The Internet And The Rise Of The Humorous Image!
The photograph has a power over us that we seldom reflect on. Iconic photographs have taken on such profound meaning in the collective conscience from the U.S. sailor kissing a nurse at the end of World War II to the photograph of Martin Luther King Jr.’s peers pointing in the direction his shooter fled. With the proliferation of digital cameras, online stock imagery and vast repositories of digital images online, modern photography has stopped meaning quite as much. As a result, the Internet has pioneered the phenomenon of photo manipulation for humor.
The current generation of computer users does not seem content with the photograph and the implicit thousand words it is supposedly worth. As a result, users have created entire communities centered on humorous manipulations of photographs where users add words to an image as a punch line of sorts.
The evolution of the humorous photo manipulation started with lolcats. Lolcats – derived from the texting abbreviation for “Laughing Out Loud” and the common name for felines – became an underground subculture creation in 2005. At that time, stock images of cats were shared between friends with humorous or supportive text added to them. In 2006 when 4chan.org and Something Awful began promoting images of lolcats. Since then, the lolcat has crossed into the mainstream. Thousands of individuals shared pictures with grammatically incorrect but funny phrases that either refer to the cat’s actions in the photograph or represent dialogue the cat might speak. I Can Has Cheezburger? is a site that remains active today with daily, fresh lolcats. As a phenomenon, lolcats remains one of the most enduring.
But lolcats has evolved as the market for cat-based humor moves toward exhaustion. The lolcats have given rise to the Internet meme phenomenon. Internet memes are like lolcats in that they feature photographs with humorous text. Internet memes differ in that their subjects are more than just cats. Instead, pop culture imagery both present (like Rebecca Black) and past (Richard Nixon) is combined with text to make jokes. These photo manipulation “strips” range from one-panel jokes to several panel strips with a punch line. Because geek culture dominates the Internet meme phenomenon, many use more obscure references than the mainstream lolcats. So, for example, Admiral Ackbar and his catchphrase “It’s a trap!” is the subject of many Internet memes. Those who have not seen Return Of The Jedi many, many times are unlikely to get the full weight of the reference when it arrives as the punch line to many an Internet meme.
Internet meme’s and other photo manipulation forms of humor are seeing growth on the Internet. The communities preoccupied with Internet memes are interested in creating and sharing humor, so they remain free sites. If you have had a joke, but lack the artistic talent to draw well, Internet memes offer a possible avenue for you to creatively express yourself!
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