Black Mirror Meme: Baes Do the Darndest Things

I created a meme for Black Mirror using the website Imgur. The site, although I'd never heard of it, was quick and easy to use. I chose to make a meme out of an image from the episode of Black Mirror entitled "The Entire History of You." My meme can be seen below:

I chose this picture because I thought the look on the main female character's face was very telling. Throughout the episode, we see her slowly lose her composure. She is smiling very faintly in this picture, but her eyes look pretty lifeless. Such was her attitude when she tried to hide her embarrassment in front of guests when her spouse insisted on obsessing over details in the form of referring to/replaying the past (re-dos). And, it's a look many women probably know too well -- the "I really hate you right now but I'm a lady so I'm trying to hide it" face.

My analysis of the meme above could be considered the ideal of the meme by Mandiberg's description. The ideal of a meme is the message it is trying to convey. Mandiberg describes the manifestation of a meme as the actual form it is presented/produced in. This meme manifests in digital photo form with text overlaying it. Lastly, the behavior of a meme to Mandiberg is basically how the meme is shared, or "behaves," once created. Posting this meme on my blog, or sharing memes on sites like Imgur, is the behavior of the meme (Mandiberg 123).

My meme also epitomizes what the modern Internet meme is. Considering Mandiberg's own academic perspective and the colloquial use of the term, he defines an Internet meme as "a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission" (Mandiberg 122). For my meme, I combined two familiar tropes of memes that frequently circulate around the Internet -- the use of the phrase "the look on your face when..." and the term "bae." I thought of the first because it is one of my favorite phrases used in memes. But the phrase wouldn't have immedeiately come to my mind when trying to come up with my own meme if I didn't see it so much online to begin with. (Mandiberg notes that memes can either have a familiar phrase attached to different images, or vice versa.)

The second trope, the use of the word "bae," is one of many cases of the commercialization of black culture -- or more specifically, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) -- into the mainstream vernacular. (Read a take on that here.) Similar to the way we discussed in class how certain things have become trends, or memes, over the years (like the bacon explosion, cupcakes, and frozen yogurt), "bae" is one of many words to have been taken from black culture and incorporated into everyday slang. The fastest way this likely happens is the spreading of content with black slang around the web, white people seeing it, taking it, and running with it.

A list of examples of AAVE or slang that are now overused colloquially in mainstream culture include (but are not limited to):

-twerk

-tho

-fleek

-swerve

-finna/tryna

ANYTHING related to tea (spilling or sipping)

-HYFR (hell yeah fuckin right)

-fuckboy

And more!

In particular, being black, I can recall my parents calling each other bae for as long as i can remember. I always thought the word was ugly, and found it very strange that it became such a popular word overnight. But, even I use it now! This just goes to show how memes, or the transference of cultural trends/ideas via the Internet, are pervasive in our society.