Memes have become immensely popular in our lives in such a short period. Memes can be found all over the internet and most topics have memes themselves. They’re a major part of people’s lives. How did they influence our lives?

Memes are comical. Whoever is into memes is likely to take comical approaches to situations such as politics. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton used memes to swing votes in their favor. Memes have made people not take situations very seriously and they can even joke about Climate Change (there’s memes about it. Go ahead and google it. Don’t be surprised to see a huge load of them.).

There are other people who use memes to describe something as well. They’re used as stories and people can notice their ideas and use memes to express theirs as well. Memes can also lead to people believing that something exists.

For example, the Area 51 Raid was originally a joke, but people actually wanted to raid it and see dem aliens. They may also want to attend the raid because they saw memes about it and thought that they could participate as well. A youtuber called Elixir, who became well known for his Naruto run, has practiced Naruto running to catch aliens. Ever since the Area 51 memes became popular, the Naruto run memes did as well. Memes cause changes in behavior. If people see something funny, sometimes they do it. They dab to draw attention, draw someone t-posing because they saw someone else t-posing, etc.

They also go to the extent of claiming that they can’t live without memes. Memes became a new way of expressing ourselves and are a major part of entertainment. There are also some people who claim that memes are harmless.

For example, “However, other students argue that such memes do not inherently detract attention from the actual issue itself, meaning the events promoting Naruto runs across hurricanes do not make people perceive the hurricane as less destructive or deter evacuation plans. Founder and administrator of Carnegie Mellon Memes for Spicy Teens, Emily Newman, addresses that these memes were brought up among the other moderators of the meme group. Furthermore, she concluded that the spoof events were harmless because we “continue[d] to educate on the issue” that Westboro Baptist Church is a “hate group and serious” and the spoof pages did not clash with information about legitimate counterprotests.”- Madeline Kim. 

It is true that memes have made a huge influence in our lives, but they don’t always interfere with how we focus on issues.