Meme

Meme: Within the social media context, a meme is a media format—image, video, GIF, text, or audio—that circulates rapidly online and conveys a particular idea, joke, sentiment, or trend. Memes are typically captioned (though not always) and can be humorous, sarcastic, or witty. What makes them appealing is that they are largely built on shared cultural knowledge or context (or inside jokes) that most people can understand.

You could say that they are colloquial forms of humor and 'gags' that individuals and groups use to reference popular culture, events, internet trends, subcultures, or history. Indeed, you can use a meme to reference just about anything—all you need is a good setup and punchline. Despite (or maybe because of) their visual or auditory simplicity, memes can convey many layered meanings that are easily understood—and really relatable!

—ensuring rapid consumption that typically makes them go viral on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook. Moreover, a meme can even possess the 'power' of expressing opinions, critiquing societal issues, and connecting with like-minded people—seriously, some folks use memes to do that. Increasingly, companies are using memes as marketing tools because what young person isn't hashtagging, @-ing, or using the Internet in some way?

If you're doing that, you might as well relate to and interact with the products and services being marketed to you.