If you spend enough time on the internet, you learn the language of memes. It’s a market-driven tongue; memes go in and out of fashion frequently. They balloon, they bubble and they burst unexpectedly. If you’re not careful, you might find yourself in a lurch, trading in low-value memes. This is as important as any college course — learning to navigate the meme economy can make or break your online presence. Irrelevance, to any self-respecting, red-blooded citizen of the internet, is a fate worse than death.
The meme economy and the real economy are similar in only a few ways. Most importantly, they both derive the value of things — stocks, products, images, catch phrases, etc. — from the value assigned to them by the mass of consumers. Bear in mind the main driver of a meme’s value is its popularity, not the quality of the meme itself. There is no single aspect of memes that makes them valuable or invaluable. In fact, many of the most valuable memes of all time, at their peak, started off as low-quality jokes. If you’ve heard somebody say, “do you know de wey,” sometime after January of this year, you’ve experienced textbook low-value trading firsthand.
Take Ugandan Knuckles under consideration. The video that started the ham-handed phenomenon became popular in December 2017. Within a few short months, arguably weeks, we saw the entire meme cycle take place. First, the internet laughed unironically. Then the market was diversified by investments in different takes on the meme. Irony and self-reference took hold. The bubble continued to grow. Eventually, as it happens with all memes, it fell into the wrong hands. The market was soiled with counterfeit. There is some debate as to whether Knuckles was ever funny, but it certainly crashed hard onto its deathbed.
The plunging of the Knuckles stock was illustrative of one of the most powerful laws of the meme economy: Valuable memes originate from the fringe. The general user base of the internet is merely a consuming body in the meme economy, but when the bubble becomes too large and the barrier to entry into participation remains too low, common browsers of the web will hazard a low-effort meme. Thus, the beginning its devaluation. Where once the general internet population made it valuable, mass participation causes inflation and rapidly brings a meme to its knees.
Another fact follows from the law of fringe value: Memes are inherently unpredictable. They get more and more surreal as time goes by. Where once the elements that made a meme great were Sir Patrick Stewart’s confused expression, outstretched hand and some Impact font, now to make a valuable meme you may need Photoshop skills and talent with “deep frying.” Try not to take advice from meme traders too seriously. Publications like Meme Insider can help, but only in a general sense to get a feel for what’s popular. The balance, and true value, lies between popularity and obscurity.
We cannot be certain about the future of memes. But we can be certain that they will not go away. Images speak louder than words. In the digital age, people may look not to judge you by the color of your wine and cheese but rather by the content of your meme folder. Keep a wary eye on your investments.
Stephan Chamberlin is a UF political science junior. His column comes out Tuesday and Thursday.
