- Better Book Titles – Little Prince (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/better-book-titles)
Thick Book vs. Thin Book (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/better-book-titles)
A Good Book Can Change Your Life (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/a-good-book-can-change-your-life)
The “Better Book Titles” meme relates to my topic because it is book-related. It relates to my target audience because they can understand and appreciate the satirical takes on books that they may have read.
The “Thick Book vs. Thin Book” meme relates to my topic because it is also book-related. My target audience will find this meme relatable as they probably have encountered a book that had repetitive scenes that, if removed, could make the book remarkably shorter.
The “A Good Book Can Change Your Life” meme relates to my topic because it insinuates that people can improve themselves through reading, a concept that Bookiepop encapsulates. My target audience will relate to this meme because a majority of them should believe that books can change people for the better, and they will have fun looking at these memes of people being transformed by a giant book.
2. According to Davison, “The ideal of a meme is the concept or idea conveyed. The ideal dictates the behavior, which in turn creates the manifestation. If the manifestation is a funny image of a cat and the behavior is using software to make it, then the ideal is something like ‘cats are funny’” (Davison, p. 123). Based on that definition, I can determine the ideals of my chosen memes. The ideal of the first meme is that the title of the “Little Prince” does not accurately reflect the book while the title, “Dating A Flower Feels Very One-Sided”, is a more apt title that encompasses the plot of the story.
The ideal of the second meme is that, without the history of Zeus’s history of impregnating Greek women, the Greek mythology would be much smaller as most of the events center around Zeus’s demigod children.
The ideal of the third meme is that good books can make people more successful in life.
3. According to Davison, “The behavior of a meme is the action taken by an individual in service of the meme” (Davison, p.123). Therefore, the behavior is the steps taken in the process of creating the meme. In regards to the Better Book titles meme, Dan Wilbur, a writer/comedian, had created the meme and posted it on his blog (Know Your Meme). He had changed the title of The Alienist to a satirical title (Know Your Meme). Soon afterwards, many online websites and respectable outlets, such as TIME and NPR, promoted the blog, prompting internet users to submit their own takes of the meme to Wilbur (Know Your Meme). Eventually, someone submitted the meme I have chosen, the Little Prince book meme, to the blog (Know Your Meme).
The Thick Book vs. Thin Book meme was posted on Reddit on June 17th, 2019 by the Redditor CosmowYoung (Know Your Meme). He had taken a picture of a thick book next to a thinner book. He had written the caption “Greek Mythology” under the bigger book and “Greek Mythology without Zeus’s Sex Life” under the smaller book (Know Your Meme).
The behavior of the meme, A Good Book Can Change Your Life, occurred when a Facebook Christian group downloaded a cartoon picture of men walking through a book, photoshopped the word ‘bible’ on the book and posted the picture on their Facebook wall (Know Your Meme).
4. According to Davison, “The manifestation of a meme is its observable, external phenomena. It is the set of objects created by the meme, the records of its existence. It indi- cates any arrangement of physical particles in time and space that are the direct result of the reality of the meme” (Davison, p. 123).
The manifestation of the first meme is the Little Prince book cover with a changed title, “Dating a Flower Feels Very One-Sided.” The manifestation of the second meme is a picture of two books, where one represents Greek Mythology and the other represents Greek Mythology without Zeus’s love life. The manifestation of the third meme is haggard men walking into a book, captioned Bible, coming out with fresh business suits.
5. The different manifestations will appeal to my target audience because the memes contain humor related to books. The first manifestation provides a satire of book titles and reveals how inaccurate book titles really are, which is a thought that most of my audience will understand. The second manifestation provides the idea of how books can be clogged up with one repetitive motif that takes up hundreds of pages, and my audience who have experienced such books can find humor in such a picture. The third manifestation provides the idea that people who read a specific book become better people, a thought my audience can find either correct or injurious, but overall all of them will find it humorous.
References:
Davison, P. “The Language of Internet Memes.” The Social Media Reader
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/better-book-titles)
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/better-book-titles
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/a-good-book-can-change-your-life
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