Hey everyone! This week in class we are taking a look at memes. So I thought I’d share a few that relate to this website. Even though we were allowed to find existing memes that related to our websites, after searching, I found that a lot of them were offensive to the LGBTQ+ community so I decided to make my own.

This first meme I made obviously comes from SpongeBob’s iconic imagination scene. But instead of talking about imagination, I used it to describe the experience after listening to lesbian musician Hayley Kiyoko. In many of her songs, she sings openly about being an out lesbian woman and uses female pronouns in her music. After listening, you just feel very inspired and very connected to the lyrics she is singing. The words she sings about loving females makes me, and many of her fans, feel like SpongeBob and his rainbow above.

In this meme I made, it is revolved around openly gay pop singer Troye Sivan. We all know this iconic meme of this little girl that came out a few years ago but is still constantly used until this day. This meme is kind of just a funny little jab to those who don’t like Troye Sivan or his music, the girl is meaning to show a face of disgust to those people. This is what me and my dry sense of humor finds funny.

Out of all the memes I attempted to make, I think this one is my favorite. I think that it is the most current and up to date meme. Just a few months ago this meme surfaced and went viral for weeks. For this website, I used the captions comparing straight artists music to music of queer artists, and of course the me is gravitating towards music from queer artists. I just think its funny because a lot of the music we hear on the radio and listen to on a daily basis comes from straight people with heterosexual pronouns, so this kind of shows someone chasing the opposite. Again, funny to my dry sense of humor.

2. In the article “The Language of Internet Memes” by Patrick Davison, he writes “Once I say that a piece of media, or a meme, is replicable and malleable, I must specify what exactly is being copied or changed. A meme can be separated into components. I propose three: the manifestation, the behavior, and the ideal” (Davison 123). The ideals for the first meme is listening to music by Hayley Kiyoko can bring out the gay in you. The ideal of the second meme is that its crazy for people to not listen or like singer Troye Sivan. Lastly, the third memes ideal is that music by queer artists attracts me more than music from straight artists.

3. Since I made all my memes, well by made I mean added the texted to the original photo, I can talk about where they originated from. As I talked about it briefly above, the first meme is obviously from the hit show SpongeBob. That particular scene always made people laugh so they decided to make a meme out of it with including a funny relatable text underneath SpongeBob and the rainbow. The second meme was from a video of two parents telling their children that they are going to Disney World. The one girl is super excited, then they pan the camera over to the younger sibling and she just has that look of disgust and confusion on her face. The video went viral first, the people screen shotted that specific time where she makes the face and made a meme of it. The last meme I believe was a just a stock image that someone found and put text over. I don’t remember the original text because there have been so many variants of that meme, but they all are hilarious.

4. Going back to “The Language of Internet Memes” by Patrick Davison, speaking on manifestation, he writes “The manifestation of a meme is its observable, external phenomena. It is the set of objects created by the meme, the records of its existence. It indicates any arrangement of physical particles in time and space that are the direct result of the reality of the meme” (Davison 123). The manifestation of the first meme is a screen capture from a popular television show, SpongeBob. The manifestation of the second meme is from a home video that a family recorded that eventually went viral online. Lastly, the manifestation of the third meme is a stock image website.

5. I think these manifestations appeal to my target audience because one, many people know the show SpongeBob and enjoyed watching it as a kid, or if you are like me you still enjoy it now. The second memes manifestation appeals to my audience because it was super popular online, along with the third meme. My target audience is youths of the LGBTQ+ community. So I am sure that they are familiar with these memes, given how popular they were at some point.