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I'm sorry meme man


Today I have a confession to make. I was mean to a person who really did not deserve it. At the time I didn’t realize what I was doing or the effect it had on him. I may have even thought I was right to bully him. Looking back now, however, I see that I was just being a dick for no reason. I know I wasn’t the only person bullying this man, because I jumped on a bullying-bandwagon. Recent events would lead me to believe I’m not the only person who is looking back, horrified at their actions.
To explain how this all started, first I have to talk about memes. You may have seen a meme. It’s often a funny image with a relatable caption, but especially in recent years memes reached far beyond this specific example. Memes have become obtuse, abstract, and even surreal. They are no longer about being relatable to the everyday human experience. Typically the only way to “get” this kind of meme is if you were there at the beginning. In other words, memes have become a big, stupid inside joke.
Now the man in question enters the picture: a youtube channel known as “Behind the Meme.” His goal was to explain confusing memes to outsiders. A commonly held belief among hardcore memers is that analyzing a meme in this way, especially on a public forum like youtube, ruins the meme. This belief led these hardcore memers to give him flak. It was probably joking at first, but as it picked up steam it became relentless. People would flock from meme pages brigade his videos with dislikes (this is where I jumped on board) and comments telling him to delete his channel.
After an unexplained five month disappearance, he has come back to youtube with a series of vlogs. I haven’t watched all of them, but from what I have seen he is drinking heavily, he is sad, and he is lonely. He said he loves memes and he loves making videos, so the success of his youtube channel was a dream come true. The bullying drove him away from doing what he liked doing so much.
            All this man wanted to do was make videos about memes, but we couldn’t allow it. We were shitty to him over something completely trivial, and it is about to drive him off the edge. I didn’t think about what I was doing because everyone else was doing it. I jumped on board with the bullying without thinking, just like I jumped on board with every other meme.

Comments

  1. Elizabeth TOctober 1, 2018 at 2:36 PM

    This is actually really interesting. I will admit to not really understanding memes, and sometimes being confused about why people get so worked up over them, but it's interesting to hear you describe this almost elitist culture that pushed things this far over something that, in the end, doesn't actually matter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. samOctober 2, 2018 at 11:53 AM

    Throwback to Mr Butler and his mob mentality thing. it also shows how much people love to be all gate keeping and elitist about things they feel like they discovered on their own.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CurtisOctober 2, 2018 at 12:22 PM

    As a person who also loves memes, I am saddened to truly hear about the meme man. I also don't believe he was doing anything innately wrong to deserve the abuse he was getting from other memers! Jumping on a bandwagon is one thing, but jumping on a bandwagon essentially running over someone isn't very good. I'm happy to see you see the wrong of what you had done in the past.

    ReplyDelete
  4. WillOctober 3, 2018 at 6:48 PM

    I absolutely despise mob mentality, and I've seen hate bandwagons gain steam and destroy tons of people online. Even then, I find it incredibly difficult to resist becoming someone "in the mob". In this case, there were hundreds if not thousands of "exposed" type videos on this guy (many of which were very popular), along with all of the hate comments/dislikes on his channel as you mentioned. When you idly watch video after video and comment after comment with the exact same viewpoint, you're subconsciously being persuaded that that opinion is correct even if you disagreed with it to begin with. In this case, the only way to stop the hate bandwagon was to have many popular videos supporting the guy, but there's no way that would have happened sadly.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Emi L.October 5, 2018 at 1:44 PM

    It's times like these when a person wishes they could have the equivalence of thousands of people. Then you could just click a like button and it would be worth thousands of likes, which would encourage the meme man. Unfortunately, we are all just one person and cannot reverse the damage of a crowd alone.

    ReplyDelete

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