Three Memes

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another post from Video Games Versus Contemporary Issues. Right now it is my favorite time of day: Meme time!

YAY

For this post, we're going to be examining three memes of mid april, 2018, and horribly, horribly date this blog in the process while doing so, discuss it's origin, what the whole point behind it originally was, et cetera. So, with that said:

#1. Original vs. Un-tumblrized

So, this whole meme isn't considered all that offensive or weird in it's current state, following the basic comedy "Before and after" shtick. The whole method of 'making' the meme is to put a character on one side, and either distill the character's traits to the point of absurdity on the other, or otherwise just any unflattering picture will do in a pinch.

What's interesting, though, is how the meme originally started. According to KYM (Know Your Meme),
" After an image began circulating of a comparison chart between the female character Tank Penny from Fortnite and an “un-tumblrized” version which imagines her skinnier, whiter and in skimpier clothing, people began to create humorous parody versions."
The original post's "ideal" (in the words of Patrick Davidson) was a sexual (and, really, sexist) attempt to recreate the character in the original creator's image, more or less removing anything actually unique or interesting about her in the process. It was first posted to 4chan, and quickly screenshots of it spread outwards.

When Tumblr saw the post, and subsequently re-posted it for their own usage, they were... less then thrilled.

Pretty much immediately they started to post their own versions of the meme as a parody, and soon enough it spread off of Tumblr, and into the ether that is the internet at large. 

#2. "Change my mind"

In contrast to Tumblr, this meme instead comes from Reddit. Steven Crowder, a right-winged comedian/podcaster, set up this little booth outside of Texan Christian University, and posted the image to his twitter. At this point, he had been running a small series of podcasts where he invites random people to walk up to him and attempt to argue about his opinions against him on the street, and for this episode- well, you see the sign, presumably.

The picture soon got posted onto reddit, where it quickly got picked up by nearly every subculture on the site- though, the anime/manga and video game communities in general seemed to take a liking to it specifically, using it as an imageboard to 'humorously' make controversial opinions known (or make fun of people with said opinions, it can be difficult to tell at times). They'll white out the sign so it's left completely blank using either a photomanipulater, or even just with a basic drawing tool like microsoft paint, and then edit Mr. Crowder's portrait in the photo to either be a different character, or removed entirely, like so: 

#3 Ugandan Knuckles

Well, this is a bit of a blast from the past (memes work at light speed, by the time people can register they became a meme, they're already forgotten). Ugandan Knuckles was originally a video from the game VR chat, which is an open-sandbox chat program that allows users to create their own models, and due to sitting in what seems to be a little bit of a legal greyzone (The game is free, so any copyright broken is being done so noncommercially), it leads to things like this.

The meme itself is almost a perfect example of a meme being less of a set 'advice animal', or template, and more of a concept- the idea of Ugandan Knuckles (A Sonic the Hedgehog character becoming something of a racial stereotype) is what drives the humor, whether it's done through video games, animation, or images.