Oh Yes! The Memes – The Media Virus that has enabled us to create content of either humor or insult without any boundaries. Nowadays, each and every phenomenon of the world gets captivated in the form of these memes.

They are simplistic and innovative yet powerful way of expressing feelings and perceptions about anything and everything we are surrounded by, especially those under the categories of jokes, hoaxes, scams, political messages, Bollywood mishaps, and twisted philosophies.

Fact: Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. As conceived by Dawkins, a meme is a unit of cultural meaning, such as an idea or a value, that is passed from one generation to another. When asked to assess this comparison, Lauren Ancel Meyers, a biology professor at the University of Texas, states that “memes spread through online social networks similarly to the way diseases do through offline populations”.

For example, take a look at how our very own Delhi and Mumbai Police have made innovative use of Bollywood dialogues in form of memes to communicate the same old message of safety and security:

Not just this, Memes have now become a friendly tool for Brands to Market their offerings as they believe it to be the new consumer language. Take a look:

So why all of a sudden I have decided to talk about them when we are all well versed with their presence and impact on our social media platforms?

Trigger: Facebook’s newest ploy to bring back teen users is a meme app called LOL.

Yes, you read it right. Facebook’s re-entry in our lives is through an independent feed like application. It was almost time for Facebook to realize that its prime service, the Facebook Network, has become vulnerable and teens especially those who belong to Gen Z have hooked on to Instagram straightaway (Which is also great news for Facebook as it owns Instagram but it’s an evident self-cannibalization situation).

Fact: According to TechCrunch, LOL is a simple piece of software featuring a feed of memes and GIFs categorized by topics like “animals” and “pranks,” and Facebook is currently testing it with 100 high school users with the consent of their parents.

It seems LOL’s design is reminiscent of Snapchat’s Discover tab, and it will offer algorithmically curated bundles of videos users can scroll through using an interaction similar to toggling through Instagram Stories, with share and reaction buttons underneath.

Facebook has been experimenting a lot lately but has failed to attract its main target group – the teens and keep them active for a long time. It’s projects like Slingshot, Poke, Rooms, and Riff have also been disappointing attempts to stay true and relevant in the minds of its users.

Snapchat had become a threat a few years ago and still continues to be a minor one but the acquisition of Instagram has helped Facebook give a cut-throat competition.

With all of this history, yet another plot is underway and this time, though it seems late, they have recognized that they have hit the right spot. The possible explanation for this venture is to find a solution to increase the time spent by the users on their platform and memes have emerged as weaponry to catch wildfire in an instant fashion.

But, there is a worry that will scare Facebook before it ventures into this – Article 13, The EU’s divisive new copyright plan.

Fact: The article states that online content sharing service providers and right holders are to cooperate in good faith in order to stop the availability of unauthorized protected contents. The implementation of this provision will essentially be through upload filters, that will scan every content that users share and verify whether they are copyrighted material or not.

Wondering how this affects meme creation and distribution?

Ans: The upload filters dedicated to this will sweepingly filter contents without distinguishing context of the contents. For example contents like memes, commentary, satire, parodies, fan videos, cover videos, product review videos etc. will be facing aggressive censor.

EU being the first one to do this, its very much possible for other governments and unions to take up this censorship implementation seriously and practice it on similar grounds. When this happens, memes will be treated as foul to the established laws and will effectively be banned. So no market for LOL.

And I don’t think Facebook wishes to sit through yet another confrontation with the legal authorities after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The death of meme culture being a speculative one, Facebook’s return is yet again dicey.