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PhD Memes About Research Life | High Impact PhD memes

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This is how i run my phd life with research problems and life problems, research gap identified, a night before thesis defense, when my supervisor shouts at me, position to read article in pdf, references and review paper, i heard he’s doing phd in stress management, ilovephd’s meme presented in the final thesis defense, how deadlines chsing me, motivation during first and final year of the phd, can you proof read my article, cofee with first publication motivate a lot, ph.d. couple goals | we love phd, forget princess i want to be a scientist – phd memes, difference between first and fifth year in lab, phd scholar after thesis defence, graphical abstract vs. abstract – phd memes, welcome to phd – memes, when you notice people reading your research work but no one citing it., where is the novelty, phd advisor before and after phd admission, what if someone had published your idea, eat and innovate, difference between theory and practice, procrastination to write a research paper, advisor with new project ideas, what i am doing in life | why i joined phd, show the difference between existing vs proposed work, before deadline vs after deadline, when your experiment gives outstanding result but you don’t know how, the idea of graduating and having to write my thesis, when scholar says he/she will submit manuscript draft tomorrow, but it’s been 6 months now, when everything is going wring in your life but you’re used to it, study vs stress meme, lab on sunday, when you start thinking about your research during dinner.

Explore the world of “High Impact PhD Memes,” where humor meets academia. This collection of memes delves into the unique challenges and relatable moments of the PhD journey. From battling writer’s block to celebrating small victories, these memes capture the essence of research life. Join fellow doctoral candidates in sharing a laugh and finding solace in shared experiences. Get ready to dive into the comical side of academia!

Check this impact meme, interesting and funny PhD memes about research life from iLovePhD Memes Facebook Page

“High Impact PhD Memes” offers a humorous and relatable glimpse into the world of research and academia. These memes resonate with the experiences of doctoral candidates, highlighting the challenges, victories, and moments of camaraderie that define the PhD journey. As we explore this collection, it becomes evident that humor can be a powerful tool for coping with the rigors of research life. So, whether you’re in the midst of your own PhD adventure or simply curious about the world of academia, these memes provide a lighthearted and insightful perspective that brings a smile to your face and a sense of connection to the scholarly community.

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• 40+ Hilarious research memes that will make you smile

Şeyma Beyazçiçek

Researches are part of our lives, especially if you are a forever learner. While doing research, we have been through similar difficulties or experienced the same feelings. In order to show these common points, internet memes come to our aid!

In this blog, you will see excellent any kind of material, such as UX research memes, clinical research memes, psychology research memes, and research paper memes. If you want to take a break and enjoy your time, you should definitely take a look at our 40 hilarious Research memes that will make you laugh :  

• 1. Tip of the iceberg

#1 Research meme - Source: Facebook - High Impact PhD

In the background of each research, there are nights, days, weeks, and even months spent time and effort for the research. So, the paper itself is just a little concrete form of all the effort and work. 

2. There is no destination!

#2 Research meme - Source: Make a meme

Researches are like living. There is no destination, but it is a journey! As you read and see, you will realize the limitless world of knowledge. 

3. But it sounds cool, isn’t it?

#3 Research meme - Source: Quick meme

When we need to do research, the first thing to do is to google it, right? We seem to have no better option as the first step in our era. 

4. Don’t want to check🫣

#4 Research meme - Source: Ah See it

Before submitting the paper, reading it might feel like it is not good enough. If you do not want to feel like that, all you need to do is submit it without the last check. 🤗

• 5. Memes matter🤨

#5 Research meme - Source: Reddit

When it comes to doing Research about anything not related to the Research topic, everything seems to be worth reading and learning. Especially if it is a meme!

6. They are always one step ahead!

#6 Research meme - Source: Facebook- High Impact PhD Memes

It is undeniable that applied research with sensational findings always gathers more attention and funding. Basic research is always doomed to lose spotlights. 😏

7. Vs the reality

#7 Research meme - Source: Pinterest

When you tell people that you are doing psych research, everybody imagines something different. However, the reality is completely different from their picture. But calm down; at least we know that you are drowning among the papers.

8. Don’t want to be THAT person

#8 Research meme - Source: Illinois

If you are the person who made somebody do psych Research or made them into psychology, you should definitely question yourself and your actions. 👀 

9. None can say the opposite!

#9 Research meme - Source: Giphy

If one has never done any research, s/he can assume that you begin a research, develop, and finish it. Nevertheless, of course, the process is way much more complicated than that! 

• 10. Welcome to the Research-lover club🫶

#10 Research meme - Source: Imgflip

If you are into research, any topic will be a duty for you. A new phone? A holiday plan? A trip abroad? Considered it done because the necessary research is done!

11. Me trying not to be a square

#11 Research meme - Source: Facebook- High Impact PhD Memes 

When you attempt to try a new research method for the first time, you might feel the anxiety of not knowing what you are doing. But as you do, it gets better, we promise. 

12. That’s the only smart thing to do 😎

#12 Research meme - Source: Meme-arsenal

Before making an important decision, no matter what, you should definitely do your research because it is how cool people act! 

13. UX Research is everything!

#13 Research meme - Source: Playbook UX

If you are a UX designer, you can share this meme with confidence. The picture given above summarizes the importance of UX research very well. 

14. Watch me, then 😈

#14 Research meme - Source: Pinterest

Yes, probably it is not a paper that can be written the night before; we know that. But if there is no other option left, it is possible turning into a writing machine. ⌨️

• 15. It is a serious job🧐

#15 Research meme - Source: Memes

While doing research, the most significant part is to collect data related to your topic in your most serious mood. It is essential but hard to keep this mood for a long time. 

16. Am I just perfect or bad at self-feedback?

#16 Research meme - Source: Tumblr

It seems like it is easier to find somebody else’s errors or criticize it. But when it comes to ours, our mistakes come suddenly invisible. Science needs to explain this!

17. I want to break free🎶

#17 Research meme - Source: McGill

While working on our research papers, we know that you do not completely feel free and work as you wish. Practicum supervisors are like a limit for research. 

18. Above the clouds☁️

#18 Research meme - Source: Imgflip

While doing the research, there is always a crowd of tabs that we cannot dare close. But, when we complete the research, it is the most satisfying feeling to close all the tabs finally.

19. So am I…

#19 Research meme - Source: Make a meme

This process is challenging both physically and psychologically, for sure. So, finishing a research paper might feel like someone who survived a battle scene. 

• 20. Look, I am famous!

#20 Research meme - Source: Twitter-High Impact PhD Memes

It is a really really satisfactory feeling to see your work online! Also, reading your work from someone else’s perspective is quite fun. 

21. It is hard to keep your energy stable 📉

#21 Research meme - Source: Meme-arsenal

At the beginning of the semester, we have big energy and motivation to start our paper. However, at the end of the semester, it is hard to feel the same enthusiasm and energy.  

22. Why would they?😭

#22 Research meme

Yes, we know that the question is optional, but still, it hurts us… When the respondents skip the question, we feel the rejection of the bone. 💔

23. So, what a medical researcher does?

#23 Research meme - Source: Mosio

When you tell people that you are a medical researcher, everybody might assume or imagine your work differently. This meme given above is a good illustration of the situation. 

24. The hardest part is done 👍

#24 Research meme - Source: Quick meme

Sometimes, it is hard to understand the topic or instructions of the research. When you understand it, it gets easier. However, when you complete your research and realize that you did wrong from the beginning, it is like a nightmare!

• 25. No kid, just no.

#25 Research meme - Source: Memes happen

Yes, Wikipedia is also a source of information. But when the data is taken as copy and paste, it is an unacceptable mistake that a professional never ever does!

26. It is worthy ✨

#26 Research Meme

Looking at your final work and being able to be proud of the paper feels like a real victory! Is the paper good? Yes. Am I okay? Doesn’t matter. 🤝

27. Hard to tell🤔

#27 Research meme - Source: Make a meme

Both quantitive research and qualitative research have pros. But it is like a dilemma to make a decision between these two. 

28. But I googled it 😏

#28 Research meme - Source: Quick meme

Yes, it is not possible to do our research in libraries. Instead, we google our questions and topics. Still, it is research, isn’t it?😇

29. Do not confuse me, please🙏

#29 Research meme - Source: Twitter - Iopsyche Memes

Sometimes, our research does not give us what we want. However, we can turn these opposite ideas into the next work. Looking on the bright side is our job! 

• 30. Which one are you?

#30 Research meme - Source: 9GAG

If you want to be the muscled dog, take your job seriously. Otherwise, you will be the weak dog if you do not work like a professional! 

31. 🥁Drum rolls🥁

#31 Research meme - Source: Memes happen

Imagine that you have already prepared the 15 pages of your research, and your PI tells you to start over. The pain🤡

32. It is time to be serious

#32 Research meme - Source: Cheezburger

Yes, the research is important. There should not be any spelling errors. But memes never allow spelling eros. Check it once, twice, three times, four times, five times….

33. That critical decision

#33 Research meme - Source: Meme-arsenal

It is essential to read the important papers related to the topic. But when it takes too much time and delays the time of starting your own research, it might feel anxious.😶

34. Let’s calm down

#34 Research meme - Source: Joey deVilla

One cannot deny that Google is a source of information today. But still, simply scrolling through pages on Google does not give you a good research paper. 

• 35. Let your confidence speak!

#35 Research meme - Source: Giphy

When you are well-equipped for a topic that you have done your research before, and you witness that someone is talking totally wrong about it, you can let your self-confidence speak!

36. A product without UX Research?!

#36 Research meme - Source: Twitter - Doug Collins

The importance of UX research can be fully understood when a product is launched without UX research. 

37. Let’s make it spicy🪩

#37 Research meme - Source: LinkedIn

If your cries for help are ignored, all you need to do is to name the docs in a fun way, just like the example given above. 😊

38. The moment of confusion

#38 Research meme - Source: Memes

When you think about too much of your research, it starts to seem wrong and correct at the same time. So, not to feel burn-out, avoid thinking about too much. 

39. Social media and research?

#39 Research meme - Source: Ah See It 

Digital culture has changed many things. When we witness someone on social media mention their research, it does not sound reassuring, right? 

• 40. It is what it is

#40 Research meme - Source: Make a meme

I have not slept, and I have not eaten properly lately. I am also not socializing in these last days. But it does not matter because I finished my research. 👍 

In this post, we have collected funny research paper memes, UX research memes, funny clinical research memes, or research memes in gif forms to make you smile. Memes are an excellent form of common feelings, and if these memes were able to help you have a great time, we are even happier than you! 

Şeyma is a content writer at forms.app. She loves art and traveling. She is passionate about reading and writing. Şeyma has expertise in surveys, survey questions, giveaways, statistics, and online forms.

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 12 May 2021

The 100 memes that immortalize my PhD defence

• Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour 0

Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour works as a policy analyst for the Government of Canada’s Climate Change Preparedness in the North Program.

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I finished my PhD on sea-ice dynamics in Nunavik, an Inuit territory in the Canadian Arctic, during the pandemic. My defence took place on 30 October 2020, over Zoom.

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Is your thesis on memes?

If you're working on a meme studies related thesis, post about it here!

• What is your thesis topic?
• What kind of methodology or theoretical framework are you using?
• What's the most interesting part of the work for you?

I wrote two of my theses so far on memes. You can read the latest one here, on the forum: The Memeticist's Challenge Remains Open (2018) (I crossposted it from my blog to see how it works).

My topic is the philosophy and history of meme studies, from memetics to Internet memes.

I use the philosophy of biology to argue for an anti-Dawkinsian (and hence anti-Shifmanian) meme studies that treats Internet memes as paradigm cases of memes.

The most interesting part of the work for me is the richness of the interconnections between different schools of thought within meme studies. I love examining the diversity of thought in the various approaches that are being used and tested within meme studies, from anthropological approaches to big data. In particular, the philosophical foundations that different researchers adopt and deploy within their work based on how they conceive of memes is mesmerising to me.

i am presently writing my thesis on the ontology & epistemology of memes. i would actually be interested in sharing drafts here & receiving feedback. this excerpt describes the structure as presently envisioned:

At this point, I shall take stock. I began (1.1) by first introducing memes by giving an overview of their cultural impact. I then turned (1.2) to examining the various senses of the word «meme». I specified (1.22) the focus of my thesis– image macro-type memes. Afterward, I gave basic motivations for analysing memes as art (1.31) & as speech (1.32). The objective of this thesis is to carry out an ontological & epistemological analysis of memes. Despite their cultural & even political significance, memes have not been the subject of philosophical attention. Yet, as shown by Frankfurt’s study of bullshit (1986) and Anderson and Lepore’s examination of slurs (2013), the philosophical analysis of mundane concepts– those that we often take for granted– can be illuminating & transformative. The upshot of this thesis is twofold. First, I hope to motivate further philosophical study of memes. Second, I hope to develop a point of juncture between disparate philosophical subdisciplines (epistemology, philosophy of art). I will pursue these aims in the next 2 chapters by developing the analysis of memes first, as art, & then, as speech. In chapter 2, I begin with an investigation into the ontology of memes qua works of art. I draw upon Wollheim’s type/token framework (1968) from the philosophy of art in order to explicate the dual meanings present in the colloquial usage of the word «meme» & to build on preceding ontological accounts of memes (Evnine 2018, Vulliamy 2022). By contrasting memes with interpretive works of art, which exemplify a type/token ontology, I draw out significant differences between the mediums. These differences, which arise from the peculiar features of meme communities, strain the type/token distinction. I conclude that the ontology of memes requires a dedicated approach. In chapter 3, I draw on the notion of testimony in order to make sense of epistemic interactions involving memes. The resulting concept, memetic testimony, speaks to a largely unrecognised positive epistemic dimension of memes– how memes might be epistemically edifying. Finally, in chapter 4, I conclude by outlining future research directions.

–jay was here!

That looks excellent. I've also been working on an article that discusses Wollheim's (Peircian) type-token framework too! I'll post it once it's done and tag you in a reply.

I've found that Wollheim's particular use of the type-token distinction is worth paying very close attention to if you're going to apply it to memes as such. Namely, Wollheim emphasises that types are neither:

• classes , which have members , not tokens; nor
• universals , which have instances , not tokens.

Instead, types have tokens .

This is uncannily similar to debates within the philosophy of biology that formed a foundation of classical meme theory during the 70s. Namely, David Hull's ontology of species. Hull claims that species are neither universals nor classes (such as the class "planets") but "spatiotemporally localized cohesive and continuous entities" (such as "Mars").

That's quite different from Wollheim's Peircian framework, which supposes that while objects of art are historical entities, the work of art is something quite similar to classes or universals (but not exactly). But it would seem that the entities from which they derived their different conclusions are similar in many ways (and hence classical memetics!).

The concomitant debates around the issue of defining art, meme, gene, species, organism, and so on overlap in terms of ontological challenges. Maybe you will find it useful to consider Wollheim's critics and how they dealt with his theories. I'd love to discuss these since I'm really interested in reading more art critical theories in this school of thought.

(Note, however, that " type " in biology refers to a particular specimen which is used as the canonical example for descriptions of defining features for the taxon to which it belongs.)

i made this table to highlight medium-specific quirks on the type/token distinction.

columns = examples of kinds of works of arts which seem to follow a type/token distinction

formulaic representation : does it have something like sheet music, a script, a choreography, some recipe or notation?

token : if the work is a type (i.e., an abstract structure), what are the actual tokens?

ontological priority : the overly complicated term used in the literature to mean chronological precedence. which comes first– the book as abstract type or as concrete token? in most cases, i suspect that the type either precedes the token, or else both are simultaneous. it is only in exceptional cases that i can think of that the token comes before the type– as in the case of memes. in the case of folk tales i'll have to think more about that, since at inception they may be more like novels or poetry in that both the type & the token come into being simultaneously...

regulation : does the type just govern the form &/or content of the tokens, or is the relation between type & token more complicated than this unidirectional picture? the abstract structure that is the symphony strictly regulates what counts as a performance. this regulation is mediated by the score (a formulaic representation). it is not the case in music that a given performance can recursively alter the symphony itself. even very influential cases can at most be said to alter the public image of the work– not the work itself (without further argument).

things i highlighted in yellow are things i found interesting.

novels don't have formulaic representations. or rather, the sort of thing (the text) which in other cases we would call the formulaic representation is in this case the token.

depending on the art form, poetry can take on two different ontological "configurations". in the first sense, it's more similar to a novel. in the second sense, the text itself plays the role of formulaic representation, & the actual tokens become readings (e.g., at an open mic).

memes & folk tales are both participatory mediums. neither involves well-defined "creator" roles. concerning regulation, the direction of fit might be to some extent bidirectional (though obviously not equally). token tellings & token memes can recursively influence the overarching type. also, the tokens arguably predate the type coming into existence.

finally, i'm still not very clear on how exactly type/token differs from universal/particular & classes (sets?)/members. it's not obvious to me that historicity plays an important role in this regard. i know that goodman has his own dualist ontology of works of art which separates into autographic vs. allographic works, which iirc has something to do with historicity.

I like this argument, but is it true?

It seems neither plausible nor factual to me, since everybody drafts their works and it's often painfully clear that they are drafting their work to all but the most gifted of creators whose works seem to appear fully fledged out of the blue. Wollheim's own examples are things like statues and manuscripts, and it's peculiar to consider that the work of a statue really is prior to the marble after the carving; and it's unclear why the difference between non-interpretive, interpretive, and participatory works in this regard (if I am reading the table correctly). I'm not sure whether it really matters.

Insofar as an artist doesn't already know the entirety of his work before setting out to create the token, the arrangement is much the same as though he were "interpreting" an existing work from partial recollection, or collaborating with another individual. And drafting any sort of artwork seems inherently "regulatory" to me, but that might not be the point you are making.

This might be an annoyingly pragmatist thing to say, but I think you'll benefit massively in your research by giving a go at creating art in each of the media you're discussing.

I wrote my Master's dissertation and my doctoral thesis on memes--the one more or less led into the other!

I come from a linguistics background, so my approach is predominantly situated in linguistics approaches and theories, though I did end up borrowing elements from other disciplines as well. My primary focus was trying to situate memes within broader linguistic theory, to reconcile their characteristics with how we understand communication and language. I don't suggest that memes are a language unto themselves, but that they can be better understood and categorized by using linguistic methods.

So my main theoretical themes were iconicity, metaphor, and ostension for the cognitive side and meaning construction, along with elements of community of practice and some other approaches for the social side of things. I did a case study review of 30 prominent memes, along with an online survey (on reddit) and some focus groups of university students.

There was lots of really really cool things that came out of my data collection, but I think one of the best bits is just how much information memes can convey. They can pack a lot of information into a relative small unit, as well as being more visceral, emotive, or metatextual than other types of communication, especially in a digital environment.

It's been great doing this research and I'm looking forward to doing more and using my thesis as a jumping off point for further work!

I would love to see your theses and hear more about your methodology in particular. I'm especially intrigued by the ostension and meaning construction aspects. I completely agree about taking and using methodologies from lingustics (or any other field for that matter) without worrying about whether memes count as the right subject matter for that purpose and so on. I think I heard that this is a growing trend too.

thanks for your thoughtful comments! my replies may be sporadic since i'm working on different parts of my thesis right now for submission in 10 days. you know how it is. but your feedback is without a doubt helpful.

this idea of ontological priority isn't mine (might have gotten it from greg currie?). i think that there could be something to it, though, even if works of art incrementally come into existence (rather than all at once). even if the novel, for instance, exists first as scattered partial drafts, one might still ask whether the drafts are partial tokens, & in what relation do they stand to the premature type (if there is such a thing.). surely it is also the case with memes, that the type does not come into being with the first image macro but is emergent after successive tokens are made (whether by the same individual who's forcing it or naturally by others).

Insofar as an artist doesn't already know the entirety of his work before setting out to create the token, the arrangement is much the same as though he were "interpreting" an existing work from partial recollection, or collaborating with another individual.

this is true. but at the very least, the medium does seem to make a difference in what is considered a type & a token. this is why the case of the poem is very interesting. the type in the case of a written poem is a non-spatiotemporal (i.e., abstract) string of words. its tokens are physical texts. but suppose i were to go on tour & give readings of my poems. now the tokens are individual performances. in this case, it seems like there is a hierarchy of types, where the abstract string of words is a "meta-type". in the first case, the medium was just poetry (& the tokens were physical texts), in the second case, some genre of spoken word performance (& the tokens were performances). but in both cases, the overarching type was the meta-type– the abstract string of words.

i think this difference is marked by the boundary between interpretive & non-interpretive works. compare now a novel & a song. the tokens are respectively, physical texts & performances. but in the case of the song, we do have a formulaic representation– sheet music. in the case of the novel, there is no such thing– or rather, the closest thing we have to that, which is a copy of a book, is actually the token of the novel.

And drafting any sort of artwork seems inherently "regulatory" to me, but that might not be the point you are making.

there are significant differences between the regulatory relationships across all of these cases. what i find unique, in the case of memes, is their participatory nature. but it is not the process of making a meme token that is participatory– rather, it is the authoring & maintenance of a meme type. hence, meme warfare (e.g., the battle for the soul of Pepe, provincialism against normies).

we might say, loosely, that there is a more or less unidirectional "one to many" regulatory relationship in the case of a symphony, since one/few composers participate in its creation, & there is an authoritative/definitive guide for how to instantiate it in a performance. by contrast, the regulatory relationship in the case of a meme [type] is less unidirectional (but nowhere near equally bidirectional) "many to one" regulatory relationship. many people participate in its creation, & there is no formulaic guide for how to make a token instance of the meme.

Right, I see. So the debate about ontological priority is actually more metaphysical than ontological. I don't think I can offer much further useful commentary about that for now!

This is a terrific way to formulate your position, because it clarifies it in a way that can be cross-referenced against the positions given by the other thinkers you're discussing. For example, it seems to me that it makes more sense to understand Wollheim as suggesting that art too forms a "one-to-many" relation between the type and tokens, since the artist must "identify" the correct expression of his work of art in order to (say) stop editing and call it a day, and the audience too identifies works of art based on picking out certain objects as being (the "same") works of art.

That actually really helps me understand why you are interested in talking about the "ontological priority" stuff, since now the discussion about the directionality of regulation gets looped right back into the discussions about epistemology (namely interpretation or "interpretive works of art") and the type-token distinction. That sounds like really hard work and I'm not sure how I'd approach it, but does look like a brilliant way to tie everything together.

Thanks! So given that there hasn't been an authoritative linguistic treatment of memes, I had to assemble my own framework and approach, which required borrowing pieces from lots of different places.

The ostensive aspects were primary drawn from the work of Scott-Phillips and his approach of ostensive-inferential communication. I found his model of making a deliberate sign implying meaning, relying on context and shared knowledge, to be very pertinent to memes. A meme itself serves as an ostensive unit, which, drawing on shared understanding, can allow a viewer to infer meaning beyond the unit itself.

This process, paired with elements of iconicity and metaphor, allows memes to encode and transmit meaning, according to my work. The whole idea of meaning construction within memes is what drew me to the topic in the first place!

Happy to share more about my methods!

I'd love to see a diagram of how meaning is created in memes this way. I really wanna know what you mean by "ostensive unit" and "meaning beyond the unit itself". So much of analysis around memes is "formalistic" in that they focus strictly on the image itself.

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Pepe the frog: a case study of the internet meme and its potential subversive power to challenge cultural hegemonies, description:.

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Article Contents

Memes in a digital world: reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker, memes: from academic to public discourse (and back), memes' promises and pitfalls for analyzing digital culture, unpacking internet memes, leave britney alone, acknowledgments, about the authors.

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Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker

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Limor Shifman, Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , Volume 18, Issue 3, 1 April 2013, Pages 362–377, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12013

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This paper re-examines the concept of “meme” in the context of digital culture. Defined as cultural units that spread from person to person, memes were debated long before the digital era. Yet the Internet turned the spread of memes into a highly visible practice, and the term has become an integral part of the netizen vernacular. After evaluating the promises and pitfalls of memes for understanding digital culture, I address the problem of defining memes by charting a communication-oriented typology of 3 memetic dimensions: content, form, and stance. To illustrate the utility of the typology, I apply it to analyze the video meme “Leave Britney Alone.” Finally, I chart possible paths for further meme-oriented analysis of digital content.

Memes are a pain. Or so at least a glance into the world of academic literature would suggest. Ever since Richard Dawkins coined the term in 1976 to describe gene-like infectious units of culture that spread from person to person, memes have been the subject of constant academic debate, derision, and even outright dismissal. Recently, however, the concept once kicked out the door by many academics is coming back through the Windows (and other operating systems) of Internet users. In the vernacular discourse of netizens, the phrase “Internet meme” is commonly applied to describe the propagation of content items such as jokes, rumors, videos, or websites from one person to others via the Internet. According to this popular notion, an Internet meme may spread in its original form, but it often also spawns user-created derivatives.

The uptick in vibrant popular discourse about memes in an era increasingly defined by Internet communication is not coincidental. While memes were conceptualized long before the digital era, the unique features of the Internet turned their diffusion into a ubiquitous and highly visible routine. Memes, since at least as early as the 1990s, have been said to “replicate at rates that make even fruit flies and yeast cells look glacial in comparison” ( Dennett, 1993 , p. 205). In what follows, I explore the utility of memes for understanding digital culture, positing throughout the following two premises: First, that the intense emotions and dramatic statements characterizing both sides of the memes debate need to be toned down. While enthusiastic advocators argue that the meme explains everything and their opponents assert it explains and changes absolutely nothing, it might be worth asking whether the meme concept may be useful for something . In this endeavor I follow the footsteps of researchers such as Johnson ( 2007 ), Knobel and Lankshear ( 2007 ), Jones and Schieffelin ( 2009 ), Benett (2003), and Burgess ( 2008 ), who used the meme as a prism for understanding certain aspects of contemporary culture without embracing the whole set of implications and meanings ascribed to it over the years.

The second premise is that we should look at memes from a communication-oriented perspective. Coined by a biologist, the term meme has been widely adapted (and disputed) in many disciplines, to include psychology, philosophy, anthropology, folklore, and linguistics. For the most part, however, it was utterly ignored in the field of communication. Until the twenty-first century, mass communication researchers felt comfortable overlooking memes. As units that propagate gradually through interpersonal contact, they were considered unsuitable for exploring content that is transmitted simultaneously from a single institutional source to the masses. But this is no longer the case in an era of blurring boundaries between interpersonal and mass, professional and amateur, bottom-up and top-down communications. In a time marked by a convergence of media platforms ( Jenkins, 2006 ), when content flows swiftly from one medium to another, memes have become more relevant than ever to communication scholarship.

The questions I address in what follows are rather straightforward: How, if at all, is the meme concept useful for understanding digital culture? What important obstacles stand in the way of its being accepted in research, and how can these barriers be overcome? The answers to these questions unfold serially in five parts. In the first section, I interpret the meme concept and its controversial status in academia, as well as its revival in the vernacular discourse of Internet users. I then look at the promises and pitfalls of memes for understanding Internet culture, suggesting that some previous premises about the concept should be put aside. In the third part of this essay I delve into the problem of defining meme units, charting a communication-oriented typology of memetic dimensions. To illustrate the utility of this typology, I provide a detailed analysis of Chris Crocker's video meme “Leave Britney Alone” and its various imitations, as well as a short corroborative analysis of the more recent “Pepper-Spraying Cop” meme. Finally, I offer some thoughts about the potential meaning and relevance of this paper to the field of diffusion studies, charting possible paths for further meme-oriented analysis of new media.

The term meme was introduced by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976). As part of his larger effort to apply evolutionary theory to cultural change, Dawkins defined memes as small cultural units of transmission, analogous to genes, which are spread from person to person by copying or imitation. Examples of memes in his pioneering text include specific signifiers such as melodies, catchphrases, and clothing fashions, as well as abstract beliefs (for instance, the concept of God). Like genes, memes are defined as replicators that undergo variation, competition, selection, and retention. At any given moment, many memes are competing for the attention of hosts; however, only memes suited to their sociocultural environment spread successfully, while others become extinct ( Chielens & Heylighen, 2005 ).

The word meme derives from the Greek mimema , signifying “something which is imitated,” which Dawkins shortened to rhyme with gene. Interestingly, a similar term to signify cultural evolution had appeared a century earlier. In 1870 the Austrian sociologist Ewald Hering coined the phrase Die Mneme (from the Greek mneme , meaning memory), which the German biologist Richard Semon used as a title for his 1904 book Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen ( Hull, 2000 ). Unaware of this existing terminology ( Dawkins, 2004 ), Dawkins' expression proved an accidental but successful imitation in itself: His concept survived and proliferated in the scientific world.

After more than a decade of sporadic and stuttering growth, memetics —understood as “the theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes” ( Heylighen & Chielens, 2009 , p. 1)—began to take shape as an active research program, drawing scientists from many fields in the 1990's ( Hull, 2000 ). Important landmarks on this path included contributions made by the prominent philosophers Douglas Hofstadter (1985) and Daniel C. Dennett ( 1990 , 1993 , 1995 ), the emergence of the Journal of Memetics between 1997 and 2005, and the publication of several meme-oriented books ( Boyd & Richardson, 2005 ; Brodie, 1996 ; Distin, 2005 ; Lynch, 1996 ). Of this stream, Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine (1999) may well be the most influential, yet also the most disputed.

Since its early days, memetics has drawn constant fire. Among the criticisms raised against it, four positions are particularly relevant to our context. The first is the concept's ambiguity: There is disagreement about what precisely a meme is, which leads to difficulties in quantifying and measuring it. Second, the analogy between nature and culture feeding the field has been criticized as reductive, materialistic, and ineffective in describing complex human behaviors. Third, the conscious selection and mutation of memes has generated heated debates over human agency and memetic control. Finally, some critics claim that memetics has no added value: It does not offer tools or insights beyond those employed in traditional disciplines such as cultural anthropology or linguistics ( Benitez-Bribiesca, 2001 ; Chesterman, 2005 ; Rose, 1998 ). We shall return to these four quandaries—and to possible ways of addressing them.

While widely disputed in academia, the meme concept has enthusiastically been picked up by Internet users. A search of Google Trends suggests a spurt of interest on the subject since data collection began in 2008, and a quick Google query of the term “Internet meme” yielded around 1,550,000 hits (January 4, 2012), many of them leading to large interactive depositories of memetic content. For example, on the popular website Know your meme , “resident Internet scientists” appropriately dressed in white coats provide various explanations for the success of certain videos in generating wide attention ( http://knowyourmeme.com ). According to Knobel and Lankshear ( 2007 ), the word meme is employed by Internet users mainly to describe the rapid uptake and spread of a “particular idea presented as a written text, image, language 'move,' or some other unit of cultural 'stuff''” (p. 202). This vernacular use, the authors submit, is utterly different from the one prevalent in the academic study of memetics: If the former tends to describe recent, often short-lasting fads, longevity is the key of “serious” memetics, since successful memes are defined as the ones that survive in the longue durée . Another difference relates to the object of analysis: Whereas in memetics the unit of analysis itself is abstract and controversial, Internet users tend to ascribe the meme tag to concrete phenomena such as particular YouTube videos that lure many derivatives. “Leave Britney Alone,” the “Star War Kid,” Hitler's “Downfall” parodies, and the “Numa Numa guy” are particularly famous drops in a memetic ocean.

The yawning gap between popular and academic uses of memes may serve as a fertile site for an improved meme theory. Here I follow Johnson's ( 2007 ) assertion that memes may be of particular relevance for cultural analysis that is interested in deciphering the meaning of “seemingly superficial and trivial elements of popular culture” (p. 27). Thus, a promising starting point for this exploration would be in identifying and mapping memetic dimensions of texts previously crowned as successful Internet memes, with an eye toward examining whether Internet memes enrich our understanding of this controversial concept.

But before such an expedition begins, we need to get rid of some excess baggage. During its 25 years of existence, the term meme accumulated many meanings. Some of them seem very useful for understanding contemporary digital culture; others somewhat less. In the next section I will catalog and differentiate between them.

Three main attributes ascribed to memes are of particular relevance to the analysis of contemporary digital culture. First, memes may best be understood as cultural information that passes along from person to person, yet gradually scales into a shared social phenomenon . 1 Although they spread on a micro basis, memes' impact is on the macro: They shape the mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups ( Knobel & Lankshear, 2007 ). This attribute is highly compatible to the way culture is formed in the so-called era of Web 2.0, which is marked by application platforms for facilitating user-generated content. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other similar applications are based on propagation of content, to paraphrase Lincoln, of users by users for users. Such sites represent “express paths” for meme diffusion: content spread by individuals can scale up to mass levels within hours. More broadly, this decentralized, nonhierarchical, and user-based model also drives new mindsets and social norms occupying media use ( Baym & Burnett, 2009 ; boyd, 2008 ; Jenkins, 2006 ; O'Reilly, 2007 ).

A second attribute of memes is that they reproduce by various means of imitation . In oral communication, people become aware of memes through their senses, process them in their minds, and then “repackage” them in order to pass them along to others ( Dawkins, 1982 ). In the digital age, however, people do not have to repackage memes: They can spread content as is by forwarding, linking, or copying. Yet a quick look at any Web 2.0 application would reveal that people do choose to create their own versions of Internet memes, in startling volumes. Two main repackaging strategies of memes are prevalent on the web: mimicry and remix. There is nothing new about mimicry —people have always been engaged in impersonating others. However in the web 2.0 era everyday mimetic praxis have turned into a highly visible phenomenon in the public sphere. Websites such as YouTube are flooded with imitations—almost any user-generated video that passes a certain threshold of views inspires a stream of emulations ( Shifman, 2012 ). The second strategy of memetic repackaging, remixing , is also extremely prevalent, as digital technology and a plethora of user-friendly applications enable people to download, re-edit, and distribute content very easily ( Lessig, 2008 ; Manovich, 2005 ). User-driven imitation and remix have become highly valued pillars of contemporary participatory culture, to the extent that one may argue that we live in an era driven by a hyper-memetic logic. 2 The term “meme” is particularly suitable to describe this glut of re-works, as the concept —deliberately connoting “mimesis”—is flexible enough to capture a wide range of communicative intentions and actions, spanning all the way from naïve copying to scornful imitation.

A third attribute of memes that makes them appealing for scholars interested in digital culture is their diffusion through competition and selection . Memes vary greatly in their degree of fitness, that is, their level of adaptiveness to the sociocultural environment in which they propagate ( Aunger, 2000 ). While processes of cultural selection are ancient, digital media have afforded researchers with the ability to trace the spread and evolution of memes ( Shifman & Thelwall, 2009 ). But it is not only experts who can now analyze digital traces on the Web—in many Web 2.0-friendly websites, metadata about viewing preferences, choices, and responses is constantly aggregated and displayed for all users to view ( Benkler, 2006 ; Burgess & Green, 2009 ). Thus, metainformation about competition and selection processes is increasingly becoming a visible part of the process itself.

The analysis so far presents memes and digital culture as a match made in heaven: The Internet is not only saturated with memetic activity, but also allows for its investigation in unprecedented ways. However, some controversies surrounding memes—in particular those I shall refer to as “biological analogies” and “who's the boss”—have hindered the wide uptake of the concept in studying digital culture.

Two biological analogies are especially prevalent in the discourse about memes: viruses and genes. The meme-as-virus analogy sees the similarity between memes and disease agents. Taking epidemiology as its model, it considers memes the cultural equivalents of flu bacilli, transmitted through the communicational equivalents of sneezes ( Alvarez, 2004 ). In Internet culture, this metaphor is prevalent in the highly visible discourse on “viral” content. Yet Jenkins et al. ( 2009 ) rightfully assert that this metaphor has been used in a problematic way, conceptualizing people as helpless and passive creatures, susceptible to the domination of meaningless media “snacks” that infect their minds.

The second prevalent biological metaphor for memes —deriving directly from Dawkins' work—takes evolutionary genetics as its model. However, some works have “pushed the analogy with the gene to its logical extremes” by seeking cultural equivalents for all principal evolutionary genetic concepts, including genotype, phenotype, transcription, and code ( Alvarez, 2004 , p. 25). This effort was criticized not only because memes behave very differently than genes ( Atran, 2001 ), but also since the reduction of culture to biology narrows and simplifies complex human behaviors. The prevalent notion is thus that the meme-gene analogy should be taken with many grains of salt ( Blackmore, 1999 ). Put differently, it is not necessary to think of biology when analyzing memes. The ideas of replication, adaptation, and “fitness” to a certain environment can be analyzed from a purely social/cultural perspective.

Another fundamental controversy in memetics, tagged here as “who's the boss,” relates to the issue of human agency in the process of meme diffusion. On one end of the spectrum, we find scholars such as Blackmore ( 1999 ), who claims that people are “meme machines” operated by the numerous memes they host and constantly spread. Nonetheless, I contend here that the undermining of human agency is not inherent to the meme concept itself—only to one strain of its interpretation. A number of works within the field of memetics are clearly opposed to it. Most important to this essay is Rosaria Conte's ( 2000 ) suggestion to treat people not as vectors of cultural transmission, but as actors behind this process. The dissemination of memes, she submits, is based on intentional agents with decision-making powers: Social norms, perceptions, and preferences are crucial in memetic selection processes. This conceptualization of people as active agents is highly appropriate for understanding how memes travel on the digital highway, particularly when examining cases in which the initial meaning of a meme is dramatically altered in the course of its diffusion.

If the biology-driven and power-driven controversies hinder the wide scholarly usage of memes, a third site of struggle—around the meme concept itself—may provide a path forward.

A core problem of memetics, maybe the core quandary, is the exact meaning of the term. The jury is still out on what is meant by “meme.” As mentioned above, Dawkins' ( 1976 ) initial definition of meme was quite ambiguous: He referred to it as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (p. 206). His set of meme examples spanned ideas (God), texts (nursery rhymes and jokes), and practices (Christian rituals). Ever since, the study of memes has been subject to disputes centering on the mind/body or genotype/phenotype dichotomy, yielding three positions regarding the nature of memes: mentalist-driven, behavior-driven, and inclusive.

Mentalist-driven memetics, represented by leading scholars in the field such as Dawkins himself (in his 1982 clarification of the theory), Dennett ( 1995 ), and Lynch ( 1996 ), is based on the differentiation between memes and meme vehicles. According to this school of thought, memes are ideas or pieces of information that reside in our brain. They are not simple ideas such as red, round, or cold, but complex ones that “form themselves into distinct memorable units” such as the ideas of alphabet, chess, or Impressionism ( Dennett, 1995 , p. 344). In order to be passed along from one person to another, memes are “loaded” on various vehicles: images, texts, artifacts or rituals. According to this view, those observable meme vehicles are equivalent to phenotypes—the visible manifestation of genes. In other words, memes are idea complexes and meme vehicles, their tangible expressions.

In contrast, the stream of thought surrounding behavior-driven memetics sees memes as behaviors and artifacts rather than ideas ( Gatherer, 1998 ). In the behaviorist vocabulary, the meme vehicle and meme are inseparable: The meme has no existence outside the events, practices, and texts in which it appears; that is, it is always experienced as encoded information. Moreover, this approach claims that if memes were indeed only abstract units of information, it would be impossible to identify them separately from their manifestation in the outside world. Defining memes as concrete units enables their evolution and diffusion to be studied empirically. This brand of memetics is closely related to the scholarly approach known as “diffusion studies” (Aungar, 2000). Many studies in this rich tradition focus on the diffusion of “innovations,” occasionally adapting the term meme and the general memetic framework (For recent overviews of the field, see Rogers, 2003 and Katz, 1999 ). However, as detailed in the concluding section, diffusion studies tend to cling to narrow definitions of memes, thus overlooking the complexity and richness that may be ascribed to the concept.

Whereas members of the mentalist- and behavior-driven schools see memes as either ideas or practices, what I tag as the inclusive memetic approach , represented by Susan Blackmore, uses the term “indiscriminately to refer to memetic information in any of its many forms; including ideas, the brain structures that initiate those ideas, the behaviors these brain structures produce, and their versions in books, recipes, maps and written music” (p. 66); that is, any type of information that can be copied by imitation should be called a meme.

But this inclusive approach may lack analytical power, as it assembles very different elements under its big conceptual tent. I therefore suggest a fourth approach: moving forward by looking at diffused units as incorporating several memetic dimensions . Since this paper focuses on digital culture, I will demonstrate this approach through the analysis of memes that spread via the Internet. Internet memes are defined here as units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by individual Internet users, creating a shared cultural experience in the process. I suggest looking at Internet memes not as single ideas or formulas that propagated well, but as groups of content items that were created with awareness of each other and share common characteristics. Going back to Dawkins' original idea—that memes are units of imitation —I find it useful to isolate three dimensions of cultural items that people can potentially imitate: content, form, and stance .

The first dimension relates mainly to the content of a specific text, referencing to both the ideas and the ideologies conveyed by it. The second dimension relates to form : This is the physical incarnation of the message, perceived through our senses. It includes both visual/audible dimensions specific to certain texts, as well as more complex genre-related patterns organizing them (such as lip-synch or animation). While ideas and their expression have been widely discussed in relation to the meme concept, the third—communication-related dimension—is presented here for the first time. This dimension—which relates to the information memes convey about their own communication—is labeled here as stance . Expanding Englebertson's (2007) definitions, I use “stance” to depict the ways in which addressers position themselves in relation to the text, its linguistic codes, the addressees, and other potential speakers. Like form and content, stance is potentially memetic; when re-creating a text, users can decide to imitate a certain position that they find appealing or use an utterly different discursive orientation.

Since I use stance in this context as a very broad category, I wish to clarify it by breaking it into three subdimensions, drawing on concepts from discourse and media studies: (1) participation structures -- who is entitled to participate and how, as conceptualized by Phillips ( 1972 ), (2) keying -- the tone and style of communication, as defined by Goffman ( 1974 ) and further developed by Blum-Kulka et al. ( 2004 ), and (3) communicative functions , as conceptualized by Roman Jakobson (1960). Jakobson identified six fundamental functions of human communication, concisely presented as follows: (a) Referential communication, which is oriented toward the context, or the “outside world”; (b) emotive, oriented toward the addresser and his/her emotions; (c) conative, oriented toward the addressee and available paths of actions (e.g. imperatives); (d) phatic, which serves to establish, prolong, or discontinue communication; (e) metalingual, which is used to establish mutual agreement on the code (for example, a definition); and (f) poetic, focusing on the aesthetic or artistic beauty of the construction of the message itself.

This analytic framework, consistent with the three memtic dimensions (content, form, and stance), as well as the three subdimensions of the latter dimension (participation structures, keying, and communicative functions) will be developed and applied in the following section to the analysis of a successful YouTube meme, featuring one somewhat upset fan.

On September 10, 2007, a young gay blogger and actor named Chris Crocker uploaded a YouTube video in which he reacted to the harsh criticism following pop star Britney Spears' lackluster performance on the MTV Music video awards. Crying and shouting throughout most of the clip, Crocker implored his viewers to “Leave Britney Alone”:

And how fucking dare anyone out there make fun of Britney, after all she's been through! She lost her aunt, she went through a divorce, she had two fucking kids, Her husband turned out to be a user, a cheater, and now she's going through a custody battle. All you people care about is readers and making money off of her. SHE'S A HUMAN! What you don't realize is that Britney is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about her. She hasn't performed on stage in years. Her song is called “give me more” for a reason because all you people want is MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE!. LEAVE HER ALONE! You're lucky she even performed for you BASTARDS! LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! […] Leave Britney Spears alone right NOW! I mean it. Anyone that has a problem with her you deal with me! because she's not well right now. Leave her alone…

The video gained over 2 million views within 24 hours, and many more in the following days and months (current view count is over 42 million). The Crocker sensation was reported on various mainstream media stages and generated worldwide attention ( Salvato, 2009 ). The video soon spawned a stream of derivatives: imitation-based memes (in which known actors and ordinary users impersonated Crocker), as well as remix-based memes (in which music, graphic elements, or dubbing were re-edited with the original).

In exploring “Leave Britney Alone” as a meme, we need to examine the distribution of the original video, but perhaps more importantly, we should investigate the structure and meaning of the new variations created of this video. People may share a certain video with others for many different reasons (spanning from identification to scornful ridicule), but when they create their own versions of it they inevitably reveal their interpretations of the text. The conceptualization of Internet memes as trinities of content, form and stance suggests that we need to follow separately the uptake—or rejection—of each memetic dimension by the text's imitators. In what follows, I will implement this strategy to evaluate the ways in which Crocker's video-meme was transformed in the course of its digital lifespan. The main dimensions embedded in the original video and their alternations by users are summarized in Table 1 .

Memetic Dimensions and Their Manifestation

Crocker's 2007 video was a complex potage of ideas, textual practices, and communicative strategies. While in practice these dimensions are importantly intertwined, feeding off each other in multifaceted ways, I attempt to disentangle them here for analytical purposes. Our starting point is the video's content, namely the ideas and ideologies that it conveys. The text includes, among other things, facts about Britney Spears' life (e.g., her two children) and castigation of people criticizing fallen celebrities. More broadly, in this video and others, Crocker wishes to convey the ideological message that being gay and effeminate is a legitimate practice. In terms of form, or textual construction, the video's layout includes one talking head, filmed in close up and in one-shot and situated in front a white cloth. It further includes repetitions of certain phrases, raised voice pitch, tears, and distraught hair-hand gestures.

The most complex dimension for analysis in Crocker's video relates to the dimension of stance. In relation to the subdimension of participation structure , the video, by virtue of its existence, reminds the viewer that a gay, overtly effeminate individual is openly expressing his opinion in the public sphere. Keying , as noted above, is the tone, or modality, of the internal framing of discursive events as formed by their participants. People can key their communication as funny, ironic, mocking, pretend, or serious ( Blum-Kulka et al., 2004 ). In the case of “Leave Britney Alone,” Crocker keys his utterances as extremely serious and as ultraemotional—sometimes so serious that, at a remove, it can even appear comical and ambiguously parodic. While some commentators questioned the sincerity of the video, Crocker insisted it was utterly genuine ( Christian, 2010 ). In an illuminating analysis of Crocker's video as a case for examining the borders between amateurism and professionalism in contemporary culture, Salvato ( 2009 ) describes it not only as being serious and emotional, but also marked by lack of self-control. Crocker embodies the allegedly amateur avocation to “lose it,” his body “deemed so wholly out of control in its production of fluids, movements and sounds” (p. 11). In relation to the communication functions defined by Jakobson (1960), of the six described above, the ones that seem most prominent in the video are the referential (Crocker provides us with facts about Britney's life), the conative (viewers are indulged to change their behavior), and above all the emotive, as this video is all about the addresser and his emotional state. In addition, a contextual examination of this video may lead to the identification of a certain phatic function to it. “Leave Britney Alone” is one of a stream of videos uploaded by Crocker on his YouTube channel. Through these frequent feeds, Crocker aspires to maintain the communicative path between himself, his budding acting career, and his faithful YouTube (and MySpace) viewers.

So far, I have charted the memetic dimensions embedded in Crocker's initial video. The question to be addressed now is: Which of these dimensions was taken up and imitated with accuracy by Internet users in their derivatives, and which ones were altered? In other words, which of these dimensions succeeded in the memetic competitive selection process? Since it is virtually impossible to track and examine all of this meme's offsprings, I compiled a sample of 20 highly viewed derivative videos. To create the sample, two queries where used in YouTube's internal search engine: the string “Leave Britney Alone,” and the words “leave” “alone” “Crocker.” I then sorted the results according to their view count, and selected the 20 most viewed videos (above 100,000 views) in which people were seen imitating Crocker. Analyzing them qualitatively, I aimed at identifying patterns of memetic uptake.

Among the three memetic dimensions, the one that viewers imitated with a high level of accuracy is the video's form. The mise-en-scène of one person in front of a white cloth filmed in one-shot was evident in virtually all texts. Men were featured in 16 videos out of 20, often bearing feminine markers similar to Crocker's (such as a wig or eyeliner). In addition, the composition of Crocker's sentences, as well as key phrases such as “leave X alone” and “s/he is a human,” were repeated throughout the sample.

In contrast to the relative accuracy in the imitation of the videos' form, radical changes take place on both the content and stance dimensions. These alternations are related, to a large extent, to the construction of all the videos in our sample as parodies . A major feature of parody is its construction with a critical difference from a source text that it mimics ( Hutcheon, 1985 ). While all parody includes some kind of imitation, it is important to note that not all imitations are parodies. Many YouTube videos are emulated without mocking their protagonists. For instance, the “Evolution of Dance” hit—itself capturing an openly self-parodying event—has spawned numerous imitations in which people copy the performer's dance movements in various contexts, without lampooning him. This is distinctly not the case in “Leave Britney Alone,” where the parodic intentions of the original are at best ambiguous and highly exploitable. As I demonstrate below, parody targets both the ideological and communicative aspects of the original meme.

To begin with, hardly any of the ideas conveyed by the original video were further circulated by its imitators: In only 2 texts out of 20 did speakers repeat Crocker's words; in all other cases, imitation involved a significant alternation of the original utterances. Videos divide evenly between two types. The first (commonly labeled “Leave Chris Crocker Alone”) includes clips mocking Britney Spears and Chris Crocker. In these clips, Crocker's message about the legitimacy of being an overtly effeminate homosexual is lampooned in various ways. Thus, for instance, the comedian Seth Green, in a heavily viewed parody, shouts and “implores” the audience to leave Chris Crocker alone, pausing occasionally to fix his black eyeliner: “You can't talk about someone when you are not willing to do what they do! You have not spent a mile walking in his sneakers, or, platform pumps…I don't know what he wears… BUT I BET IT'S STYLISH!” The second type of parody videos includes clips that mock a battery of other pop stars and celebrities. In such videos—including, for instance, “Leave Justin Bieber Alone,” “Leave Miley (Cyrus) Alone,” and “Leave Rebecca Black Alone”—the presenters mock Crocker's outcry to pity celebrities by performing the opposite: they publicly bash these celebs. Thus, for example, in one video the protagonist implores his viewers to “Leave Michael Jackson Alone”: “He had sex with a few people, who turned out to be under 13… He's only a human! I think […] And so what if he dangled his child off a balcony. You bastards are even lucky he bothered to show him to you…”

A radical alternation of meaning also takes place in the communication-oriented dimension of stance. In relation to participation roles, the notion that users who upload videos may be overtly effeminate gays is disdained through scornful imitations of Crocker's effeminate traits. Another major shift is related to keying (the tone and style of communication): User-generated derivatives abandon Crocker's overtly emotional performance in favor of a cynical and ironic one. No one says what s/he means in those videos. When a speaker “pleads” with his audiences to “leave Michael Jackson alone” because he “loves his monkey,” it is quite clear that the words spoken are not those meant. The same is true for the clip that implores “Leave Miley [Cyrus] Alone,” praising her with the following words: “She made you guys a movie in 3-D. She didn't have to do that. We would have been OK with 2-D, but she went the extra mile.” In all these cases the humorous effect derives from the gap between the uttered words and their diminishing meaning, or intention. Interestingly, the vast majority of the sampled videos employ common ironic keying: These videos are more similar to each other than to Crocker's original.

Regarding the communicative functions, I found that the most prominent ones in the original video—emotive and conative—are marginal in its derivatives. While imitators do convey a certain feeling (scornful amusement), and seem to want to generate a similar amused reaction, both the emotive and the conative components are not as explicit and strong as in the original video. Rather, imitations stress a different communicative role: They draw attention to the communication process itself, thus performing more closely to the metalinguistic function. This analysis follows Hariman's ( 2008 ) description of parody as “talk beside itself,” a mode of communication in which subtle communicative strategies become manifest. In our case, imitations draw attention to the communicative codes and strategies Crocker uses. Shouting, dramatization, and repetitions are all exaggerated and thus scorned as artificial and inappropriate. On a broader level, Crocker's imitations may also be fulfilling the phatic function. In an environment characterized by the rapid propagation and diversification of content, producing a takeoff of a popular and well known YouTube video such as “Leave Britney Alone” helps the person who uploads it stay in touch with the wider YouTube community. Uploading such videos may thus serve as another way to maintain the links underscoring a huge and highly heterogenic crowd.

My analysis so far yields a complex web of imitations and memetic dimensions. While users emulate the forms manifested in Crocker's video, they imitate the other imitators to construct opposing memes at the content and stance dimensions. In other words, the process of imitation combines overt copying and reversals of aspects of the original event. It may be that the most powerful communication-oriented meme spread by users in this process—one that has been replicated in almost all the videos we examined—is that of ironic communication: communication that veers from a definite commitment to one's uttered words, using language in a playful and nonobliging way.

So far I have demonstrated the utility of the threefold meme typology through a video-based example. I wish to further illustrate its applicability to other formats, such as image and text. To this end, I'll briefly look into the recent example of the “Pepper-Spraying Cop” meme. On 18 November 2011, students from the University of California - Davis campus gathered as part of the Occupy Wall Street protest. When they refused police orders to evacuate the area, two officers reacted by pepper-spraying a row of still-sitting students directly in their faces. Shortly after the incident, videos documenting it were uploaded to YouTube, generating uproar against the excessive use of force by American police officers (Dearen, 22.2. 2011 ). A photograph in which one of the cops, John Pike, was shown spraying the students quickly evolved into an Internet meme. Users Photoshopped the so-called casually pepper-spraying cop into an endless array of contexts, spanning historical; artistic; and pop-culture-oriented backgrounds (Jardin, 23.11. 2011).

The plethora of images constituting the “Pepper-Spraying Cop” meme can be analyzed through the lens of the three dimensional model of content, form and stance. Such an exercise reveals that while most versions share a similar Photoshop-based form, they vary greatly in terms of content. Content-wise, two main groups of meme versions were identified. The first group focuses on political contexts: Pike is shown pepper-spraying iconic American symbols such as George Washington crossing the Delaware; the former U.S. presidents on Mount Rushmore; and the Constitution itself, as well as freedom fighters across the globe (e.g., in Tiananmen Square). These political versions share a clear idea: that the officer brutally violated the basic values of justice and freedom as represented by the protestors. A second group of user-generated images is pop-culture oriented. In these versions, Pike is pepper-spraying icons such as Snoopy and Marilyn Monroe, as well as a battery of stars identified with other Internet memes, such as little baby panda and Keyboard Cat. The ideas conveyed by this group of pop-culture oriented memes are often polysemic. In one case, in which Pike is portrayed as spraying Rebecca Black—a widely scorned teen singer and Internet phenomenon—the original meaning of the photo as criticism of Pike seems to be almost reversed.

This differentiation between two types of memetic content can be further associated with alternations in stance. For instance, the utterly serious keying of the original photograph has been transformed in the process of memetic uptake, which involves explicit playfulness. Yet if in the politically oriented versions of the meme the keying is mainly sardonic, in the pop-culture-oriented ones the main tone is amused and humorous. The analysis of the “Pepper-Spraying Cop” meme according to the three memetic dimensions thus reveals that in contrast to the unified pattern of memetic uptake characterizing “Leave Britney Alone,” other memes might encompass a more divergent mode of diffusion and evolution. And this differentiation, as elaborated below, should be subjected to further empirical analysis.

This article is essentially about matchmaking. While memes and digital culture seem like an ideal fit, scholars—particularly in the field of communication—have so far been timid about coupling them. The forgoing essay thus both identifies and explores a fledgling field of knowledge. As such, it addresses three basic questions: (a) how, if at all, is the meme concept useful for understanding digital culture; (b) What important obstacles stand in the way of its being accepted in research; and (c) How can these obstacles be overcome?

Three attributes ascribed to the meme concept were highlighted here as particularly useful for exploring digital culture: Memes diffuse at the micro level but shape the macro structure of society; they reproduce by various means of imitation; and they follow the rules of competitive selection. These features were discussed here not only as apt descriptions of the technological affordances of the Internet in the Web 2.0 era, but also as key logics and perhaps even highly valued ideological pillars of a so called “participatory culture.” Yet two different features identified with the meme concept—close linkage with the biological metaphor and the undermined role of human agents—have hindered its uptake by media scholars. Two possible paths to overcoming these barriers were suggested: Forsaking the aspiration to find biological equivalents to all things cultural and conceptualizing humans in a more active way.

Another stumbling block to wider interest in memes relates to the ambiguity surrounding the concept. Since there is still dispute over what memes are, it is virtually impossible to study them empirically. Responding to this lacuna, I suggest in this article to define memes as complex systems incorporating three dimensions: content, form, and stance. When scrutinizing the propagation of memes, we should therefore examine them as trinities rather than as unified entities: The embracement—or rejection—of each dimension must be followed separately.

This distinction between memetic dimensions may serve as an invaluable tool for tracing the ways memes promulgate and shape digital culture. For instance, in the aforementioned “Leave Britney Alone” case, users chose to systematically undermine the ideological and communicative memes conveyed by Crocker's video, while simultaneously constructing and spreading opposing memes entailing ironic communication. Thus, while each user-generated video is ostensibly discrete and free to take its own form, a closer look reveals that Crocker's imitators chose to follow similar ideological and communicative routes, emulating each other's imitations. This pattern suggests that the ostensibly chaotic world (wide web) may in fact follow more organized cultural trajectories than meets the eye.

The differentiation between memetic dimensions may also advance our ability to create distinctions and draw borders between Internet memes. If we think of Internet memes as groups of interconnected content units that share common characteristics, we may further posit that such shared features may include content; form; and stance, and various combinations thereof. Therefore, the definition of a certain meme's scope may rely on the memetic dimension through which it is examined. For instance, if our prism is that of content, or ideas, we may argue that the same memetic content can be expressed in a video, a text, or a Photoshop image. In this case, what we define as a particular “Internet meme” will incorporate various formats. Alternatively, we may identify memetic formats, such as Image Macros or Lip-Sync, which are used for conveying various ideas. This differentiation thus allows for a nuanced, flexible, and dynamic account of what constitutes an Internet meme.

In providing a close reading of only two cases, this article implicitly suggests the need for further studies charting a large-scale map of Internet memes. Such works could ask what ideologies, textual conventions, and communication forms are conveyed by popular Internet memes, and what are the webs of relationships between these memetic dimensions. Eventually, this line of research will provide a comprehensive overview of prevalent assumptions, norms, and ideologies behind the memetic construction of digital culture.

As a concluding note, I wish to offer some preliminary thoughts about the potential meaning and relevance of this paper to the field of diffusion studies. At the turn of the century, Elihu Katz ( 1999 ), one of the founding fathers of the field, claimed that although questions about “how things get from here to there” (p.145) are at the heart of all disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, the field of diffusion studies has gone significantly undertheorized. He describes a gulf between the skyrocketing numbers of diffusion case studies and the lack of substantial efforts to theorize across discrete case studies and fields 3 One of the reasons Katz mentions for this impasse is the fact that “the items themselves refuse to hold still” (p.145). Another problem he hints at but does not articulate explicitly relates to the definition of the diffused unit. The study of diffusion until now has tended to focus on specific entities: In most text books, diffusion is defined as the propagation of “an idea, practice, or object” (e.g. Rogers, 2003 , p. 12). The “thing” itself which is diffused is always a well-defined entity, with clear boundaries. It is unchanging; its constant nature is what makes diffusion analysis possible.

This paper suggests a different route. Its three-dimension typology for analyzing Internet memes highlights the fact that, in diffusion or other types of communication research, the cultural object itself is a composite. In many cases, an item is at the same time an idea, a practice, and an object. Diffusion studies may therefore benefit from exploring the degree to which these dimensions work in cooperation or competition with each other. Indeed, looking at the diffused unit as an amalgam may also provide a key for a more nuanced account of cultural change. So far, the focus of diffusion studies has been mainly on the diffusion of innovation . But if we differentiate between content-, form-, and stance- based memes, we might discover that so-called “innovations” are sometimes old ideas or communicative practices in new textual gowns. This framework may therefore allow us to think about the delicate balance the between diffusion of innovation and the diffusion of tradition . Such a trajectory seems to fall in line with Benjamin Peters' ( 2009 ) recent suggestion to reconceptualize “new media” as “renewable media”: Rather than just asking if a medium is new or not, it might be more rewarding to trace the various forms that certain technological ideas take in the course of history. 4

To provisionally conclude, the meme is a natural for studying Internet and digital culture. Memetic behavior is not novel, but its scale, scope, and global visibility in contemporary digital environments are unprecedented. In this hyper-memetic era, user-driven circulation of copies and derivatives is a prevalent logic, or as Henry Jenkins (2009) aptly puts it: “if you don't spread, you are dead.” Copies become, in this sense, more important than the “original”: They are the raison d'etre of digital communication. It is clear that much more work is needed in excavating the wealth deriving from the coupling of the meme concept and digital communication. The fit between the two displays all the reluctance, enthusiasm, and pragmatic negotiation that one might expect of the marriage of an odd couple. Like it, it may be messy and complicated, but continuously interesting.

I am indebted to Menahem Blondheim, Benjamin Peters and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this manuscript. I would also like to thank Elihu Katz, Paul Frosh, and Zohar Kampf for their useful advice.

In this sense, one might argue that memes are equivalent to signs. Indeed, signs have much in common with memes, to the extent that it has been argued that memes are no more than newly labeled signs ( Kilpinen, 2008 ). Yet two fundamental differences between the concepts justify their discrete existence. First, as described above, the meme is not just a sign, but a complex sign: Whereas “god” is a meme, “red” is not ( Dennett, 1995 ). Second, while each meme is comprised of signs, not all signs are memes. For instance, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is composed of many signs, but only its first four notes have evolved as a meme. Over time, these notes were replicated as a discrete entity, separate from the symphony, thriving in contexts in which Beethoven's works were utterly unknown ( Dennett, 1995 ). To put it differently: A meme is a sign—or a set of signs—that gets replicated by many individuals. Borrowing from Simone de Beauvoir, we can thus argue: “One is not born a meme, but rather becomes one.”

This “hyper-memetic” existence may be related to new modes of thinking about copies, and copying. In his recent In Praise of Copying , Marcus Boon ( 2010 ) addresses the pervasive presence of copying in contemporary culture, claiming that it should first be celebrated as an integral and fundamental part of being human, and only then be thought of as something that should—or should not—be regulated. For a rich analysis of the concept see also Schwartz, 1996 .

In the decade following Katz's article, diffusion studies where reenergized by the ascent of the World Wide Web. “Diffusion of innovations” has so far been cited in a startling number of 31,598 works, according to Google Scholar. Some of these new studies strive to retheorize the field (e.g. Peres et. al, 2010), yet to the best of my knowledge, they still do not account for the problems of defining the propagated unit—and the changes it undergoes—more sensitively.

This mode of thinking of media as renewable, or as re-mediating well entrenched social structures, is evident in some historical works about the emergence of particular media, such as the telegraph ( Blondheim, 1994 ).

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Limor Shifman is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication and Journalism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main research interests are new media, popular culture, and the social construction of humor.

Addresss: Department of Communication and Journalism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel

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A popular YouTuber's negative video of Humane's AI Pin raises questions about critical reviews in the age of innovation

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Hello there! If you're struggling to decide the foods worth buying organic, best-selling author Michael Pollan has some suggestions for the ones worth splurging on to avoid harmful chemicals .  

In today's big story, we're looking at a critical tech review that caused a bit of a stir on social media .

What's on deck:

Markets: Goldman Sachs quiets the haters with a monster earnings report .

Tech: Leaked docs show one of Prime Video's biggest issues, forcing customers to abandon shows .

Business: The best bet in business these days? Targeting young men who like to gamble .

But first, the review is in!

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

The big story

Up for review.

"The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed… For Now"

Marques Brownlee, the YouTuber better known as MKBHD, didn't mince words with the title of his review of Humane's AI Pin .

In a 25-minute video , Brownlee details all the issues he encountered using the AI device. (Spoiler alert: There were a lot.)

Brownlee's review aligns with other criticisms of the device . But not all of those came from someone with as much sway. His YouTube channel has more than 18 million subscribers.

One user on X pointed that out , calling the review "almost unethical" for "potentially killing someone else's nascent project" in a post reposted over 2,000 times. 

Most of the internet disagreed, and a Humane exec even thanked Brownlee on X for the "fair and valid critiques." 

But it highlights the power of Brownlee's reviews. Earlier this year, a negative video of Fisker's Ocean SUV by Brownlee also made waves on social media . 

Critical reviews in the age of innovation raise some interesting questions.

To be clear, there was nothing wrong with Brownlee's review. Humane's AI Pin costs $700. Watering down his review to ease the blow would be a disservice to the millions of fans relying on his perspective before making such a significant purchase.

Too often, companies view potential customers as an extension of their research and development. They are happy to sell a product that is still a work in progress on the promise they'll fix it on the fly. ("Updates are coming!")

But in a world of instant gratification, it can be hard to appreciate that innovation takes time. 

Even Apple can run into this conundrum. Take the Apple Vision Pro. Reviewers are impressed with the technology behind the much-anticipated gadget — but are still struggling to figure out what they can do with it . Maybe, over time, that will get sorted out. It's also worth remembering how cool tech can be, as Business Insider's Peter Kafka wrote following a bunch of trips in Waymo's software-powered taxis in San Francisco . Sure, robotaxis have their issues, Peter said, but they also elicit that "golly-gee-can-you-believe-it" sense.

As for Humane, America loves a comeback story. Just look at "Cyberpunk 2077." The highly anticipated video game had a disastrous launch in 2020 , but redeemed itself three years later, ultimately winning a major award .

Still, Humane shouldn't get a pass for releasing a product that didn't seem ready for primetime, according to the reviews. 

And its issue could be bigger than glitchy tech. Humane's broader thesis about reducing screen time might not be as applicable. As BI's Katie Notopolous put it: " I love staring at my iPhone ."

3 things in markets

1. Goldman finally strikes gold. After a rough stretch, the vaunted investment bank crushed earnings expectations , sending its stock soaring. A big tailwind, according to CEO David Solomon, is AI spawning " enormous opportunities " for the bank. 

2. Buy the dip, Wedbush says. Last week's drop among tech stocks shouldn't scare away investors , according to Wedbush. A strong earnings report, buoyed by the ongoing AI craze, should keep them soaring, strategists said. But JPMorgan doesn't see it that way, saying prices are already stretched .   

3. China's economy beat analysts' expectations. The country's GDP grew 5.3% in the first quarter of 2024, according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. It's a welcome return to form for the world's second-largest economy, although below-par new home and retail sales remain a cause for concern .

3 things in tech

1. Amazon Prime Video viewers are giving up on its shows. Leaked documents show viewers are fed up with the streamer's error-ridden catalog system , which often has incomplete titles and missing episodes. In 2021, 60% of all content-related complaints were about Prime Video's catalog.

2. Eric Newcomer is bringing his Cerebral Valley AI Summit to New York. The conference, originally held in San Francisco, is famous for producing one of the largest generative AI acquisitions ever. Now, it's coming to New York in June .

3. OpenAI is plotting an expansion to NYC. Two people familiar with the plans told BI that the ChatGPT developer is looking to open a New York office next year. That would be the company's fifth office, alongside its current headquarters in San Francisco, a just-opened site in Tokyo, and spots in London and Dublin.

3 things in business

1. America's young men are spending their money like never before. From sports betting to meme coins, young men are more willing than ever to blow money in the hopes of making a fortune .

2. Investors are getting into women's sports. With women like Caitlin Clark dominating March Madness headlines, investors see a big opportunity. BI compiled a list of 13 investors and fund managers pouring money into the next big thing in sports.

3. Bad news for Live Nation. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department could hit the concert giant with an antitrust lawsuit as soon as next month. Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, has long faced criticism over its high fees.

In other news

Blackstone hires Walmart AI whiz to supercharge its portfolio companies .

Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Blackpink's Lisa: Celebrities spotted at Coachella 2024 . 

NYC's rat czar says stop feeding the pigeons if you want the vermin gone .

A major Tesla executive left after 18 years at the company amid mass layoffs .

Some Tesla factory workers realized they were laid off when security scanned their badges and sent them back on shuttles, sources say .

New York is in, San Francisco is very much out for tech workers relocating .

AI could split workers into 2: The ones whose jobs get better and the ones who lose them completely .

Oh look at that! Now Google is using AI to answer search queries .

A longtime banker gives a rare inside look at how he is thinking about his next career move, from compensation to WFH .

Clarence Thomas didn't show up for work today .

What's happening today

Today's earnings: United Airlines, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and others are reporting . 

It's Free Cone Day at participating Ben & Jerry's stores. 

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco , deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb , editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock , senior editor, in London. George Glover , reporter, in London.

Watch: Nearly 50,000 tech workers have been laid off — but there's a hack to avoid layoffs

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Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Dogwifhat Among Top Picks For This Researcher's 'Meme Coin Supercycle' Thesis

Zinger key points.

• Crypto veteran Flow in a recent thread highlighted crypto is the place for the most asymmetric opportunities.
• His top picks for meme coins are Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe, Dogwifhat, Toshi.

Crypto and macro researcher TradeTheFlow presented a compelling thesis on the rise of meme coins in the current crypto cycle.

What Happened: In an April 12 X (formerly Twitter) thread, Flow argues that meme coins are not just a passing trend but a reflection of a broader societal shift towards financial nihilism and high-risk, high-reward investment strategies.

The researcher suggests that we are entering a new generation of meme coins, where they are emerging as a new asset class within crypto rather than isolated runs of one or two coins over an entire cycle.

Flow points to the recent success of several meme coins, such as Dogwifhat WIF/USD , Bonk BONK/USD , Slerf SLERF/USD , and Book Of Meme BOME/USD , as evidence of this trend.

Flow also shares his top picks for meme coins with significant upside potential, categorizing them into three groups:

• Original (OG) memes: Dogecoin DOGE/USD , Shiba Inu SHIB/USD and Pepe PEPE/USD
• Solana memes: Bonk, Dogwifhat and Wenn (WEN)
• Base memes: doginme (DOGINME), Toshi (TOSHI) and Normie (NORMIE).

Also Read: Hold On To Your Dogecoin: It’ll Be The ‘First Meme Coin To Reach $100B Market Cap,’ Says Trader

Why It Matters: According to Flow, the widening wealth gap and the increasing difficulty for the average worker to achieve financial stability have led to a “propensity to take bigger risks” in the hopes of breaking out of the vicious cycle of economic hardship.

This has attracted many people to crypto, particularly meme coins, which have generated numerous rags-to-riches stories.

Flow highlights several reasons why meme coins have gained so much traction, including their ability to generate attention, their simple narratives, and their appeal as a form of rebellion against traditional crypto projects with high valuations pushed by venture capitalists.

He points to Dogecoin in the last bull run when it generated hype due to Elon Musk's tweets. Despite no fundamental value, it became popular.

What's Next : The influence of meme coins and  Bitcoin as an institutional asset class  are topics expected to be thoroughly explored at Benzinga's upcoming  Future of Digital Assets  event on Nov. 19.

Read Next: Trader Shares Tips On How To Trade Meme Coins: Only Buy Coins That Clear This Hurdle

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Maggie Rogers on ‘Don’t Forget Me,’ the album she wrote for a Sunday drive

Maggie Rogers wrote and recorded her new album, “Don’t Forget Me,” over five days last winter. The songs came quickly and chronologically, as if she was writing “different scenes in a movie.” (April 12)

Maggie Rogers performs on Day 3 of the Lollapalooza Music Festival on Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023, at Grant Park in Chicago. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Maggie Rogers wrote and recorded her new album, “Don’t Forget Me,” over five days last winter. The songs came quickly and chronologically, as if she was writing “different scenes in a movie.”

“I’ve been writing songs now for 15 years, and so I think I’ve just come into this place where I really trust my process and my craft. I think because of that, I was in a place where I was willing to just play,” Rogers said in a Zoom interview ahead of the album’s release.

The result is a record that Rogers calls “relaxed,” one that finds her “unguarded and present.”

The mood is lighter than Rogers’ electric 2022 album “Surrender,” which was in many ways a release of pent-up pandemic energy — a collection of songs that begged to be experienced live and with a crowd. And it leans more heavily on acoustic sounds than 2019’s “Heard it in a Past Life,” the first album Rogers released after a video of Pharrell Williams reacting to her song, “Alaska,” in a New York University class went viral.

As Rogers explains it : If “Heard it in a Past Life” is air and “Surrender” is fire, “Don’t Forget Me” is earth.

Like her past projects — and her studies at Harvard’s Divinity School — community is a through-line of “Don’t Forget Me.” Rogers name-drops friends and tells their stories alongside hers. She has welcomed the way the new songs have united crowds, and looks forward to continuing to foster that joyous, present, environment on tour.

“I’m excited to be able to meet people in it,” she said, referencing the album’s Friday release.

That community-first quality of her music is something that fans, too, embrace: New York’s Gaia Music Collective, for example, organized a “one-day choir” of Rogers’ song “Light On.” Four hundred people gathered to learn and perform an arrangement of the song, a cappella.

“She also is thinking about music as a connective force, as a thing that can bring us and our stories together,” said Matt Goldstein, the group’s founder and co-director. “It’s no accident that her music feels good to sing together.”

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: “Surrender” felt like an album that had to be moved through and experienced with a crowd. How do you see this album being embodied?

Rogers: This record was always made for the car. I really wanted to make a record that felt like a Sunday driving record, because to me, those are some of the most intimate moments that I’ve had with music or with an album — when I’m singing along to a song in the car and it feels like that artist or that song is like a friend in my passenger seat. Those are some of my favorite records, and they’re the records I turn to for comfort over and over again. And you know, in this big, crazy, completely insane, existential, world, if that’s something that I could offer to the world through my music, I think that that is really special.

AP: Could you say more about how you see your three studio albums in relation to each other? I liked how you described each of them as elements — air, fire, earth.

Rogers: I think categorizing them in that way is just a way to help give context to them. To me, they’re all really important reflections on different periods in my life. And my songwriting is pretty consistent at the center of all these things. It’s mostly the way that like my producer brain has chosen to dress up the songs at their core, and that has more to do with creative expression or curiosity more than anything.

In each record, I’m just trying to be as present and authentic as I can. “Don’t Forget Me,” what I love about it, is that it’s this really, like kind of woven tapestry. Like in so many ways I created a character that sort of led me through this album, rather than trying to make a snapshot of my life in the exact moment. But there are real truths woven into that character and into those stories.

And you know, it comes out two weeks before I turn 30 and in a way it feels like this big ode to my 20s and everything I’ve experienced. Even if the narrative plot line isn’t exactly 1:1 with my life, the essence of all of the feelings within all of the songs feels really, really truthful.

AP: Looking ahead, what do you think you learned after putting what you had studied at Harvard into practice while touring last year?

Rogers: It’s funny because I spend all this time thinking about live music and the way people come together around it, and I had this thought that when I got on stage that it would be like, you know, that meme of the woman with the math problem above her head? I was like, that’s going to be me. And then I got on stage. And what I love about being on stage is that I’m not thinking, I’m just moving. I’m just feeling. It’s like deeply instinctual.

When I think about the tour that I’ll be on for the next year, I think I’m mostly just really excited to have fun. Like, I’ve worked for so many years and been in so many bands, whether it was like at some underground club in New York City or being 18 and playing in bars or being on the road in a van at the beginning of my career, that now I feel really comfortable on stage and I love playing live. I’m so happy that live music is back in this way.

AP: You posted a video around the holidays about a journal entry you found from the end of your time at NYU.

Rogers: So trippy.

AP: How does that kind of reflective writing fit into your daily practice and songwriting now?

Rogers: It’s such a massive part of my life. I mean, I write every day. I kind of can’t sleep without it. It’s usually the last thing I do at the end of the day. And it, like, really is a meditation.

I wrote a ton through grad school and have continued working on essays and I’m turning my master’s thesis into a book. My long form writing practice feels as much a part of my life as my short form songwriting practice, and it helps me to stay really present in my life because I’m paying attention to detail all the time.

AP: You said that writing this album felt like writing scenes from a movie. Do you look to films for inspiration when you’re developing a storyline and character like this?

Rogers: No, I mean, the movies that I love often have a strong female lead — like, “10 Things I Hate About You” was a really big, big part of “Surrender.” And “Thelma and Louise” was a big part of this record. I don’t know — maybe it makes me a basic b—, but, like, I’m a lover of a Meg Ryan rom-com, or a Julia Roberts movie. But that’s just what I like. That to me has the same sense of comfort as the album that is the passenger in the passenger seat that you’re singing along to in your car — they hold the same space for me.