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.