This is a meme I found on Instagram a few days ago. The meaning of this graphic was oddly difficult for me to determine, mainly because there was so much to unpack here. However, upon giving it some thought, I would say the meaning behind this is the creator is making a joke (in poor taste), perhaps trying to bring humor to a sensitive and serious topic, by making this video link look like it is a video about “Crazy Vape Tricks” when in reality it was footage of 9/11. This footage contains visuals of smoke filling the sky, creating some tie between 9/11 and vaping strangely. I think the butt of the joke is that someone would click on that link expecting to see a video of vape tricks (which is another major issue taking over our society) and instead be viewing that footage.
Why someone would make a meme like this is beyond my comprehension, but clearly it got some laughs because at least 819 people liked this image. This makes me question the effect of a meme like this because one would think people wouldn’t find this sort of humor funny, but apparently lots of people do. In my mind, not only does this meme spread horrible misinformation about a terrible event in our nation’s history, but it touches on a negative aspect of our society in a non-informational way, making vaping the center of the joke. In other words, vaping shouldn’t be glorified in video or meme form, and making a joke about that event in particular in ill taste is just appalling in my opinion. It certainly affected me negatively, cause I didn’t enjoy seeing it on my feed, and it probably did the same for countless others.
That is the reason why I made this meme as an attempt to heal the wound created by the prior meme. I used a popular meme base-photo and just changed the message to be a positive one regarding the harmful meme. Sadly, I don’t think it would have as much of a viral quality, since the memes that go viral are unfortunately viral due to shock factor, and usually, it’s the mean memes that achieve that in my mind. Our cultural values need to change in that way, and people need to be more apt to appreciate thoughtful and positive content. In order to make this content spread faster then the negative stuff, I guess the best way to do it would be to have more news companies like “YES! Magazine”, so that way positive news and memes are in circulation more.
1 Response
Luke, your choice of memes very good and straight to the point you were trying to make. This harmful meme is enlightening a world tragedy , and making it a laughabke image which shouldnt be the case in this scenario becasue we need to mourn the lost lives of the loved ones and the first responders who gave there life, your rebuttal for a good meme is funny and good use.