“Memeology”: An Ideological Psychoanalysis of How Memes

Interact with Social Media Consumers

By Long K. Nguyen

Introduction. As the Internet is becoming the standard means of communication, social network
emerges as a platform that initiates new discursive practices in communication. An example of
this phenomenon would be the widespread occurrence of internet memes, a concept described by
Limor Shifman as “units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by
internet users, creating a shared culture experience.”1 In other words, it is a digital image that
spreads person to person from the process of reproduction to interpretation at a relatively fast
speed. A meme transmits ideas of popular culture into writing, speech, gestures, rituals, and most
commonly, images through social media. These ideas are common situations, processes, or social
ideas that the popular culture can immediately relate to. Because they are ideas that anyone can
relate to, they interpellate viewers through a humorous way, and due to this massive
interpellation that memes catch the viewer, they are reproduced and regenerated more and more
to the media. In this paper, memes will be discussed through the ideological process of
interpellation, or hailing through lens of Louis Althusser in his essay Ideology and Ideological
State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation) as well as Jacques Lacan’s concept of the
objet (petit) a. The aesthetics of memes are also discussed in relation to Susan Sontag’s Notes on
Camp. Of course, since memes can be created from any idea and by any Internet user, the
analysis discussed in this paper will not apply to every single meme on the Internet, but it is
researched based on the common widespread media phenomenon regarded as ‘a meme’ by
popular culture.

1. Limor Shifman, Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual

Troublemaker (MIT Press, 2014), 2-3.
The aesthetics of memes: This section discusses the aesthetics of the most popular and
dominant genre of meme on the internet: Memes that originates from images (or videos) that is
then added with captions and text to explain or relate to the situation that the image signifies.
Despite the fact that captions and texts on a meme are necessary for delivering different
connotative scenarios, the humor and connotations of a meme hugely depend on the aesthetics of
the image, an aesthetic that is meant to deliver humor in an ironic way rather than a serious way.
In many memes exist a style of aesthetics that originates from a serious image, by turning that
image into a meme makes the image a seriousness that fails. This notion is explained by Susan
Sontag’s essay Notes on Camp. Take the frame in Figure 1 as an example.

Figure 1: A variation of ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ Meme, also known as ‘Man Looking at

Other Woman’. Image source: knowyourmeme.com

In this frame, a man looks at the backside of a woman walking by while another woman,
presumably his romantic partner, looks on disapprovingly. The original photo was taken by
Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem with the intention of creating the concept of infidelity.
When being turned into a meme; however, the seriousness and representative in the photo turns
frivolous. As a note in Camp, Sontag wrote “the whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious.
More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious;’” and “the essential
element in Camp is a seriousness, a seriousness that fails.”2 In this instance, the meme involves a
complex relation to the serious in that the viewers know that the original photo ironizes
unfaithful men and represents a serious problem in relationships, but when the picture is being
looked at as a meme, its connotations become different. The picture of the meme is then present
just to serve the purpose of denoting a situation in which a subject (the man) is distracted by an
object/cause of desire—or in Jacques Lacan’s terms, objet a (the girl out of focus) away from
another subject that it has in possession (the man’s partner). Its original idea, the concept of
disloyal men in relationships, is entirely lost and was replaced by a different situation (in this
case, the subject is ‘the youth,’ object/cause of desire is ‘socialism,’ and the subject’s possession
is ‘capitalism’). It can be concluded that the image that a meme originates from is serious; but
the process that such image is turned into meme, is the process of failing the serious, thus
making the end product (the meme) extremely Campy.

However, not every meme that involves the process of turning an original, serious image
into a parody with photoshopped text or additional images on top is considered as Pure Camp.
The following is an example:

2. Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp, 10.

 Figure 2: “Left at Exit 12” Meme. The meme is a photoshop composite based on a
Youtube video entitled "How to exit freeway like a boss." Uploaded on July 4th, 2013,
the video by YouTuber Fredrik Sørlie shows a car drifting into an off ramp. Image
source: knowyourmeme.com

This meme in Figure 2 is a photo cut from the video in which a car drifts into the highway exit.
In the highway sign, the author of the meme would photoshop a text of something they disapprove
and something they prefer. In this case, the car in the original video intentionally drifts in style
towards the exit, but the still shot that the author uses to make the meme tricks the viewers into
thinking that it was an accident that the driver mistakenly misses the exit, therefore making a late
turn in the style of drifting. Being a parodied from the video and photoshopped into a meme that
has different, exaggerated connotations, this meme is still an instance of camp that Sontag would
describe as “a vision of the world in terms of style – but a particular kind of style. It is the love of
the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of things-being-what-they-are-not.”3 That being said, because the way
the screenshot from the video makes the viewers think that the drift is an accident (while in
reality it is fully intentional), the meme is a rather an instance of ‘deliberate Camp’ than ‘naïve
Camp.’ A note from Sontag’s essay explains that “Pure Camp is always naïve. Camp which
knows itself to be Camp (‘camping’) is usually less satisfying.”4 Through a close aesthetic
examination, it can be said that the variant of memes which originates from an image/video of a
different scenario that is then parodied to different connotations through photoshop or captions,
are usually Campy in different ways. They can either be ‘deliberate Camp’ or ‘naïve Camp.’

A psychoanalytic approach to memes: Through Lacan and Althusser. The Campy aesthetics of
certain memes is what makes it deliver humorous connotative meanings, but it is also very important
to note the ideological relationship between memes and the viewers. One of the most profound
reason why memes can go viral and be reproduced in a massive amount, is through delivering a
popular belief, or an idea that most viewers can relate to. The information that a meme delivers can
be any topic, from everyday life situations, academic knowledge, to political affairs— and many,
many other situations. The instance that a viewer looks at a meme and can immediately relate to the
idea, or joke that is interpreted by the meme, can be described as the situation in which the viewer
becomes a concrete subject that is hailed by the functioning of another subject—the meme. This is a
process that ideology occurs in the form of interpellation. The interpellation of individuals as subjects
are described in Althusser’s essay as the notion that “ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that
it ‘ recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transform’ the individuals into
subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or
hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or

other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’”5 In other words, the ideological discourse generated by the meme

calls out to the viewer, and the viewer becomes the

3. Ibid, 3
4. Ibid, 6
5. Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards
an Investigation), 174
subject (and are subjected). The viewer then immediately believes that he is addressed directly
by the meme, following an ideological discourse that replies to the question ‘Hey, you there!’
with ‘Yes. . . it is I.’ An example of this interpellation is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Drakeposting Meme. Image source: pinterest.com

This frame shows the still shots captured originally from Drake’s music video “Hotline
Bling.” In the captured shots, the hip hop artist performs several dance moves and gestures,
including one that shows him holding his hand up to the side of his face as if he is refusing
something. The text reads “when ur [your] relatives offers [offer] you money and your pretend
like you cant take it first.” In this instance, the meme calls out to viewers who can relate to the
familiar situation in which they are offered money by relatives but have to act polite as if they do
not need it first. In Althusser’s terms, the meme interpellates those viewers and transforms them
into subjects. After looking at the meme and getting the idea, the viewers would reply to the hail
with an ideological discourse that can be described as “Yes. . . it is I,” or in everyday terms,
“That is totally me.”
 Figure 4: Epic Handshake Meme: Originates from 1987 film Predator. In this scene, the
character Dutch (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is surprised to see his old friend
Dillon (played by Carl Weathers) and greets him followed by a strong handshake that
turns into an arm-wrestling match. The artwork shown in the meme is a water-colored
fan art uploaded by Flickr user thisisrorydean. Image source: knowyourmeme.com

Another way that viewers as subjects respond to the hailing of ideology, is through the

function of ideological recognition (or referred by Althusser as reconnaissance). As shown in

Figure 4, two muscular men’s arm, one is black while the other is white, greets each other with a

handshake that looks like arm-wrestling. For easy referencing, I will call the white arm in this
meme as assujettir a (subject a), the black arm as assujettir b (subject b), and the handshake as

the object/cause of agreement. In this meme, assujettir a and assujettir b are two subjects with

different traits (punk and rock), while the handshake is the object/cause of agreement (not calling

the police). The meme speaks the idea in popular belief that punk and rap is two relatively

different genres of music (punk is known as a music genre of white people, while rap is the genre

of black people), but they are similar in that they are both known as music that many people find

irritating to hear when played at high volume. Some even consider as noise pollution which leads

to the outside-listener calling the police for disturbance that such music creates. The process that

a viewer looks at this meme and recognize such humorous concept in the meme is called the

reconnaissance.

The ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an
ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do
so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we have the
inevitable and natural reaction of crying out (aloud or in the still, small voice of conscience’):
‘That’s obvious! That’s right! That’s true!’ At work in this reaction is the ideological recognition
function which is one of the two functions of ideology as such.6

By this quote, Althusser means that when confronted by a situation that is familiar to us in

everyday life, the sense of obviousness emerges in the viewers and an ideological recognition

instantly occurs, which causes them to utter the reaction (in ideological discourses or audibly):

‘It is true!’ In this sense, the viewers who gets the message in the meme will have an ideological

effect of the reconnaissance.

The pattern that this meme follows is similar to that of the previously discussed meme in

Figure 2—an instance which two subjects are connected/interfered by a third object. Looking

6. Ibid, 172
through a psychoanalytic view, this pattern is a resemblance of the Venn diagram, a figure that is

used by Jacques Lacan in his 1966 seminar “La logique du fantasme.”7 to illustrate the objet a.

Figure 5: The diagram that Lacan illustrates in his seminar “La logique du fantasme.”

As explained in the essay The Films of Joseph H. Lewis by Hugh Manon, “In essence, Lacan’s

diagram reveals that the crucial object in desire is objet a, a structure of partiality/linkage

between two states, neither one of which is ever totalized, except in the empty-from-either-

perspective mirage of the objet a itself, which knots them together.”8 In other words, the diagram

explains the notion in which two different subjects are connected by objet a—the object/cause of

desire. This idea of Lacan is a pattern that is followed by many popular memes that has gone

viral on the Internet, the following are some examples.

7. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire XIV: La logique du fantasme, 1966-1967, unpublished

manuscript, session of 16 November 1966, http://gaogoa.free.fr/Seminaires_HTML/14-
LF/LF16111966.htm
8. Hugh Manon, “The Films of Joseph H. Lewis: Contemporary Approaches to Film and
Media Series,” (Wayne State University Press, 2012), 1953.
Figure 6: A photo that the internet considers as the ‘gay version of the Distracted Boyfriend
meme. The original photo was posted by Twitter user @skylxrk, before being photoshopped by
user @mikeyil
Figure 7: Joshua Reynold’s original painting ‘Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy’ turned into
a meme. Image source: https://knowyourmeme.com

The central notion in these memes is ‘the desire-connection between the human subjects.’ This

familiar pattern in many memes brings the connections of human desire into an emblematic

representation. In other words, these types of memes are obsessed with the objet a—because the
cause of desire is so familiar to viewers in real life situations, the connotations through a parody

of images becomes humorous, thus making viewers not only respond to the hailing call, but also

forward the call to others through the process of reproducing and sharing until a meme becomes

viral.

Misrecognizing memes. Through the function of the recognition, memes hail viewers that are

familiar to the situation illustrated in the meme, but of course, there is another side where plenty

of viewers will not understand/recognize the concept illustrated in certain memes. Because there

is no outside to ideology, it is not to say that one who does not recognize an idea or concept is

not in ideology. In this case, it can be explained through the lens of Lacan that because one has

the prior/base knowledge beforehand, he is able to ideologically misrecognize something.

Misrecognition is not ignorance. Misrecognition represents a certain organization of

affirmations and negations, to which the subject is attached. Hence it cannot be conceived
without correlative language. If the subject is capable of misrecognizing something, he
must surely know what this function has operated upon. There must surely be, behind his
recognition, a kind of knowledge of what there is to recognize.9

In other words, Lacan argues that recognition is synonymous with misrecognition, to misrecognize is

to recognize something. This idea is also familiar in his essay Mirror Stage where an externalized

image is perceived both as the self and the ‘other.’10 In the sense of memes, when a viewer looks at a

meme and recognizes that he is not familiar to the situation being interpreted in the meme, he is also

in an ideological process that occurs in the form of interpellation. Thus, the process of not

recognizing a concept in memes is also a situation that the viewer becomes a

9. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 1, Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-
1954, 167.
10. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: The Mirror Stage as a Formative of the I Function, 1949, 97
concrete subject that is hailed by the functioning of another subject—this time it is their

knowledge instead of the meme. The hail “Hey, you there!” still occurs in an ideological

discourse, and the viewers as subjects in this case would respond to the hail of their knowledge.

Whether getting the idea, seeing the obviousness being delivered in a meme or not, viewers

when looking at the meme still is still ideologically interpellated.

Conclusion. As a widespread internet phenomenon, memes are a very broad concept of study

that requires a deep research and analysis to draw a conclusion that applies to every single

concept. That being said, this paper covers the most prominent way that internet memes are

present and how they work to express ideas through its aesthetics and ideological effects.

Aesthetically, most memes originate from an image/video that is meant to connote a completely

different idea. The process of parodying (or in some cases, dethroning the serious) connotations

in the original image makes a meme campy in a way that turns the original into a ‘being that they

are not.’ This applies to most—but not all memes. Ideologically, memes function through the

process of turning individuals into subjects that are interpellated/hailed by an idea put forward in

the meme. Whether the viewers understand the familiar/obvious idea expressed by the meme or

not, they are nevertheless ideologically interpellated by the meme. Also, a very common theme

in memes, are memes that represent Lacan’s idea of the objet a—or the object/ cause of desire. In

fact, many ideological effects that viewers process when looking at memes can be explained

through a Lacanian view. A broader study would look further into Lacan’s idea of the mirror

stage with the relationship between a being and the entity that is separated from reality—or the

relationship between the ‘Innenwelt’ and the ‘Umwelt’—to analyze deeper about the recognition

and misrecognition effects of viewers when seeing a meme.