Wholesome memes are beautiful internet love. In this article, we'll initially define and illustrate what wholesome memes are, then we'll examine its implication to helping others.
Let's first define a meme. A meme is any form of message, in any form of media, that spreads. Memes do not have to be images, but most of them are. They can be physical acts, videos, even text. There are no limits on a meme.
Memes are great. One classification of memes is called wholesome memes. If you're not familiar with "wholesome memes", below is a helpful definition provided by the wholesome memes subreddit.
Perhaps a few examples of my favorite wholesome memes I've collected over the years would best illustrate:
I hope you have a good idea of what a wholesome meme is now! :)
You might feel good, and that's exactly the intent of wholesome memes. If you don't, that's okay. Wholesome memes are for people who want to celebrate the good in their lives.
If you enjoyed the wholesome memes I provided and you'd like to see more, I suggest the wholesome memes subreddit or the wholesome memes Facebook page.
References:
[1] Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2017). Social psychology. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
[2] Internet for the Spirit • r/wholesomememes. (n.d.). Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/
[3] Kelly, T. (2017, July 25). Why the internet loves wholesome memes. Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/wholesome-memes/
Picture Credit:
Memes are great. One classification of memes is called wholesome memes. If you're not familiar with "wholesome memes", below is a helpful definition provided by the wholesome memes subreddit.
definition of a whole·some meme
- a meme that promotes health or well-being of body, mind, and/or soul
- a meme that is pure of heart, devoid of corruption or malice, modest, stable, virtuous, and all-around sweet and compassionate
- a meme that conveys support, positivity, compassion, understanding, love, affection, and genuine friendship by re-contextualizing classic meme formats, and using them to display warmth and empathy
- a meme with no snark or sarcasm that displays genuine human emotion and subverts a generally negative meme to be more positive
Perhaps a few examples of my favorite wholesome memes I've collected over the years would best illustrate:
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You might feel good, and that's exactly the intent of wholesome memes. If you don't, that's okay. Wholesome memes are for people who want to celebrate the good in their lives.
Let's delve into why someone would spend the time and effort to create a wholesome meme. To start, a wholesome meme posted on the internet is a prosocial behavior as it is intended to benefit others. Wholesome memes could be created for egotistic or altruistic reasons.
Egotistic reasons, which are motivated by selfish concerns, would involve seeking fame or sweet internet points. People could also be utilizing the negative state relief model, which proposes that people help others in order to counteract their own feelings of sadness.
Altruistic reasons, which are motivated by the desire to increase another's welfare, are a little more tricky. There's a debate regarding whether human behavior can truly be altruistic. The empathy-altruism hypothesis suggests that empathic concern for a person in need produces an altruistic motive for helping. It would be interesting to know whether this hypothesis holds true over the internet with several strangers. If a person were to post a wholesome meme with the pure intention of making others feel good, this would be an altruistic reason.
Wholesome memes usually rely on empathy to fully understand and appreciate them. The major components of empathy involve perceptive taking (using the power of imagination to try to see the world through someone else’s eyes) and empathetic concern (having other-oriented feelings, such as sympathy, compassion, and tenderness). Commonly, you have to visualize yourself from someone else's perspective and imagine how you'd feel in their shoes given the situation. Below is a wholesome meme that requires empathy:
"Don't let your dreams be dreams" - Jack JohnsonThis motivational quote is about realizing your dreams to ultimately achieve them. There's a humorous spin-off of this quote: "Don't let your memes be dreams". Wholesome memes are great and feel good, but what if you truly aspire to be a wholesome person? As a concluding thought, I'd like you to think about how wholesome memes can help you live a happy life and become a better person in the long run. Think about the perks of being a living wholesome meme generator.
If you enjoyed the wholesome memes I provided and you'd like to see more, I suggest the wholesome memes subreddit or the wholesome memes Facebook page.
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| Created by yours truly |
References:
[1] Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2017). Social psychology. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
[2] Internet for the Spirit • r/wholesomememes. (n.d.). Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/
[3] Kelly, T. (2017, July 25). Why the internet loves wholesome memes. Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/wholesome-memes/
Picture Credit:
Wholesome Memes. (n.d.). Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/wholesomememers/
Great post idea! I thought this was a really fun way to explore altruistic and egoistic motivations while getting people to evaluate something that has become common across the internet. I definitely agree that creating wholesome memes is a prosocial behavior. I think that posting wholesome memes are likely due to a combination of both egoistic and altruistic motivations. In general, I think that the internet is becoming more like social media in that peoples actions are founded on the idea of promoting themselves or connecting with a greater audience. People post for egoistic reasons. Like we discussed in earlier chapters this semester, people don’t post for the good of others. They do it for acceptance and liking. When you talk about people posting wholesome memes for fame or internet points, I think you are essentially describing the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI think that wholesome memes differ from your average social media post, however, in that they also have altruistic reasons behind them. The memes rely on empathy and perspective taking to appreciate them but they are requiring those things to make people feel good. I think the intent is to put something online that people can relate to and feel inherently good about. The memes aren’t trying to get perceivers to reciprocate or play on their emotions for attention, I think they are just trying to spread good feelings. Do you think that online interactions are generally more altruistic or egoistic? Furthermore, do you think that is something that differs based on culture? For example, are collectivist cultures more likely to act altruistically versus individualistic cultures?
I think online interactions are generally egoistic and self-centered, and while wholesome memes may be more altruistic, I still think it's mainly egoistic and meant to increase personal gain. It kind of relates to the Friends episode we watched in class, Is there really a selfless good deed? Even if you just want to make people happy with a meme if you get up-votes or likes on it you are directly benefiting from their happiness and getting more attention. As for a cultural difference, I think people from individualistic cultures are more likely to be egoistic online because of their capitalistic competitive tendencies. Do you think collectivists are inherently more altruistic because of their cultural norms to emphasize the needs of the group over individuals?
DeleteI agree with you Emma. Most internet content is egotistic and self-centered, and wholesome memes fall victim to this as well. I think it's a combination of both egotistic and altruistic motivations, like Elizabeth stated. However, what if a person created a wholesome meme to benefit others and received attention as a byproduct? Would this negate it's altruistic intent? For example, if a meme didn't get any undoots or popularity but still benefited other people (via passive browsing), would this make it more altruistic?
DeleteI think that's a great point and one of the biggest debates: Is there really a selfless good deed? Because even if you perform an act with altruistic intentions you can still receive benefits like making yourself feel better. But at the same time, if you post a meme with intentions of brightening someone else's day and no one reacts to it, you receive no benefit yourself, but also don't help improve someone else's mood. Maybe if someone posted a wholesome meme and didn't check up on it and see if it did well in terms of social media standards and simply sent it out there with good intentions, it would be considered purely altruistic.
DeleteI've never heard of memes being classified as wholesome memes, but I really enjoyed the memes you showed us and they really brightened my day! The polar bear was too cute. Do you think people make these memes for altruistic or egotistic reasons? or maybe a mixture of both? I've never really considered the idea that people would make something to make other people happy for selfish reasons, but that is an interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked them! :)
DeleteI think people make wholesome memes for both egotistic and altruistic reasons. Anything that can help you gain personal popularity is egotistic by nature. But I'd like to think there are altruistic reasons involved as well. Perhaps the motivation is to help friendly internet strangers, and any attention or popularity gained is just a byproduct. The wholesome memes subreddit community seems to harness this mindset. Just read through a comment section if you need assurance!
I see memes all of the time on twitter and instagram and I have never thought of them connecting to social psychology. I always assumed that people posted them just to get attention on social media, more along the egoistic route. I now see that it makes sense that some people post them to spread happiness. I have also never heard them classified as wholesome memes. This was a very interesting blog post that gave me a new perspective on memes!
ReplyDeleteHaha, you gave me a good chuckle. In retrospect, I really find it amusing that I wrote about memes for an academic purpose.
DeleteI also love that you are taking about memes in an academic setting. What a wonderful era we live in lol. I am also torn between thinking that people spend the time creating "wholesome" content solely to get likes/shares/popularity (egoist) or whether or not they truly create this content to spread joy in people (altruistic). The cynic in me says that everyone wants to get credit and recognition for any content that they create regardless of the message that they are trying to spread. Even if their intentions are pure, I still think that selfishness reigns supreme.
DeleteI think that, due to the largely anonymous nature of the internet, wholesome memes are mostly altruistic in nature. Regardless of how much you take credit for something, everyone knows that creators are mostly forgotten when their content goes viral. When you make something, especially an image meme, and send it out into the world, you don't really know where it will end up and you also know that most people won't know you made it. This stands in pretty stark contrast to the majority of internet activity, which I find highly interesting. I think we need more wholesome meme internet warriors. Maybe they're the secret to fighting trolls.
ReplyDeleteYour logic could be applied to memes in general. The anonymity of the internet definitely helps memes spread in more altruistic ways. I think that's just the beauty of memes.
DeleteFirstly, I had no idea wholesome memes existed and I thank you for informing me. More to the point, my assumption would be that most memes, regardless of classification, are for egotistic reasons. Even with user names and such systems of hiding identities, the creation and repost of a meme is still connected to some form of representation. So while the creation or repost is not tied to a specific individual, it is connected to the data re-presentation of the individual.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Anything that can help you gain personal popularity is egotistic by nature.
DeleteBut I'd like to think there are altruistic reasons involved as well. Perhaps the motivation is to simply share a pleasant feeling to friendly internet strangers, and any attention or popularity gained is just a byproduct.
I really enjoyed reading this post. I think it is interesting to take a psychological perspective on one of the most pervasive items which exists on the internet. As you stated memes come in all shapes and sizes, and are posted everywhere. You can barely go into any type of social media without finding memes somewhere. Wholesome memes are an interesting sect of memes just because they are such a different nature compared to other memes. It is hard to decide whether these types of memes could be primarily egotistically driven, or altruistically. I would say the wholesome memes land more so on the altruistic side. While the person could gain a lot of karma for posting the meme on reddit, I feel most people just want others to have the same feeling they had when seeing these memes.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, sharing the same pleasant feeling. This is definitely a main motivator as to why people spread wholesome memes. The creator of the wholesome memes subreddit (Poppwall) stated the audience for wholesome memes are people “who want to celebrate the good in their lives. Hopefully, that’s everybody, but we have the ones that like memes.”
DeleteWhile wholesome memes are relatively new, I have browsed the wholesome meme subreddit many times, especially after a long day. These memes are a perfect way to get rid of some of the bad feeling you are having, and replace them with that wholesome, satisfying, feeling. I believe these memes are more altruistic because they were posted to make others feel good, and can even turn someones day around.
ReplyDeleteA wholesome post indeed! Wholesome memes are some of my favorite things to come out of the internet in recent years, because so much of what memes are based off nowadays are so negative, and sometimes outright mean. Wholesome memes are quite literally the opposite of that. They take the good parts of what it means to live or be human, and the good parts of humanity, and make something that makes you feel good inside, and good to be a member of society. It really draws you back into reality, that everything isn't always as bad as it seems, because there are always cute dogs, cute babies, and good people out there making the world a better place.
ReplyDeleteThis was definitely something I didn't really think about before. Who knew there was such a thing as wholesome memes!? Although now that I know the actual definition of them I have definitely spent hours at a time looking at them, especially after a harsh exam. When everything else around me is negative it never hurst to take a break and just laugh. Your post also showed how making someone else laugh can really help yourself feel better even if it was through a meme.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely an area that I did not immediately think about when regarding this topic, so nice creativity! I think the biggest thing that these images do, like said previously,is provide a little sigh of relief and something to distract from all the other upsetting stuff on todays social media. Being able to stare at dogs doing goofy things, may not be the best use of time, but definitely does help when it comes to destressing and relaxing after a long day, argument, anything really. This demonstrates that even the smallest of things can make people smile and laugh. Once you send one image to a friend, they laugh and pass it on, it becomes a really positive chain that started with a picture online.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. I feel like most times people look at memes they only look at them in the surface. It was very interesting to delve a bit deeper into what I feel most people would see as a simple time waster. Now that I have read about what wholesome memes are I will definitely look at them in a different way and think about them in a bit deeper of a way when I come across them.
ReplyDeleteNice blog post! It really is kind of incredible that very simple images can have an effect of boosting someone's mood. I've never taken a look at memes as a prosocial tool before. Many of these images put a smile on my face whenever I see them, even if they can be a little silly. I guess that the basic concept has been around for a while, but in the form of things like motivational posters and the like.
ReplyDeleteI think that wholesome memes are posted for egoist reasons. I have never seen somebody make a meme and not want recognition for making that meme. In my mind, the need to be recognized seals the deal on these memes being made for egoist reasons. Hypothetically if someone made a meme just for the giggles and didn't want recognition then it could possibly be altruistic. However, this scenario still allows for the "I am happy because I made this. Happiness is good for me. Thus I did this for my own gain" argument.
ReplyDelete