Erikka Askeland: Memes say more in six little pictures

ONE thing I always used to distrust about the constantly growing intrusion of the internet into our daily lives was the way early-adopting social media types simply made up words.

Mainly they were meaningless jargon meant to baffle. For example, I still don’t think the term “interstitial” actually describes anything useful. But the new one that has emerged, particularly among Facebook devotees, is the “meme”.

Originally the term was coined by everyone’s favourite atheist, biologist Richard Dawkins, to describe how ideas evolve like viruses. If you have enough memes coming together, argued Dawkins, you end up with complex human constructs such as organised religions.

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Co-opted by hackers and black turtleneck-wearing post grads, the word now describes jokes that people circulate to their friends, adapt slightly, then pass on to more friends.

The most recent meme to storm Facebook was “what people think of my profession” which showed in a comic and self-mocking way perceptions of the jobs people do.

It goes like this – the meme has six pictures, usually nabbed from other parts of the internet and given headings, which are all the same. Let’s take the one about journalists, since I am one.

“What I think I do”, has a picture of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as crusading journalists Woodward and Bernstein from the film, All the President’s Men. Which is of course a highly accurate representation of what all of us really think we do. But puncturing this hubris is the next heading, “What my editor thinks I do” which has a picture of a monkey at a typewriter.

“What my mum thinks I do” reflects that lovely soft-focused view that mums tend to have of what their offspring achieve, and features Diane Sawyer looking every bit the serious American TV news anchor.

But “What my friends think I do”, is less dramatic and has a silhouette of a disconsolate-looking figure slumped over an alcoholic drink.

“What society thinks I do” shows a bank of paparazzi harassing a mother with babe in arms. And the punchline, “What I really do” shows a picture of people working on a factory production line.

Get it? There are other ones for different jobs, such as artists, teachers, writers and midwives. But it has to be said, most of the occupations that have been given the meme’s comic treatment are those you’d imagine allow for a bit of spare time to make these things up.

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But it was so popular and pervasive – for a few days, at least, which in internet time is a near eternity – it seemed to be saying something about our modern jobs and past-times.

Ask a child what he or she wants to be when they grow up and you might get an answer like doctor, nurse, prime minister or astronaut. Or at least this was the case when I was young. Perhaps now the little poppets also cite “pop singer” or “celebrity” as their ways of furthering a career.

When first meeting someone, the inevitable question comes: “So, what do you do?” For the most part, this is something men in particular tend to ask as a way of sizing the other up. But it is also a way to establish identity. Women, who tend to have more going on in their lives than just their job, often ask the question “How are you?” instead.

But the information age we live in has complicated how we describe our jobs. I recall one friend, a publications researcher, who tried to explain to his grandmother what he did most days. “Works with computers,” was the best summation she could grasp.

Another friend admitted that when a taxi driver asks him what he does, he lies. Rather than explain his complicated job, he plumps for something that won’t produce further questioning.

It used to be that our jobs sometimes became our names – such as fletcher, butcher, chandler, baker. We should be grateful this is no longer the case. Imagine calling yourself Mr Social Media Consultant or Ms Litigator? Or worse, Mr or Mrs Banker.

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