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I'm here for memes, not snappy Xitter, 4Chan, reddit or similarly sourced screenshots of texts
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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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Lol, I always love it when people have to split hairs so finely on definitions that they risk fission.
I made this joke elsewhere, but this is basically the No True Memesmen fallacy. The definition of meme includes these pictures, and trying to narrow the definition to exclude them is laughable.
When everything is a meme, nothing is. Ther is no adaptation, no cultural twist, no recontextualisation or any other relevant criteria in a screenshot of text and nothing else.
Ok, so just make up your own word that has the definition you want, or deal with your definition not being the same as others'. Because the definition of meme isn't as specific as you want it to be.
I see this as no different than the people who argued that image macros aren't memes.
The Oxford Dictionary's definition of a meme you meant to say.
For example, Jana Zündel (german article), a german meme researcher, stated that a meme always includes a recontextualisation. The Wiki page lists key characteristics such as intertextuality and cultural evolution.
There is a screenshot from reddit posted here earlier today, do you think that's a meme? Can you take it, put it in a new context and have it keep its original context as a reference so that the new post would create a new idea building on the context? Or is it just a random story, maybe funny to some?
Took like 5 minutes
Great, you made a meme out of a screenshot. Yet, the screenshot is not a meme, it's a ranfom story.
Taking a screenshot of one website, cropping it, and posting it on another website is recontextualization.
https://c.tenor.com/8sERkslHbYcAAAAC/tenor.gif