12/22/2023 0 Comments Christmas rage comicsThe shameless monetization means brands begin watering down the more chaotic - and usually interesting - aspects of the meme to make it more palatable. (Anyone remember the Adam Sandler Rage Comic shirt ?) It’s popularity and ubiquity lead to companies trying to shamelessly monetize it. It paradoxically becomes more specific and niche as it becomes remixed by more and more diverse communities. In the chaos, it undergoes such a rapid transformation that it no longer resembles itself. Here’s how it usually works:Ī niche meme appears within a somewhat insular community.Īccess to it increases as it becomes more popular.Īccess and popularity reach a tipping point and it’s suddenly everywhere. The next stage is usually shameless monetization. It wasn’t as sophisticated and intensely political as what’s happening now to Wojak, but it was basically the same. I’ve written before about how Gen Z doomer memes are basically just Rage Comics 2.0 and a similar chaotic explosion of content happened around them, as well. What will happen next to Wojak is both deeply unimportant and also pretty interesting. This happens a lot! I would even go so far as to say it’s healthy, at least on a macro level. Which is, honestly, something that is completely and totally normal for memes. Whatever your personal political bugaoo is, no matter how absurd, there is now a Wojak for it now. Whatever the complete and total inverse of intersectional social justice is, that’s what’s happening to Wojak right now. I spent the last few days going through a bunch of them and they are wildly chaotic and politically all over the place. Also, it’s not exatly the “woke” triumph over racists that some people are framing it as. The non-white Wojaks are evolving incredibly quickly and there really isn’t much connective tissue between the disparate threads happening.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |