The Performative Dimension of Visual Internet Memes

The most of research on internet memes focuses only on one side of the phenomenon, be it propagation, semiotics, humoristic or aesthetic features, or the role of memes in certain culture. This work proposes the performative approach to the study of internet memes, which implies the understanding of it as an event, or as something happening. The approach helps study memes as a fluid and unfolding structure with internal laws and external features being built in social and socio-technical relationships. The formal analysis of visual internet memes as digital objects discerned principal elements, such as carcass, base, carcass signifier and base signifier. The interaction of these elements defines humoristic aspect of the meme as well as keeps unified the net of separate memes. There are also two main properties of internet meme – the inner independence and self-demonstration – that work together and affect the process of perception. The property of self-demonstration, or in other words, the demonstration of the structure, stipulates that the viewer perceives not only the content of a certain meme, but also its structure. The understanding of meme is both the affect of laughing and the instantaneous process of mastering the production of it. To combine both in one word the notion of ‘meme seal’ was proposed. The duality of the seal as an instrument and its imprint helped in describing the active-passive process of human’s interaction with memes.