Little miss iron deficiency. Mr. Sexually Confused. Little miss too obsessed with stranger things. Mr. Mommy’s problems. little miss seasonal depression Sounds familiar? If not, you’ve missed the Little Miss/Mr. Men’s meme wave, which probably makes you feel like the little miss spends a fair amount of time on social media.
The latest meme trend: People using cartoon characters popular with Gen Z and millennials to share personal anecdotes, ranging from a little self-deprecating (Mr. uses big words incorrectly) to hilariously too specific (Little Miss Buys journals for aesthetics but never writes in Them) to implications of deeper struggles (Mr. Emotionally Unavailable).
“I think some of these posts are serious ways of expressing very specific traumas or emotions that you probably can’t talk about in any other way,” said Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at CUNY Queens College and a self-identified “Mr. Overwhelmed .”
Memes started gaining traction on Twitter, Tumblr, and Discord around April, and their origin is often credited to @juulpuppy, an Instagram account known for sharing original memes.
But what is it about these memes, repurposed from the children’s book brand Mr. Men and Little Miss and more recently from the TV show, that made them so popular so quickly? It’s easy to customize, Cohen said. Classified as a “meme remix”, it uses a format that allows anyone with basic editing skills to turn the meme into something self-referential.
Advanced Photoshop skills aren’t required, said Yasemin Beykont, a Ph.D. student at Pennsylvania State University who researches new media and meme culture when she’s not being the “little miss procrastinator.” It’s simple to keep the cartoon character and change the text.
Remix memes have always been popular, but they emerged as major players in the digital zeitgeist during the pandemic, Beykont said. During that particularly murky era of unknowns, hall-of-fame screen-time numbers, and extreme amounts of time indoors on couches, the format became both a language of self-expression and a coping mechanism for connecting with others while feeling comfortable. they share vulnerabilities.
“All memes are a way of making sense [a way for people to deal with their emotions] one way or another,” Cohen said. “It’s about trying to take a bigger idea that’s a little less understandable and turn it into something replicable and shareable.”
This is actually what the original Little Miss and Mr. Men stories set out to accomplish. The cute, amorphous characters helped children process larger emotions and more abstract concepts and ideas. The first Mr. Man, Mr. Tickle, tried to answer the question, “What does a tickle look like?” Later characters took on charming versions of a variety of traits: Mr. Adventure, Little Miss Brave, Mr. Muddle, Little Miss Curious.
The nostalgia generated by the characters, especially for Gen Z and millennials who grew up during the show’s heyday, evokes memories of a simpler childhood (a common thread in popular remix memes, such as the recent “We need an American doll”). Girl who ___ ” trend).
Taking advantage of this comfort and shared memory, Cohen said, is one of the reasons people may use the meme to reconcile and vocalize their current conditions, some of which are quite sensitive and draw attention to topics that are taboo subjects of conversation in real life. .
“This is a sweet way to make the audience part of a larger conversation about a hyperspecific neurosis, if you will, or a divergence, that people might want someone to know in terms of vocabulary.”
When a meme like this goes viral, the digital format becomes so familiar and pervasive that we are less hesitant to share our own feelings and experiences online.
Looking at the big picture, the fact that people are successfully creating memes on original characters with modern vernacular, contextual, and hyperspecific references, Cohen said, shows two things: the uniqueness of this trend, and the power of remixing memes to reshape culture. : even established stories that have been around for half a century. “When we get to the point where we can tell a story with a meme, it’s above and beyond our culture,” he added.
How popular memes die
But this influence is a double-edged sword, wielded by many different online actors and according to a very specific timeline that all trending memes follow, Cohen said.
The initial explosion of the meme was followed by creators shifting to use more inclusive language and delve into niche discussions, many of them focused on mental health. The “Mx”. A title was added to disrupt the format’s gender binary, and the tags became more personal, self-deprecating and expressive of serious topics, an element of meme culture that originated in the early 2010s, Cohen said, And it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
But trendy memes always come across a triple term: radical and/or political trolls and remixes; popularity on Instagram, where the app’s format doesn’t allow the meme to grow and develop as much; and use the popular memes for commercial purposes.
Trolls can, and eventually do, latch onto any popular meme and use it on people: the longer a meme is trending, the more likely it is to be used to spread regressive messages and stereotypes. Instagram users have noted that as the trend continues, some of the Little Miss characters have been used to perpetuate jokes about dumb blondes and slut-shaming, while some Mr. Men memes have criticized men who they deviate from “traditionally” masculine behavior in dress. or expression.
And as of this week, Cohen said, he noted some of the earliest political uses of the meme: Little Miss believes in traditional marriage, Little Miss unvaccinated, Little Miss two genders, Little Miss voted for Trump twice.
These usages signal a cultural shift with a slippery slope, Cohen said, sometimes ending in the extremist genre. It has long been a far-right and extremist tactic of co-opting and appropriating existing popular symbols. The swastika, Valknot, and the “OK” hand gesture are widespread examples of culturally significant, or simply benign, symbols that have been looted and commandeered by radical groups.
This purpose is twofold, Cohen said: first, to “ride the cultural wave” as a vehicle to share its hateful messages, and second, to remove its non-hateful meaning from public consciousness. “Sometimes, not always, they think that owning a meme or destroying it is a good form of reactionary activism,” he added.
Pepe the Frog, a meme that gained popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s, was branded a hate symbol in the run-up to the 2016 election. An entire art aesthetic called fashwave renamed early nostalgia of the Internet and Microsoft Paint-chic with white supremacist hate speech, with “art right” rising in popularity in the years that followed.
“Radicalization occurs, and radicals exist, in the lowest capacity to understand anything,” Cohen said. “It’s when you can reduce something to such simplistic terms that there is no outside.”
Marketing is the other way memes start to die. Beykont, who has a background in research and marketing, has seen an increase in the use of popular memes in advertisements by companies. And once that happens, he said, users tend to drop them because they take on another meaning. Those who join the Little Miss/Mr. The men-for-business trend includes the UFC and Disney+ Canada, along with a host of small businesses and online businesses.
“It changes the meaning in a way that people don’t want to use those memes anymore,” he said. “It becomes less authentic.”
Mr. Doesn’t Post Memes says: We are probably at the beginning of the end of this Little Miss Meme trend.
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for editing this article.
Source: www.grid.news