Many years ago, the famous French playwright Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais said: "I hasten to laugh at everything, otherwise I would have to cry!" Several centuries have passed since then, and humanity has changed a lot, but at least one thing remains the same—laughter, as it did then, supports us in difficult times.
Only, if these were just anecdotes and jokes before, their place has now been almost completely overtaken by memes. Memes surround us literally everywhere—they accompany every more or less significant event. And there are special dedicated meme pages on social media, where tens of thousands of followers enjoy related memes. Such as, for example, the Instagram page called Books I Didn't Read.
More info: Instagram
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As of today, this Instagram page has more than 2K different postings and around 277K followers and, if we believe the description, dedicates its posts to philosophical memes. That is, those that at least make you think.
For example, to understand the meaning of one of the more popular posts on this page, you need to know the specifics of the philosophies of Marx, Hegel, Lacan, and Slavoj Zizek. On the other hand, not all the memes presented here have a very high entry threshold.
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The key feature of good humor is that it should reflect certain facets of our reality, and resonate in the heart of everyone who listens to the joke or looks at the meme. For example, when I look at a picture where several unread books meet "a newcomer"—a book I just bought, I understand it perfectly. After all, I myself have a couple of books on my shelves that I haven't gotten around to reading yet...
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To create a successful meme—that is, one that at least makes people smile (we are not talking about virality now—its mechanisms are still largely unexplained), the authors of popular meme communities offer several rules. For example, this dedicated post on the United for Respect website notes three key steps:
1. Keep it simple—the meme should be understandable (who said anything about Slavoj Zizek?...)
2. Know your audience—use language techniques that are understandable to the people the meme is intended for.
3. Keep it current—stay up-to-date with trends and events, because no one actually likes outdated memes.
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However, it is quite possible to create a fairly universal meme—for this, it has to appeal to feelings that are inherent in one way or another to each of us. Or at least to most of us. And most of the memes presented on the ‘Books I Didn't Read’ Instagram page, by and large, seem quite universal. At least, it seems so to me. In the end, we didn’t include a meme about philosophers in this selection—just in case...
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In any case, we will be really glad if, while scrolling this list, you smile at least once. This world can be damn complicated and harsh sometimes—so if humor really lets us to take a break and get even a small boost of good mood, so be it. So please feel free to look at this whole selection—and smile, just smile! And who knows, maybe crack up over some of these memes as well!
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