Nowadays, people around the world can enjoy the same culture thanks to the Internet. Accordingly, cultures are gaining tremendous popularity and are reproduced in different forms. ................Ed
Do you know ‘Kkang’? It’s the title track of singer Rain’s mini-album, which is back on the charts. It was not until three years later that the song started to shine with comments on the music video. The public’s first impression was that of mockery. The bluffing lyrics, excessive choreography that does not fit current trends, and the self-loving ‘Rain hat’ have become a source of ridicule. Comments close to ridicule were pouring in, which led to a GIF (photos or pictures) and even a ‘kkang-group’. This allowed us to go over one ‘kkang’ a day, three ‘kkang’ a day, and N number ‘kkang’ a day.
............................................... #Meme?
Rain’s popularity is based on the trend of the ‘Meme’ culture. A rather unfamiliar word, meme is a combination of the Greek word ‘Mimee’ and the English word ‘Gene,’ first used by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Just as genes propagate from generation to generation through cloning, culture requires self-replicating memes. In other words, memes are commonly referred to as funny GIFs, videos, buzzwords, and trends that have the power to be shared online. Internet memes were first used by ‘Mike Godwin’ in 1993.
#Meme & MZ? ...............................................
The evolution and popularity of memes are closely related to the characteristics of the ‘MZ generation’ (Millennial Generation and Generation Z, born in the early 1980s and early 2000s), the content consumers. The MZ generation deliver memes to the right places and reproduce parodies or analytical images. A key example of this meme culture is singer Zico’s ‘Any Song Challenge.’ He started uploading a video of his dancing along to ‘Any Song,’ with a fellow celebrity on SNS(Social Networking Service) and it created a challenge among celebrities as well as those in their teens and 20s. Also, popular video-sharing platform ‘TikTok’ makes it easy to produce and re-publish videos or share them on SNS.
............................................... #Effects?
In this way, a meme does not end in a spontaneous play culture, but also creates tremendous economic effects. Also, what we can see from the meme craze is that the main producer of content is now becoming a ‘consumer’. It is important to remember that contents that empathize with millennials who use online platforms as a venue for various games can have a tremendous ripple effect. Besides, marketing with memes has a major impact online and works faster than any previous marketing method.
#Problems? ...............................................
However, marketing with memes doesn’t always have positive effects. It suggests that controversy may continue as boundaries between an extreme sense of fun and over-the-line ridicule are ambiguous when it comes to comments based on content. Therefore, experts say that courtesy and consideration must be required to move toward a healthy meme culture. Therefore, it’s time to expand the possibility that we can create positive memes such as the #ThankstotheChallenge for medical staff suffering from COVID-19.
Kim Seo-young (ST Cub-Reporter)
ksy2902@soongsil.ac.kr
