My original meme

 For my original meme, I chose the "First World Problems" picture coupled with my words to create a meme that reflects my case study of ‘First World Christian Issues’ memes that are prevalent on Pinterest. By employing some of Shifners techniques such as Prestige, humor by incongruity, and provocation of emotions, I was able to create a meme that fit into my meme study that is aimed at practicing Christians. It revealed that knowledge of the Christian culture magnified the humor of the meme so I used the common church issue of overtime sermons as my prestige factor. The incongruity of the depressed woman in the picture coupled with the seemingly trivial church issue created humor for the meme. Christians act like overtime sermons are abominations, so the meme portrays the irony of that thought by using incongruity of the picture and the issue. This leads to the individual coming to a realization that most of our “Christian problems” in developed countries are actually laughable compared to others. This realization creates an emotional response, which moves the person towards clarity on the issue (which in this case would be that many Christians don’t have a church to attend or places to eat at afterwords) which can lead to a greater understanding of their Christian faith.

  

To validate my findings I compared my study to a similar one on mylesmemeblog.blogspot.com. Myles’ meme study is based on another social media, Twitter, and uses the memes as a tool to unite Christians and spread their message to non believers. Her findings communicated that Christian memes are used to uplift others in their community as well as spread their belief of the gospel. Our meme studies are comparable in a sense that we both researched social media Christian memes and how the memes not only bring the Christian community together, but how the memes reinforce Christian beliefs.  Both of our meme studies revealed that strong emotions and prestige play a large part in the humor and reproduction of the memes, which then ultimately lead to lived religion and the deeper understanding of the Christians’ own spirituality. The difference in the two would be the audience; while my selection is focusing on giving Christians a reality check, Myles’ appeals to Christians but also aims to pull in religious outsiders in hopes of spreading the gospel.  

How Memes Frame Religion

This week I will be using numbers 7, 8, and 11 from my sample collection.

Two characteristics of the success of the Christian Memes on Pinterest can be tied into the memes' prestige as well as their use of participation tools. These Christian memes that I have been examining have followed the outline of using common Christian experiences or issues to enact feelings upon the viewer that can then make the meme humorous, allowing its chances of reproduction on the internet to increase. Because Christianity is one of the top world religions, it has a higher prestige, especially in America. According to a 2012 Gallup Poll, about 77% of Americans associate themselves with some branch of Christianity. It would stand to reason then, that memes based on Christian religion and culture would be more prominent and shared than those of a lesser religion such as Buddhism which is comprised of less than 1% of the American people. While one may debate on the amount of "lived religion" Christians and those that simply give themselves a Christian title, it can be assumed that since both groups know enough about the basics of Christianity to consider themselves as such, a majority of Americans would understand these Christian memes.  I actually received a few comments on my Pinterest account regarding my recent postings of multiple religious memes which proves the success of these First World Christian Memes. I was surprised at how many people reposted; one actually messaged me mentioning how much they enjoyed the memes. All of these people share the same faith and were able to comprehend the message and humor, and in turn they wanted to share them adding to the memes' success. 

From the memes studied, I would categorize most of my memes into the Stock Character Macros genre. This genre originated from pictures of animals offering advice (whether accurate or not) and has transformed into using people as well as animals. They do not necessarily continue to offer advice, but follow a common line of thought when used.  For example, the VBS meme above has been used anytime the creator wants to portray a person is going to be overwhelmed (a secular example might be "when a person asks for gum and the whole class hears them").  Another example is the woman crying about not knowing the song lyrics. This has become a popular stereotypical picture for first world problems (for example: "I want to change the channel, but the remote is in another room") and has been incorporated into Christian culture by doing the same thing, but aiming the issues at Christians. 

Meme Memetic and Rhetoric Devices

This week I will be using memes 3, 4 and 10 from my sample list. 

This post will be focusing on the specific rhetoric and memetic techniques employed by the memes, the types of humor used and the way the beliefs and values impact the viral success. These memes present an aspect of dominant features of a culture where "Christian Problems" are portrayed in the context of a typical church service. These memes all focus on the use of physical human expressions to depict their church issues which then add to the understanding of how the creator of the meme feels about those issues. For example, the phrase "went to church, remembered to turn my cell phone on silent" would not mean much, but when paired with success baby, one can understand the meaning behind the sentence.  

That brings us to looking at the humor behind the memes and what makes the pictures paired with the sentences amusing. These memes all employ the use of whimsical and playful content in order to be seen as humorous. Mr. Bean himself is a popular meme because of the nature of his character; a goofy out of sorts man who doesn't take life seriously and usually doesn't react appropriately to situations. The facial expressions he uses are humorous by themselves, so the meme creator sought to combine an already humorous photo with a sentence that would bring out the humor of both the picture and the description, creating a kind of symbiotic relationship between the two. This brings out a joking and whimsical nature of the audience perceiving it and draws attention to the meme. The 4th meme also provokes emotion by the girls expression in conjunction with the sentence. The meme originated when a parent told her daughter she was taking her to Disneyworld, to which the girl responded with a confused look on her face. This internet sensation is known for the ironic response creating the humor of the face which is then paired with the confusion of worship group songs that no one knows creating a playful and whimsical meme. The 3rd meme as mentioned earlier, uses the success baby to illustrate their point. The success baby meme itself falls into the high arousal-"awe" category based on the fact that the meme revolves around a cute baby. The playfulness and whimsey however again come from the pairing of the picture and words. 

These humor devices definitely have an impact on the way their ideas are framed based on the ideas and the way they are portrayed. These types of Christian memes aim to unite the Christian culture by connecting them with situations they can all appreciate, but they also manage to do it in a way that is in line with their beliefs. For example, memes that use other forms of humor and arousal such as Superiority or Anger/Anxious stories could fall in a grey area as far as their humor among Christians. Some might think the memes were acceptable while others would argue they are not in best taste and could fall tarnish their reputation because their memes look no different than secular memes. By using playful and whimsical memes, Christian memes are able to join in the popular culture of meme making and provide a sense of community while at the same time keeping their humor separate from the world without it becoming too cheesy or watered down.