What is the one thing that has existed for as long as the internet has been around? Memes. The answer is memes. But with the rise of Gen Alpha and their less-than-stellar reputation for meme creation, or just their less-than-stellar reputation at anything, the question that most people are asking is, “Have memes become too brain-rotted?”
Popular memes currently include 6-7, W Speed, Dexter, D4vd, Dude Man, Italian Brain Rot, Chicken Jocke, Citra Nosey Animatronic, Adrian, and many more.
These memes are the modern memes, the memes that the last remnants of Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alpha have created for the whole internet to see, but compare these to the memes or meme events or characters that were created back in the 2010-2019 era of the internet such as Trollface, Nyan Cat, Big Chungus, The Area 51 Raid, Baby Yoda, Uganda Knuckles, Harambe, Pepe the Frog, Doge and Bad Luck Brian.
People who are on the internet who were interviewed about this topic had some interesting things to say. When asked about their favorite memes, Zequias Martinez Oxendine, a sophomore, said the 6 7 meme because it is “the 1st one I thought of”. Raja Kumar, a sophomore, said that his favorite was the “Low taper meme” because “I just like it,” and Nicholas Arsenault, also a sophomore, said that his favorite was “Nick Young’s no look missing shot” because “Nick Young is wild.”
When asked about the modern state of meme culture, Oxendine said that “Our attention span is cooked,” and Kumar said that “it’s absolutely horrible and the memes are forced.” Contrary to the negativity of the last 2, Arsenault had something positive to add. “It’s alright,” said Arsenault.
And finally, when asked about whether they prefer old memes or new memes, all 3 said old memes, but for varied reasons. Arsenault said that he preferred old memes because his favorite memes were old. Martinez-Oxendine said that he preferred old memes because they were “more thought out,” and Kumar added that old memes were “less forced”.
And people may ask, Why does this matter? Why should we waste our precious time even pondering this question? The response to that is that it does not really matter all that much, at least to the employed.
So, with all this information provided, only one question remains. “What is the future of memes?” And while the future cannot be predicted, it seems like they are going to be so brain-rotted that they probably are not even going to be funny anymore.
