Memes as Cultural Texts: Imitation, Participation, and the Transformation of Meaning
How do memes travel across cultures, countries, and communities? How does imitation transform an image, phrase, or cultural reference into something new?
A meme is more than a funny image shared on social media. It is a cultural expression that spreads through imitation, repetition, adaptation, and transformation. As it travels from one person to another, or from one culture to another, it may retain its recognisable form while acquiring a different meaning.
Think of a meme as a cultural text that people continuously rewrite without necessarily changing its original image, phrase, gesture, or structure. Its recognisability depends on repetition, but its cultural productivity depends on variation.
This article explores the concept of the meme through four illustrative examples:
- Distracted Boyfriend,
- This Is Fine,
- India's JCB Ki Khudai, and
- Pawri Ho Rahi Hai.
A meme is a replicable cultural form whose recognisable structure enables imitation, while successive acts of reuse transform its meaning across communities, contexts, and historical moments.
1. What Is a Meme?
The term meme was popularised by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins proposed the meme as a cultural counterpart to the gene: a unit of cultural information that spreads through imitation.
The term derives from the Greek mimēma, meaning something imitated. In the broader cultural sense, memes can include melodies, fashion trends, catchphrases, jokes, gestures, stories, and rituals. Internet memes are a particularly visible contemporary form of this process.
| Gene | Meme |
|---|---|
| Replicates biological information. | Replicates cultural information. |
| Passed through biological reproduction. | Passed through imitation and communication. |
| Changes through genetic variation. | Changes through adaptation, parody, and reuse. |
| Spreads through populations. | Spreads through communities and networks. |
The comparison is useful, but cultural transmission is not identical to genetic evolution. People actively interpret, modify, and deliberately circulate cultural material.
2. Example One: The Distracted Boyfriend Meme
The Distracted Boyfriend meme uses a stock photograph by photographer Antonio Guillem. It depicts a man looking at another woman while the woman accompanying him reacts with disapproval.
The photograph became a reusable template. Users assign new labels to the three figures, transforming a scene of romantic distraction into a commentary on competing preferences, changing priorities, and temptation.
How does the meme work?
A person is attracted to an alternative while neglecting an existing commitment.
Underlying idea: temptation, distraction, or changing priorities.
The boyfriend represents a student, the girlfriend represents studying for an examination, and the other woman represents scrolling through social media.
New meaning: procrastination and the struggle to concentrate.
How does the meme change meaning?
- Original context: A man appears attracted to someone other than his partner.
- Technology: The boyfriend represents a programmer, the girlfriend an established programming language, and the other woman a fashionable new tool.
- Education: The boyfriend represents a student, the girlfriend represents examination preparation, and the other woman represents social-media scrolling.
- Politics: The three figures can represent political allegiances, competing ideologies, or shifting public priorities.
The photograph remains recognisable, but the labels and contexts change. The audience supplies new meanings without having to invent an entirely new visual structure.
Practice: Interpret new meanings in the repeated use of the photograph with these captions:
Theoretical interpretation
From a semiotic perspective, the image acts as a signifier whose meaning is shaped by labels, cultural codes, and audience knowledge. The same visual relationship can signify romantic infidelity, technological enthusiasm, procrastination, or political disloyalty.
Each adaptation also depends on intertextuality: the audience recognises the earlier meme and interprets the new version through that recognition.
Key insight: The meme travels because its form is familiar, but it remains useful because its meaning is adaptable.
3. Example Two: This Is Fine
Source and history: Know Your Meme: This Is Fine
The This Is Fine meme originates in KC Green's 2013 webcomic On Fire, part of his comic series Gunshow. A cartoon dog sits in a room engulfed in flames, calmly drinking coffee and declaring that everything is fine.
The humour emerges from the contradiction between what the audience sees and what the character says.
- Visual reality: Everything is going wrong.
- Verbal response: Everything is fine.
- Underlying irony: The character refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation.
How does the meme acquire new meanings?
- Student life: The fire represents an approaching examination, while the dog's calmness represents procrastination or anxious denial.
- Workplace culture: The fire represents impossible deadlines and excessive workloads, while the dog represents the employee expected to remain calm.
- Politics: The meme can portray an institution insisting that everything is under control while a crisis worsens.
- Public-health crises: The image can communicate collective anxiety, dark humour, or criticism of attempts to portray abnormal circumstances as normal.
The original visual structure becomes a framework into which communities insert their own concerns. A personal experience of denial can become a satire of workplace expectations or an accusation against those who refuse to acknowledge public problems.
Theoretical interpretation
Richard Dawkins: The meme replicates through imitation, with each adaptation introducing variation.
Roland Barthes: The relationship between the image and its meaning changes with the cultural context. The fire does not permanently signify one particular crisis.
Julia Kristeva and intertextuality: Every adaptation depends on the audience recognising an earlier text and bringing that recognition to the new version.
Mikhail Bakhtin and re-accentuation: When the image moves into a new social context, it acquires a new evaluative or ideological emphasis. What begins as a comic representation of personal distress can become political criticism.
Key insight: The same cultural sign can move from self-mockery to social satire and political accusation.
4. Example Three: JCB Ki Khudai — An Indian Digital Meme
Further reading:
The JCB Ki Khudai trend became widely discussed on Indian social media in May 2019. It centred on a familiar sight: people gathering to watch a JCB excavator digging at a construction site.
JCB is a brand of construction machinery, although the name is often used colloquially in India for excavators more generally.
The original joke concerned the fascination that excavator videos seemed to generate. A routine activity became a source of entertainment, and the online discussion itself became part of the joke.
How did the meme change meaning?
- Everyday spectatorship: The meme exaggerates the tendency of people to stop and watch an excavator at work.
- Unemployment and idleness: Some versions satirise the idea that people have so much free time that they watch construction work for entertainment. This is a comic framing, not evidence of the causes of the trend.
- Weddings and spectacle: A groom arriving at a wedding on an excavator turns the machine into an unexpected vehicle for a social occasion.
- Popular entertainment: Comparisons with cricket, Bollywood, and international entertainment franchises exaggerate the popularity of watching an excavator.
How did the meme travel?
- Everyday life: People already recognise excavators as a familiar feature of construction sites and roads.
- Digital circulation: Photographs, videos, jokes, and hashtags spread across social-media platforms.
- Participatory imitation: Users connect the trend to local experiences, celebrity culture, films, cricket, and other forms of popular entertainment.
- Collective recognition: New versions remain intelligible because users recognise the shared cultural reference.
The meme connects three layers of Indian cultural life: the familiar local scene, the accessible vernacular expression JCB ki khudai, and the participatory practices of digital culture.
Theoretical interpretation
The excavator initially signifies a machine performing construction work. Through repetition and recontextualisation, it becomes a sign of curiosity, idleness, spectacle, or entertainment.
The meme is particularly interesting because its users do not need to share one political ideology or one particular language. The familiar machine and the absurdity of the online trend provide common ground.
Key insight: An ordinary feature of local life can become a shared digital reference through which audiences collectively produce humour and social commentary.
5. Example Four: Pawri Ho Rahi Hai — From Pakistan to India
Context: In February 2021, Pakistani social-media creator Dananeer Mobeen posted a short video featuring herself, her car, and her friends. She said:
“Yeh humari car hai, yeh hum hain, aur yeh humari pawri ho rahi hai.”
“This is our car, this is us, and this is our party.”
The word pawri is a playful pronunciation of party. The distinctive delivery helped make the phrase memorable and easy to imitate.
Indian musician Yashraj Mukhate transformed the spoken words into a musical remix, helping propel the expression into widespread circulation. Users, celebrities, brands, and political actors subsequently created their own versions.
How did audiences transform the meme?
- Cricket celebrations: The phrase becomes an expression of shared joy after a sporting victory.
- Everyday pleasures: A small treat, a birthday celebration, or an ordinary gathering becomes an exaggerated party.
- Commercial participation: Brands adapt the expression to promote products, services, and special offers.
- Political satire: Political actors use the phrase to celebrate rallies or mock the public performances of opponents.
The linguistic dimension
The transformation of party into pawri is especially revealing. The audience recognises the original English word but hears it in an unexpected form. The altered pronunciation becomes a distinctive cultural sign.
Once the phrase circulates, users no longer need to reproduce the entire video. The words pawri ho rahi hai can be enough to activate the reference.
This is an example of semantic compression: a short expression carries the memory of a much larger cultural event.
From one creator to many participants
- A Pakistani creator produces a memorable video.
- An Indian musician transforms it into a musical remix.
- Audiences reproduce the expression in their own contexts.
- Brands appropriate it for marketing, while political actors use it for satire.
Each new version contributes to the meme's circulation, and some adaptations become templates for further adaptations.
The meme demonstrates that cultural participation is not simply the repetition of an existing expression. It is the production of new meanings through repetition.
Key insight: The audience is not merely the receiver of a cultural text; through imitation, adaptation, and circulation, the audience becomes its co-producer.
6. What Do These Four Memes Have in Common?
| Meme | Recognisable element | New meanings through reuse |
|---|---|---|
| Distracted Boyfriend | Three figures in a visual triangle. | Temptation, changing preferences, competing priorities. |
| This Is Fine | A calm dog in a burning room. | Denial, anxiety, overwork, institutional failure. |
| JCB Ki Khudai | The familiar excavator and the spectacle of watching it. | Curiosity, idleness, entertainment, social commentary. |
| Pawri Ho Rahi Hai | A distinctive phrase and pronunciation. | Celebration, linguistic humour, marketing, political satire. |
These examples differ in form. Some depend on a photograph, others on a comic strip, a familiar public scene, or a spoken phrase. Yet all demonstrate how recognisable cultural material can be adapted for new situations.
7. A Theoretical Framework for Studying Memes
Richard Dawkins: Replication and variation
The meme survives because people imitate and reproduce it. Each user can copy the recognisable structure while modifying its content. This resembles replication with variation, although cultural evolution is not identical to biological evolution.
The process can be represented as:
Imitation → Variation → Circulation → Reinterpretation → Further imitation
Roland Barthes: Semiotics and the instability of meaning
A semiotic approach distinguishes the signifier from what it signifies. A familiar photograph or phrase can remain recognisable while its meaning changes through labels, captions, and cultural context.
The image of a burning room does not permanently signify an examination, a workplace crisis, or political dysfunction. These meanings emerge through the interaction of the visual form and the context in which it is used.
Julia Kristeva: Intertextuality
Each new adaptation depends on a relationship with an earlier text. The audience recognises a familiar image, phrase, or structure and brings that recognition to the new version.
The humour often emerges from the relationship between the familiar form and its unexpected application.
Mikhail Bakhtin: Re-accentuation
When an expression moves into a new social context, it can acquire a new evaluative or ideological emphasis. A comic image can become a form of political criticism; a casual phrase can become an advertisement or a statement of group identity.
The inherited expression remains recognisable, but a new speaker gives it a new social accent.
8. Is a Meme a Text, a Genre, or a Medium?
This distinction is important for English Studies and Digital Humanities.
| Concept | Application |
|---|---|
| Text | A particular meme image, phrase, or video with its associated meaning. |
| Genre or format | A recognisable, repeatable structure, such as the Distracted Boyfriend template. |
| Medium | The means of circulation, such as Instagram, Reddit, or WhatsApp. |
| Intertextuality | The relationship between a new version and earlier versions. |
| Cultural practice | The social act of copying, adapting, sharing, and interpreting cultural material. |
A poem shared on Instagram does not become a new genre merely because it appears on Instagram. Similarly, an image does not become a meme simply because it is posted on social media.
A meme becomes culturally productive when its recognisable material is adopted, imitated, or adapted through circulation. The same meme format can appear on different platforms, and the same platform can carry many different genres.
9. The Central Paradox: Imitation Is Also Interpretation
Consider what happens when a familiar meme is adapted repeatedly:
- An original image or phrase establishes a recognisable cultural form.
- A user imitates it to express a personal experience.
- Another user adapts it to comment on a social or political issue.
- A brand or institution appropriates it for a different purpose.
- A new community gives it a locally meaningful interpretation.
At every stage, the user does more than copy. The user interprets the inherited form and makes it speak to a new situation.
This is the paradox of the meme: its recognisability depends on repetition, but its continued usefulness depends on difference.
A meme reproduced without change can circulate, but a meme that is recontextualised can acquire a new cultural life.
10. Classroom Activity for Postgraduate Students
Task: Select one meme that has circulated across different communities. Collect three versions that demonstrate changes in its meaning.
For each version, answer the following questions:
- What was the original context of the meme?
- Which visual, verbal, or structural features remain unchanged?
- What new meaning does the adaptation introduce?
- What cultural knowledge does the audience need to understand it?
- Does the meme mock, criticise, celebrate, normalise, or excuse the situation?
- How does the new version depend on the audience's recognition of earlier versions?
- Does the adaptation challenge the original meaning or reinforce it?
Suggested assessment rubric
| Criterion | What is assessed? | Marks |
|---|---|---|
| Contextual understanding | Accuracy in identifying the original context and subsequent uses. | 5 |
| Semiotic analysis | Understanding how signifiers and meanings change. | 5 |
| Cultural interpretation | Recognition of social, linguistic, and ideological contexts. | 5 |
| Critical argument | Quality of reasoning, evidence, and interpretation. | 5 |
| Total | 20 | |
Students should be assessed on the quality of their analysis rather than merely on their ability to find a funny meme or produce an entertaining adaptation.
Conclusion: The Audience as Cultural Producer
The four examples demonstrate that a meme is not simply an image or phrase that becomes popular. It is a cultural form that becomes available for collective reuse.
The Distracted Boyfriend meme shows how a visual structure can represent competing choices. This Is Fine demonstrates how humour can become social criticism. JCB Ki Khudai illustrates how an everyday Indian experience can become a shared digital reference. Pawri Ho Rahi Hai reveals how a spoken phrase can travel across national boundaries and acquire new meanings through linguistic play and audience participation.
In each case, users inherit an existing expression but give it a new context, a new target, and sometimes a new ideological purpose.
Digital cultural production is therefore not simply a matter of creators producing content and audiences consuming it. Audiences participate in the creation of meaning through imitation, adaptation, circulation, and reinterpretation.
The central insight
A meme travels because people recognise it; it remains culturally productive because they can make it mean something else. Its repetition preserves a cultural form, while its transformation reveals the creative and interpretive agency of its audience.
Selected Resources
- Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. 1976.
- Know Your Meme: Distracted Boyfriend.
- Know Your Meme: This Is Fine.
- Know Your Meme: JCB Ki Khudai.
- The Indian Express: Why #JCBKiKhudai trended.
This article approaches internet memes as cultural texts through the concepts of imitation, intertextuality, semiotics, re-accentuation, and participatory culture.
