Meme Communication

For this post, I will be looking at numbers 1, 2 and 6 of my meme samples. 

These memes are not commonly used and do not have specific names (such as Bad luck Brian or Advice God) but rather, all of them depict some sort of Christian "problem" within them. By taking perceived issues and adapting them to an online audience, they portray a level of competition and selection. Movies, children and puppies are all common in American culture so Christians would be familiar with all of them, and are therefore chosen to depict specific American Christian issues for those reasons. Stances within the memes are also thought provoking, and all three of the samples use some form of communicative functions, most notably the emotive approach. In emotive approaches, the meme draws on the feelings and emotions of its audience to produce the desired response. All of these memes describe a common Christian experience that can be somewhat of a hassle such as shopping for modest clothing, having to wait on parents after church, or enduring a frigid church building during services. Because the experiences are not all positive, the memes generated to fit the texts have been exaggerated to match the feelings that come with them like the frozen character to show cold, a passed out pup to express being tired, and a child bored to the point of sleep to show impatience.  What does this expression of emotive type communicative function tell us about Christianity? To an extent, I would argue that the exaggerated pictures aim to bring about a reality check, while at the same time allowing the Christians to feel connected to one another for experiencing similar humorous religious situations. Within American Christianity, there is an abundance of freedom in expression whereas in other countries Christians are not accepted as readily and in some cases are downright persecuted. The memes in these samples bring about a reality check to many "first world Christian problems". When these memes are shown to the American Christian community, they will be embraced not only for their humor but for their message of awareness as well. Christianity emphasizes the Church being a worldwide body, so these memes point out the typical American problems that are laughable compared to others losing their lives for the same belief, and spur the religion on to awareness of their "first world problems" and the dire predicament of others. 

My Meme Samples

My meme analysis will come from religious Christian memes on Pinterest, specifically those coming from the groups called Project Inspired and Faith Hub.  My meme selection all come from pins on Pinterest which take expressions from common Christian lived religion experiences and depict them as memes to portray their feelings about certain issues. The memes to be discussed will be as follows:

1) Waiting After Church
2) Modest Pup
3) Silent Cell Phone Success
4) Overtime Sermons
5) Dont Know the Words
6) Cold Churches
7) Hipster Hillsong
8) VBS Leader
9) Spiritual moments
10) Confused Worshipper
11)Baby Baptism
12) Chick fil a

The first memes I will discuss will be numbers 5, 9, and 12.

The underlying theme and focus of the groups Project Inspired and Faith Hub seem to be connecting Christians with other Christians, giving a sense of online community and encouraging one another to live out their religion through it.  While memes are not the sole focus of these websites, they are used as a sort of comic relief for those involved in what is a very personal and deep topic. These examples shown above give a sense of the type of memes these groups use to unite those in their lived religion. These memes all portray "Christian Problems" which are similar to the commonly known "First World Problems". These memes depict small issues or annoyances that occur within Christian life, and coincide them with a graphic that gives the problem some detrimental feel. The memes all have captions that describe some issue that lived religion Christians may encounter, and then add it to an image that magnifies the issue. The woman crying and the girl who is upset both add to the concept of the memes by exaggerating the actual issue, which is often a non issue to begin with. This puts the issue into perspective with the Christian audience, but also allows irony and humor because most Christians would be able to relate to the issues.

Pinterest Meets Religious Christian Memes

Pinterest is a commonly known online corkboard that allows people to create their own boards and pin anything that they find interesting. Because it is online, anything and everything is fair game which of course includes memes. I have chosen to study Religious Christian memes on Pinterest to analyze how they are portrayed to connect the community of Christian lived religion.

The focus of my meme study will be on how lived religion memes depict different aspects of the Christian lifestyle to create humor and analyze what kinds of humor that Christian memes portray. Because there are very specific rituals, scenarios and beliefs that only Christians understand, it appears that these memes have been used to unite believers thus strengthening their faith and sense of humor. Another aspect I would like to address is the target audience. Pinterest is notoriously a predominantly female website so it will be interesting to see if the boards and pins found regarding Christian memes reflect that label or not. 

For my first meme analysis, I chose a meme from Pirates of the Caribbean depicting the scene where Jack Sparrow is running away from a mob of native tribes who are trying to capture him. The caption reads "Be a VBS leader they said. It will be fun they said". 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/269019777716805187/

This meme incorporates lived religion into it by describing an aspect of Christianity that most actively involved Christians would have knowledge about. VBS, commonly known as Vacation Bible School, is a popular activity churches hold during the summer where children of all ages come and have interactive learning about different Bible stories. Because it involves caring, watching and teaching kids for an extended period of time, it can be seen as a daunting task which is often undertaken by women. Church members in charge of such events recruit volunteers to help teach classes which is where this memes humor originates. When someone volunteers and doesnt realize the extent of what they are doing, they can feel overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to carry out the activities and keep up with the needs and questions that the kids come up with, thus depicted in the analogy of the meme. This meme serves to connect those who have been involved with a VBS (especially women) who can understand the extent of the tasks and provide a comedic outlet to how they sometimes feel.