In a world of reaction images, mind scrolling, and brain rot, memes have become one of the primary ways we process reality. But when symbolic shortcuts replace deeper thinking, our understanding of the world can become superficial and reactive.
Many of our online interactions focus on sharing memes. Friends on social networks, message boards, and group chats can now spend days communicating with each other with nothing but bright images, emojis, reaction GIFs, short clips, and jokes.
We are all familiar with memes in our daily life. They are one of the smallest units of cultural exchange on the Internet because they can often communicate complex ideas in a fast, visual, and engaging way.
While memes can be funny, clever, and insightful, they can also lead to shallow and superficial ways of understanding our world, especially when they become the primary way we gain new information.
It’s not uncommon for people these days to get most of their news through memes while casually scrolling through social media. We read a sensational headline and—at most—react to it with the latest reaction to an image from our favorite movie or TV show.
Like all forms of communication, memes influence how we process and interpret our world; even if we are not aware of it, they can shape our beliefs and map of reality. If memes become the standard way of obtaining new information, we risk becoming “meme brains” – only interpreting reality on a superficial and reactive level, without delving into details and nuances.
First, let’s explore the key psychological characteristics of internet memes.
The Psychology of Internet Memes
According to Nov research in the psychology of communication, Internet memes are often:
- Focus on humor – They are meant to make us laugh, including memes that touch on negative topics and use black humor. Like most humor, memes help create emotional distance from serious subjects.
- Cultivate group identity – Memes can reinforce tribal identity, meaning you have to be part of a certain group to “get” the meme. This can cultivate a sense of belonging among online communities, but it can also lead to increased polarization between in-groups and out-groups.
- Caricatures – This is a simplification of people, situations, and reactions. Usually, memes need to avoid nuance, detail, and external context to be effective, otherwise they dilute the original message (see simple versus complex communication).
- Reproducibility – One of the defining characteristics of memes is that they are easy to replicate and share with others. Memes are units of cultural exchange. When this exchange escalates between opposing groups, it can escalate into a “meme war.”
- Collapsing context – Memes can be recontextualized in different situations. When you browse the general meme templatesyou probably remember many times when these memes were adapted to different social, cultural and political perspectives.
- Low reputation cost – Sharing memes is a “low-risk, high-reward” activity. The pros of spreading or getting attention outweigh the cons of offending others because you can always laugh it off or say “it’s just a joke”.
- Signaling – Memes express a point of view or feeling that we want to share with others. This includes in-group/out-group signals (“I’m on your team” or “I’m not on your team”), as well as more subtle or covert messages such as “dog whistling” (where people express conflicting opinions that only those in the “in the know” will pick up on).
- Hermeneutic resources – Memes are not just jokes; they grow into the mental framework of how we interpret the world. They have become one of the main symbolic languages we use to understand reality. When you look through someone’s meme collection, you can learn a lot about who they are and how they see the world.
Meme-Brained: The Rise of Reactive Thinking
In our rapidly changing visual world, our view of reality is becoming increasingly ‘meme-driven’.
Overconsumption of memes can begin to distort our perception of reality and our ability to think clearly, especially when we see and respond to the world only reactively, based on images, “just for laughs” and are no longer capable of deeper and thoughtful analysis.
Everyday Internet users intuitively know that they have a poor information diet when they refer to their Internet feeds as “brain rot,” “content scum,” and “scrolling.” Many agree that social media makes them dumber and more negative.
If the memes were posted on information pyramidthey would be considered one of the lowest types of information in terms of educational value, next to gossip, hearsay, and cartoons.
Of course, political cartoons have been used in newspapers for centuries as a way to satirically poke fun at current events. Memes serve a similar function. However, getting news only through memes would be like a newspaper where every page is filled only with cartoons. That would be interesting, but probably wouldn’t give you enough insight into what’s really going on in the world.
Additional research published in Social networks + society shows how memes can train our minds to compress complex situations into instantly recognizable emotional patterns: hero vs. villain, grudge vs. founder, winner vs. loser, NPC vs. enlightened thinker. Public figures are transformed into cartoon characters, sometimes directly referencing pop culture: “This man looks like Darth Vader/Voldemort!” Memes push us to do this Strawman opposing argumentssimplifying them to the point of absurdity to get our point across.
While memes can unite people in your group, they can also create divisiveness and backfire among people outside of your group. Studies demonstrate how memes can often contribute to political polarization and social conflict, so they may not be as effective at “pulling people” over to your side as they are at signaling your loyalty.
Memes are symbolic shortcuts, they cannot replace rational thinking
According to cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, fast and slowmemes will be seen as part of System 1 type thinking: automatic, rapid, instinctive, and intuitive pattern recognition. This is in contrast to System 2 type thinking, which is slower, more conscious, rational and deliberate.
Both types of thinking are part of a healthy and functioning brain. System 1 thinking helps you recognize and respond to the immediate threat of a snake or predator (which is an unconscious response), while System 2 thinking helps you solve a math equation or choose which college to attend (which requires more conscious effort).
A diet based mostly on memes activates our System 1 thinking but neglects our System 2. Instead of considering more information, details, or context before forming an opinion, our brains look for the quickest symbolic shortcut.
Memes activate our strong reactions. When we start breaking our brains, political conflicts are reduced to fandom wars, historical figures become reactionary images, culture is compressed into trivial content, and serious moral questions are reduced to recycled internet archetypes and one-liners.
In the right doses, memes are harmless fun. When used carelessly, memes close the door to dialogue, not open it. In a world with growing social division and wealth information pollution on the Internet, it is now more important than ever to monitor how we use memes and how they affect our psychology and worldview.
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