The section of the Bowes article about humor (page 7) reminded me of a form of messaging and data conveyance that I think deserves more attention: memes. Like Zach, I think memes are a really interesting lens to view culture through, and the way they convey information, create community, and reinforce relationships is more important than ever now that we spend so much time online.

More often now, I learn more about current news events through memes; for example, I first heard about the Four Seasons hotel/landscaping mix-up through jokes, rather than the NYT or other “traditional” news source. The way memes spread, to echo Bowes, has a virality that mimics the way COVID spreads – slowly, then all at once, creating a global community that transcends other boundaries.

Many of the examples given in the Bowes article (to echo Ailee) attempt to bring the body back into the data and attempt to reengage people with their physical environment – the EPA guidelines that push people to interact with the world around them, the photographs index physical space, the drawings depict symptoms experienced by real people and present images of the body. Memes, I think, interact with its users and the physical in a different way. Instead of privileging the physical, they reinforce engagement with the online environment, encouraging further submersion in a community so that you can always be “in on” the joke.

However, they also have a different way of bringing the body in, through humor, the physical reaction or laugh.