and darker, grungier makeup. i enjoyed taking them, but it took quite a lot of shots! i hate smiling for pictures, but i love looking like a moody bitch. i had two i really liked, so i put them together in GIMP, flipped one of them, and created "art." enjoy, yall.


final words: let people be people!!! life is short, make some memes, take some pictures, and just try to be nice to others.

1 comment:

  1. Your final statement says it all plain and simple "let people be people!!! life is short, make some memes, take some pictures, and just try to be nice to others."

    I so appreciate your meme explosion here, you definitely speak and read the lingo so well. I am always curious what it means to be "in" in the meaning of the memes, how they become understand, or maybe morph in understanding as they replicate. You hit many I am not familiar with, but can almost infer the "memeness"

    Definitely good points on the criticism of selfies being focused on young women (though that was the skew on the data in the selfiecity project), but absolutely it misses much by making that the typical use case.

    And the story behind your selfie is really helpful, and the image is very evocative, it does suggest a story we are left to infer, am thinking this or something like it gets rolled into the SelfieUnselfie for this week.

    Yes, there must me a meme for the teacher late in commenting...

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