Thoughts From Here

• The interesting unrecognizable texts that are memes and comments

After taking quite some time to think about publics and counter publics and unrecognizable texts, I’ve decided to write about two things that I hadn’t considered public writing until now: memes and internet comments. If someone asked me three weeks ago if comments on social media, like instagram or YouTube for example, are received by a particular audience, I would’ve said yes and nothing more. But after our readings, I’ve realized that even simple comments under photos have far more complex publics than I would have thought. What type of media that the comment appears under determines the public in a general sense, but these publics might be unknown to the commenter. I know I’ve seen someone comment a political statement under an unassuming post only to receive great pushback from a counter public they didn’t expect to be present. The social rules in comment sections are also heavily affected by the public present. A woman commenting something flirty under another woman’s picture isn’t uncommon and is acceptable between friends. But if a man comments something similar under a woman’s picture it’s usually considered actually flirtatious. The internet has made public discourse more widely available and depending on what site you’re on, what you post about, the gender of the poster (or commenter) and even the age of the individuals involved affects the rules of what writing is acceptable. 

The age of memes is a fascinating topic in my opinion, and the subject of our readings has only made it even more interesting. Memes are a fascinating phenomenon to me because they tend to reach out past their intended public and take root in other places of discourse. This tends to happen relatively quickly. A meme intended for a certain group of fans is edited in order for it to apply to a different public. The best example of this that I can think of is the old “live slug reaction” meme from years ago. It originated on twitter in 2022. I’ll put the meme bellow.

It was originally made for fans of Star Wars, poking fun at the facial expression made by a slug-like character during a lesbian kiss scene in rise of Skywalker. However, people on the internet almost immediately started putting the “live slug reaction” on anything and everything. The best versions of the meme involved removing the slug altogether and instead putting a different character in the reaction box. Here’s a version I found where the stand in for the judgmental slug is the Flash. Post cred to Ashley-slashley on tumblr.

I think it’s pretty cool how memes can transcend their intended publics and become a commonly understood aspect of the cultural zeitgeist like the live slug reaction meme.