제 10 호 Memes as a Double-edged Sword
Kicker: OPINION (MEME)
Memes as a Double-edged Sword
The Age of Meme, A New Digital Trend Code
By Sol-Hyang Park, Reporter
It is the heyday of ‘Meme.’ Memes made through YouTube and various online communities, such as “Rollin Rollin," “Sadala," "One Kkang a day,” are not just entertainment, but are also influencing offline business trends. Memes, which used to belong to a non-mainstream culture enjoyed by a small number of netizens who enjoyed social activities online, are now new digital trend code that anyone can easily enjoy and follow through SNS.
Origin of Memes
“Internet meme” or “meme” is a secondary creation or parody that spread from the Internet to the community or social networking.
Originally, it was derived from the academic term "meme" first proposed by zoologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene.” In the book, meme meant "spiritual reasons such as religion, ideas, and ideologies that have been reproduced and passed on throughout generations," just like human genes. This has been expanded to the meaning "a cultural element in a work that is parody, modulated, and spread" to call for a new spreading culture that has exploded since the Internet was distributed in the early 2000s. Particularly, people in English-speaking communities have used this word to refer to the essential things used in chatting and UCC activities, which also became widely used among netizens in Korea. In addition, we call a person who produces or distributes memes as a "memer".
Examples of Memes
Meme encompasses every word, photo, video, song, action, etc. Anything that is easy to remember or addictive on the Internet is likely to become a meme. We can also call the social and cultural phenomena or buzzwords that were popular in the past before the word meme appeared, as memes.
Memes by Period in Korea
As for examples of Korean memes in the early 2000s, there are "You go, Hawai (a famous line from the movie “Friend”)," The Fruit of Love (Community Fund Badge), and Ulzzang Culture (developed with the advent of Cyworld)." Also, in the 2010s, there were memes such as smartphone, Facebook, greenlight (used in the TV program "Witch Hunt"), and juice spilling memes (a scene from the drama "I Must Have Loved You").
In the 2020s, there are memes such as social distancing (corona influence), Rollin (music of Brave Girls), and Money Games (web entertainment show based on a Naver webtoon "Money Game"). In particular, since 2020 affected by the Corona pandemic, many more Internet memes have been created as Internet usage has increased relatively.
In fact, the concept of memes was introduced to the public in Korea relatively recently, since singer Rain's "Gang" memes. At that time, Rain's song “Gang” became popular again in 2020 through MBC's "Hang out with Yoo.” The process of re-rising and the derivative words such as “1 kang a day” could not be explained without using the concept of the meme, and Rain himself used the word meme. Previously, people used words such as “drip” much more than “meme”.
There also can be a worldwide meme. For example, with the development of the Internet, people began to use "memes(funny pictures with texts)" frequently in the community. It is called “meme” in English, and 'jjal' in Korea. People are using a lot of humorous memes that intuitively express feelings or situations that cannot be explained by text alone. As such, meme is a pop culture beyond languages.
Meme Marketing
Many companies also focus on this meme phenomenon, and apply it to their marketing, which is called meme marketing. They organize promotional strategies with meme elements that are talked about and parodied in many Internet communities and social media. This kind of meme marketing has much greater ripple effect than normal advertising, thanks to the meme's own characteristics. This is because if consumers think it is funny, they will share and distribute themselves, even reprocessing them to create another meme. Thanks to the meme, it has a strong promotional effect without spending too much money. Of course, not all meme marketing succeeds. The meme trend can already have cooled down, so proper timing and witty planning would be important.
An example of effective meme marketing is Burger King's "All Day King" ad, which parodies scenes from the SBS drama "The Age of Wildlings" in 2003.Actor Kim Young-chul, who played a role in the drama, negotiated the price of a hamburger saying "4 $.” This ad is a parody of the scene in which he negotiates with the U.S. military in the drama. Originally, this scene was used as a meme, and steadily became popular. Based on this humor code that netizens have long loved, Burger King successfully delivered the message of the best quality hamburgers at the cheapest price with humor. It is said that after the ad, the average sales of each store rose more than 70% .
On the contrary, there are cases where a company used meme contents without permission, so obsessed with memes, in the end, rather worsened their brand image. In July last year, CJ Food's "Hatban" was blamed for unauthorized use of singer Sunmi's contents. Hatban promoted black rice with a post on Instagram using the signature pose of Sunmi's song "Purple Night." They also mentioned her in promotional comments. The problem was that Sunmi was not their promotional model, and they did not ask for permission from the original author in advance. As many people criticized the lack of copyright awareness, they finally made an apology that they acknowledged their faults, and deeply regretted.
Memes as a Double-edged sword
Memes give light fun to many people's daily lives and are even used in corporate marketing. For young MZ generation, it is an essential digital communication code, leading the trend.
However, memes can be a dangerous weapon. Like was mentioned, focusing only on the fun and ripple power of memes can make unethical mistakes such as violating copyright or human rights. Since there is a strong tendency to make anything funny, memers can abuse other people's works without permission, or ridicule others. A lot of memes pour out in just one day, and many memers are still looking for the object of memes. If this phenomenon continues, it can be overshadowed by fun and forget the basic things to keep. Moreover, memes are propagated and distributed very quickly, so even if we try to correct them later, there would be no turning back after they have already become memes.
Meme culture is now a new channel of communication, and also a vital part of people’s lives exhausted from Corona. Fun things that were overlooked in the past are rediscovered, entertaining people in many ways.However, the power of memes is so strong that memers may make irreversible mistakes. So we will always have to make memes and enjoy them in due degree!
