We haven't talked about a website in quite some time again so let's talk about another one. Apparently, we live in a world where memes come and go bringing out with the stale and in with the fresh ones. Memes have been around since the early days of YouTube but back then not a whole lot of people knew or understood the concept of them. I've discussed quite a few meme-related channels in the past like Behind the Meme and kaka v420 to terrible websites like Imgur as an example. Now we are going to talk about another website that has fallen too far down the rabbit hole for being an absolute dumpster fire these days and that is Know Your Meme. Do I even need to explain it?
Brief History:
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| knowyourmeme.com on November 17, 2009. |
Know Your Meme was founded and created on November 25, 2007 (Thanksgiving) by Rocketboom, a Vlog based website that ran from 2004 to 2013. The website is self-explanatory as its primary focus is memes and the meme culture. Beginning in 2007, they would produce a thing called Season [Year] where each episode they would discuss a meme topic. An example is Season 2008 Episode 7 where they talk about the meme 'Boom goes the dynamite.' In 2011, they were acquired by Cheezburger Network which is another site that also does memes. Throughout the years, the reception they would get was mostly positive with The Daily Dot saying that 'It's the Britannica of internet culture.'
The Downfall:
Political Propaganda / In Your Face Garbage / Disturbing Content:
Know Your Meme started out as a way for people to cater the meme culture and with that it shows. Unfortunately, ever since 2014, it all went to shit. Nowadays in terms of the meme culture, Know Your Meme is nowhere close to actually being good anymore. When you go to their frontpage now, it's all this in-your-face garbage that nobody would be interested in. All of it is separated in categories ranging specific topics to full fledge galleries that feature anime, furries or political propaganda. Now they did have a category for news based coverage so you know where this is going. Almost every sort of meme pic is tied towards being political. Literally the top news trending post on the site was a PA-25 plane crashing at a gender reveal party. Disturbing and yet fucking disgusting.
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| At least, this person gets it. |
People nowadays that post pics to the site don't have any idea or the concept on how a meme should be created and that's the reason why the site just went to shit in terms of the content because they're able to post whatever they want without limitations. I get that websites need to have a change once in a while, but at least keep it for something that it was once part of. Anyways, there has also been the trend that people make on the site and that is posts that involve TikToker's, and their controversies (what a twist) which is a form of documenting. An example of this is a post discussing the TikToker known as Bentellect (I might talk about him in a future post). You'll see posts like this throughout the site as well as ones that involve YouTuber's as well. I mean, this is a meme site, not a WordPress post. What's ironic is that one moderator that talked about the people who contributed to the Bentellect post aren't moderators. I don't know and I don't care.
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| This is every type of cancer in the book. |
Know Your Meme users also try a way to get clicks on an image, in other words click shaming. All of these translate to the worst user experience. None of the latest meme's are funny nor aren't interesting. Of course, it's another way to offend someone. Anyways, because Know Your Meme is bad, it sparked topics on various reddit posts with some ranging all the way back in 2012 to today. From a site that was once for memes is just over the top in your face garbage. In fact I actually think that it's equally as bad as Imgur.
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