Memes used to just be funny by and large. But over time the meme; a combination of precis coupled with pictures has become more than the sum of its parts. So, if a picture paints a thousand words … a picture with two dozen words actually paints a picture with ten thousand words.
This first one is a reference to both the pandemic that has savaged liberties and freedom as well as killing millions (though probably not as many millions as directly as the doom-mongers would like you to believe). For us in the northern hemisphere at least (the free west ... I think) it points to how quickly the Russian invasion of Ukraine swept the pandemic news away ... Abracadabra!
I guess it all falls back to the dark art of marketing, it’s not exactly a new discovery, but it is an adaption that is freely accessible to anyone who wants to make a particular point barbed for maximum penetration using very few words. And as we saw with the first set posted, you can take classic themes, character quotes from classic characters, real or imagined and recombine them to your own ends. Or as below just take the words already written and amplify them with a sub-definition.
The interesting part of the process is that when you take
an imagined character’s attributes from a fictional narrative (Morpheus from
the Matrix in the previous example), then the amplification of the message is
exponential in effect. As the emperor clearly demonstrates below. Anyone who doesn't have a `penny drop' moment looking at the meme is likely to be clinically dead or lived in a cave on a desert island since the mid-1970's.
Beyond that is the diversity of uses that an image can be used for, but we will look at that another day … and probably on a lighter note.
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