“A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”(1). As stated by Mary Ann Bell it is often tempting to define memes by examples such as “Gangnam Style”(1). With the high demand to participate in social media the potential for a rise and spread in “ideas, trends, rumors, memes, or anything catchy”(1), is great. This phenomenon is called “going viral” and is rapidly occurring within our society. Whether these ideas, images, or trends are purposely leaked or an accident taken out of context, memes tend to have a virus-like effect on cultures(1). The concept of memes can be linked to the idea of social norms, “actions or beliefs commonly accepted as normal behaviors by a group or society” (Lundin 1). Individuals who divert from the terms defined by a certain society or culture can be subjected to being ostracized (Lundin 1). This suggest that social norms are a psychological tool that help others exercise some level of control over another's behavior and social practices and helps establish a hierarchy for maintaining social order and organizing social groups within respective cultures.(Lundin 1) Social norms vary throughout different cultures and “stem from human interaction” (Lundin 1). Individuals can “observe the accepted behaviors of a group in order to be accepted by the group” (Lundin 1) in order to avoid the effects of being ostracized. “Ostracism is a universal experience and has been observed across different cultures, times, and species”(Gerber, Williams 1). Memes such as “Involuntary Abstinence” can play a role in the ostracism of individuals in the gaming/larping community. Larping is a form of role play which involve full costumes and props. Usually the individuals who partici... ... middle of paper ... ...icans as a whole are largely beginning to display and pass on images and ideas at the expense of others for comedic responses, likes, and general popularity within the world of social media. This in itself is becoming a social norm; allowing and participating in acts at another individual's expense. Memes have the ability to distinct levels within a social hierarchy as well as aiding in the progression of an already formed stereotype. It also allows the abuse of image ownership where an image posted on Facebook or Instagram could be taken and/or altered by someone it does not belong to . Images and ideas can be powerful if given power by society. If we did not allow these images to be replicated or feed into the hype of memes with a negative concept attached to them it would hold less power in the culture it was formed in or possibly not even be formed to begin with.
Every culture or group has a certain degree of expectations (norms) for its members, which is not all equally achievable by its members, especially the innate features
In the 1950s and 60s Harold Garfinkle developed a method for studying social interactions. He formed ethnomethodology, which is studying the methods of people. In other words, ethnomethodology is the study of social norms. (p. 139, Conley) Most of us follow social norms unconsciously. It can be difficult to go against a social norm. The purpose of the project was to conduct a breaching experiment against social normalities. For this experiment, I chose to go an entire day whispering every word I spoke. I chose to violate this norm because it is socially unacceptable to whisper in a normal conversation. Throughout this paper, I will explain the methods and the results of this breaching experiment
In this generation memes are really popular. I asked my parents what they thought memes were and they had no clue what I was talking about. So for those who do not know what a meme is, here we go. A meme is a humorous picture or video with text that spreads rapidly through various social media accounts. Memes are also very powerful and can affect a person, or event either good or bad. According to memgenerator.net, Futurama Fry is the second most popular.
In the human society, there are several influential tools such as cultures, religions and fashions. Both of them can influence many people, the way about how their influence spread is named meme. Blackmore points out “as example, he suggested tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches”(36). Just like the gene, in human society, different cultures, thinking and religions can also be spread from person to person. This phenomenon only exists in the human society. For meme, background environments are very important because they need the environments, which people will be influenced by their surroundings to transmit. For human beings, they are influenced by memes because they are everywhere, people are influenced by meme when they learn, talk to others or even get some new ideas from books. Blackmore mentions, “memes are stored in human brains (or books or inventions) and passed on by imitations”(36). On the one hand, human beings are good to learn form others or from textbooks that is why memes can work so well in human brains; on the other hand, memes make sure that every member of human beings can be influenced by human thinking and cultures, which is very important for whole group of human beings. Memes play very important role in human world because they
The reactions of people when you break a social norm can vary quite drastically. Sometimes the reactions are quite large and other times they are rather subtle. The reactions typically vary based on what norm you break and how strong of a norm it is. In the case of invading people’s personal space, I did not receive and intense reactions. All of the reactions I received were subtle. Not ma...
Deviance is any behavior, belief, or condition that violates significant social norms in the society or group in which it occurs (Kendall, 2012). Our experiment will study the behavioral deviance of a social norm. Sociologists use symbolic interactionism to study face-to-face interactions. We are expected to follow these certain unwritten rules of behavior telling us the way that we should act in certain situations. The social norm or folkway I chose to break was that of invading an individual’s personal space. See Figure 1.0 showing the proximity generally utilized by Americans, according to Edward T.Hall. Personal space is the region surrounding a person, approximately 18 inches, which they regard as psychologically theirs. People value their personal space, and feel discomfort, anger, or anxiety when their personal space is encroached (Personal space, n.d.). We walked around to find the best scenario and individuals to interject our teammate in purposefully invading their comfort zone.
It is 9:00 PM on a Sunday night. Televisions all across America tune into MTV. Millions of viewers will now spend the next thirty minutes watching a television program titled 'Jackass'. While watching this program, the viewers will observe everything from people eating hard boiled eggs in an attempt to purposely vomit, to a man testing out various self defense devices on himself. Next week viewers will tune into the same program to see the same kinds of stunts performed. The reason that America watches these kinds of programs, and the participants in them perform these stunts, are because 'norms' are being broken. A norm is something that is generally accepted by a society as the right thing to do, or the way things are supposed to be. For example, a norm would be to enter an elevator and stand facing the front for the duration of the trip. Breaking that norm would be to enter the elevator and face the back for the duration of the trip. It is not what is expected. Different norms exist in different societies, and when these norms are broken within these societies people pay attention, because it is not an occurrence observed on a regular basis.
Individuals are the victim of meme to be replicated or reproduced but individuals are not the victim when how the meme is the influential of one’s life. Meme’s purpose is to spread the ideals, cultures or behaviors to people. Other than that they are not responsible for anything else. Blackmore said in her essay, “Strange Creatures” of how memes are not suppose to have negative or positive effects towards the individuals. The main purpose for them is to replicate which means they are just neutral. This is why meme is called “selfish”. They do not care what happens next after they reproduce. Also, because a meme is overriding human system where imitation comes in first rather than looking at if it is morally wrong or not and how it can actually
A meme indeed is passed around and around when a person copies or imitates something. That something can be sounds, attitudes, and even movements. When we are told something, we might not recite the same sentence word from word to someone, but we surely pass parts of it to the individual. This is an example of a meme. “We humans, because of our powers of imitation, have become just the physical ‘host’ needed for the meme to get around” (37). The meme uses us to make itself known to the world. In this case, we have no control over ourselves or the meme and let the meme get around. It is superior and dominates our thoughts and ideas. All this time we thought that we make our own decisions, however through the “meme’s eye view”, our brain activity is old and
“I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time –Betty White (“Betty White Quotes,” 2014, para. 1).” This quote can be interpreted to fit with several of the social media avenues that many people spend their time on. Day in and day out people post, tweet, share, and pin countless times throughout the world. These different forms of communication were first created for an easier way for people to connect with others. Yet now, so much time is spent on these social sites that it has warped the interactive part and is causing more damage than good. Many are growing a desire and are living for the amount of “likes” they can receive on a post or how many re-tweets they can generate. Instead of going to these outlets to participate in a partial portion of their social lives, people are filling that time with the technological aspect of communication. As White said, this can become an inordinate amount of wasted time and can ultimately grow into further damaging circumstances. These different social media channels can cause emotional harm through disparaging the relationship between friends, conjuring of a narcissistic personality, and the retrogradation of ones self-esteem.
Blackmore, Susan. “The Theory [of Memes] is Promising and Testable.” Free Inquiry. 2000 (Summer), 20.3
These things have become so common that not having them almost makes it seem like there is something missing. Because of features such as these, it is incredibly easy to share every aspect of what we are reading, doing, eating and listening to with everyone in our social networks. While this has meant incredible advances in the way we interact with our world, it has also fundamentally changed the way our social relationships are created and sustained. Social medial led users to have false impression of others and changed our feelings. Because social media users tend to only show the most positive aspects of their lives, social media users have a false sense of reality when it comes to how they seem themselves, how others see them and how they see other people. “It is not difficult to say that social media effect our perception of others” (Goshgarian213).
Social Media is defined by Merriam-Webster as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)” (Merriam-Webster), and for many Americans is a method of social interaction that is used often on a daily basis. It has been determined that one in five people use social media at least once a day and that 19% of Americans between the age of 15 and 54 are on sites like Facebook and Twitter(). It’s no longer common place to send handwritten letters or birthday cards, now writing on a wall, sending a tweet or snapping a picture is accepted. Although social media has provided todays society with instant forms of communication and ways to connect, it also created a new standard for living and has caused problems for many groups of citizens in all walks of life and has caused society to re-think its usage. There are two views about social media, either that. It is a positive addition to society and its benefits outweigh the risks, or that social media causes more harm than good and it’s usage should be limited.
The researcher’s survey reported that almost half of social media users felt a slightly uncomfortable feeling before publishing updates that were not fully factual or accurate (Schau & Gilly, 2003. The findings suggest that many social media users were conflicted by an internal battle between their idealized cyber-self-images and their inner voice of reason. Such a conflict would support the research findings of prior efforts by Ashton, Barkley, Beaty et. al. and Miller and Lynam , that suggest that the social conflict perspective when internalized creates a manifestation of bitterness and resentment of authority and social norms. Taken in the context of antisocial patterns of development as offered by the researchers Berry, Ones, & Sackett, social media users may be demonstrating a resentment of social structures and social stratifications caused by the conflict between their cyber expectations and their real world self-image (Berry, Ones, & Sackett,