So, there’s a meme page on Facebook called Epic Texts. Its legacy points towards the idea of having shared predominantly funny texts as memes, but has since then branched out to include regular, run-of-the-mill memes too.
The page was created just before the pandemic hit in February, 2020, and has since then accumulated a following of 54,000 people.
If you dive deeper into the internet, you can find opinions on various forum platforms like Reddit and Quora of folks debating whether memes still have it in them.
Face value, that’s understandable. Memes aren’t for everyone, and hence there will be people who never find it funny. Then there are others who think they have overstayed their welcome, or have run their course on the internet.
One internaut pointed out that memes haven’t been funny to them ever since ca. 2018. In their post, they mentioned the likes of Ugandan knuckles, VR chat, DDLC, Logan Paul, "Pictures preceding unfortunate events," Spaget and more, which were “peak”, but nothing significant thereafter.
For others, memes were never really funny. One such netizen asked the question as to why and one Quorian pointed out that memes don’t have to be inherently that. They are obnoxious, rude or antagonistic, but not really funny.
And since it’s a form of communication for some, it doesn’t have to be funny all the time. Especially with topics that are hard to verbalize, like mental health or just pure sadness.
There are also folks, however, who have always loved memes. Even if they are now past their expiration date.
One Redditor vented about how folks are quick to declare a meme dead and by proxy they assume it’s no longer funny. That’s not how humor works, nor is it based on objectivism. In the words of this one Redditor, “There's a video that actually explains why dead memes are still around."
All jokes aside, the discussion continued elaborating what it really means for a meme to be dead. It’s not necessarily how long they lived, but rather how often people used and abused it. And since everyone experiences meme frequencies differently, everyone thus thinks certain memes are dead or not. And also funny or not.
