Meme Deconstruction

In our rapidly and constantly developing world everything is changing, gaining new forms and meaning. Starting from the second half of the 20th century, when society became a prisoner of postmodernism, deconstruction turned into a necessity, the only opportunity not to tire of the endlessly circulating flows of information which loses its relevance and starts bothering us in days or even hours. The permanent rethinking, mocking, and hunting for new meaning is a vent of our society of artists-consumers living in the conditions of permanent revisionism. Since all phenomena of culture are subject to deconstruction, such elemental force as memes, is no exception.

In fact, meme deconstruction is no different from deconstruction in art and in a general sense implies a process of transferring a composition or its part into a new context or environment, where all the contradictions arise, and thus the phenomenon acquires a new meaning, moving away from previous ideas. There are two kinds of deconstruction: the global one which affects areas of memes or the whole meme culture in general, and local deconstruction, affecting individual memes. The instruments of deconstruction are irony and a new context where the fresh forms emerge. This is why, when speaking of the global meme deconstruction, we often imply the crucial moment of birth of ironic and "weird", absurdist memes. By the way, the result of such deconstruction, compared with old memes is reflected in the metameme "Memes Then and Now" which, by way of local examples, shows what really happened to meme culture in recent years.

It is believed that the deconstruction began in 2012 with the advent of Coaxed Into A Snafu, when people got bored of Rage Comics and its overuse. Many think it to be to be the first ironic graphic meme ever, but, in fact, the web comic SBAHJ by Andrew Hussie can be considered as the first one. On the whole, the premises and even some tools necessary for the deconstruction have already been in 2009. Howbeit, the deconstruction took the global character, and memes as the "original humorous content" itself have been rethought. The end of the first half of the 2010s had been marked by the birth of new genres and movements, and ironic memes have finally become a routine: Deep Fried Memes with their fresh and dizzy effects, Surreal Memes with their experiments and mythology, and many others. One cannot forget Anti Memes, the brightest and most obvious example of the deconstruction of a meme as a humor form. It would be a stretch to call Dank Memes that have eventually grown into the kind of "protest against normies", the result of the deconstruction of memes; they are rather a consequence caused by the natural evolution of the borders between the meme system's two polar sides. On the other hand, isn't deconstruction itself a part of meme evolution?

In many ways, the deconstruction was the result of netizens' increased self-awareness, their tastes, and a general state of culture. When there wasn't enough provided cultural tools, memers began to deconstruct the very essence of humour, resorting to post-irony and meta-irony. These not quite fresh features that, nevertheless, have found a second life in memes, expanding it further and further. One of the most common and effective methods of deconstruction is inversion, when the original meaning, by extracting the idea and moving it into new conditions, becomes its own antipode. A jest, as well as a parody, is a kind of deconstruction, too. Since a meme consists of an idea and a form, they are both subject to deconstruction, and this has been proved by Increasingly Verbose Memes. They are remarkable that such memes took and deconstructed any other meme inside of themselves without leaving the limits of their personal form.

By 2018–2019, the global deconstruction has slowed down, and users focused on local processes (which, nevertheless, had happened before). The formation of genres as such has been completed for now, and the phase of deconstruction of already deconstructed memes has begun. Also, particular pre-ironic memes are being rethought as well, such as Doge which in 2018 gained new forms that were alien to it, developing a plenty of topics that were not available in the years of its former popularity. A liquid Doge, related to the surreal movement, ironically cynical macros about depression and disasters, a foot fetish Doge, a trapped Doge which uses an environment as a tool, and even wholesome nostalgia posts: all this is the result of a local deconstruction. However, it is really difficult to find a meme that has not been deconstructed yet. Take, for example, "Hmm Today I Will X", or "Barry vs. Larry" as a parody of the legendary battle between PewDiePie and T-Series, ridiculing the meaninglessness of the subscriber race, or "PeePeePoomer/Brain Toomer/Goober" as a rude mockery of young people who create their stereotypical portraits based on the Doomer meme, and so on. Style memes, or rather the mememes inside them, are being deconstructed too. So, in 2018 Peter Griffin became popular again in r/DeepFriedMemes, but this time in a completely new role. He was ironically deconstructing the memes, as if "explaining" their essence, which increased the extra layer of irony (an example). Honestly, I have tried to deconstruct DFM too, but, unfortunately, failed. Moving away from style memes, I need to state that Loss is a kind of deconstruction, but more instinctive one. It altered the forms of symbol memes, simplifying them to a minimalist sign with a rich background.

Russian memes, despite all their disadvantages, have not missed the opportunity of deconstruction. Memchiki that got ahead of Coaxed Into A Snafu of which I already wrote, also had a purpose to make fun of Rage Comics. It's a great evidence of that global meme deconstruction doesn't depend of a country at all, even although Russia has always had its own unique meme environment. Anyway, Memchiki were a success that led to quite ambiguous events, namely the fall of our memes (which, however, can also be called a kind of deconstruction). On the other hand, there is more worthy and obscure deconstruction of the Rage Comics, precisely speaking, even two waves of it. The first one is the comics of Azrail (in the left) who had been experimenting with the content formats in 2013, creating himself an image of a devout schizophrenic and expanding perverted views about religion, death, and their reflection in pop culture, as well as touching especially ugly aspects of modern society. The second wave named "глаза ползёт" ("eyes crawls", in the right) (VK groups with such content: 1, 2) is a current of horror Rage Comics which was founded by Azrail's inspired followers. At the moment it's crawling from the underground, trying to deconstruct all the popular memes. These movements are a great example of rare Russian surreal memes and incredibly successful experiment both with form and idea.

Techinically, every iteration of a meme's life is a some kind of deconstruction: an idea falls into a new environment; therefore, a new scope and a new context in which it acquires its own meaning, sometimes opposite to the original. Deconstruction is extremely useful in the terms of fighting with the "death" of separate memes which is caused by decline in their popularity. At the moment, the Internet allows us to deconstruct absolutely everything, from inside jokes to the image of Garfield. As already mentioned, revisionist views, reinforced by reference to the culture of the past, is one of the reasons of weblore's dynamism. Literally anything can be a part of online folk art: a random 3D-cartoon from the middle 2000s, a year-old web comic, or a photo the day before yesterday, all of which will not only be provided with a comment, but also deconstructed beyond recognition. Many label our times "weird", "absurd", and "pointless", but these are indeed the essence of its beauty.