Veroli Zhimo
Every few weeks, if not days, a disconcerting piece of news from somewhere in the world has netizens looking for ways to comment on the pandemonium through memes— wording transposed on funny images.
Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, defined a meme as “a unit of cultural meaning, such as an idea or a value that is passed from one generation to another.” In today's internet age, this cultural phenomenon is simply understood as things that are widely shared voluntarily online. Or as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it— “an image, video, piece of text, typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.”
The latest memes that emerged was from Myanmar as the recently-elected government was deposed by a military coup earlier in the month.
A video of a dance instructor, engaged in an elaborate workout routine to some techno music, while a coup is seemingly taking place in the background emerged—black SUVs drove up to a checkpoint on what appeared to be the road leading to the country’s Assembly of the Union complex behind her.'
Minutes after the video was posted, it became subject to comment, controversy and, importantly, memes. The young woman’s image has been pasted on other recent attacks on democracy, including the storming of the US Capitol building in January.
Speaking of the US, senator Bernie Sanders captured the imagination of millions of netizens when an image of him wearing mittens at the Biden inauguration captured the attention of meme-makers everywhere, before the swearing in even happened. By the end of the day, Sanders was being Photoshopped into all kinds of scenes, from New York City subways to college canteens in Nagaland.
But Naga youths do not have to go far or look to foreign personalities to find ‘meme-worthy’ events.
Social media accounts run by the state’s imaginative youth are filled with meme-worthy moments from popular Naga musicians, churches, legislators, bureaucrats, as well as leaders from the Naga political movement.
Among others, memes have been used to make entertaining comments on the ineffectiveness of the Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition (NLTP) Act, the lack of good roads, the ban on dog meat, gender inequality and even the Naga Peace Talks.
While using humour as a coping mechanism is nothing new, a new layer to social and political discourse has been added with the millennial and Gen Z’s tendency to approach serious issues with jokes.
Transcending the notion of wording transposed on funny images, they summarize a culture fraught with political fatigue in a non-traditional point of view—one that the older generations probably do not or cannot fathom.
But there is an irony in this exercise.
There is no denying that memes deliver a moment of levity at a time when most of life is imitating fictional dystopia. However, there is the question of whether the people have become so distracted by the bells and whistles of social media and the worldwide web, that they will not notice institutions and civilisations crumbling around them? Obsessively creating memes and sharing them as the means to take on an attack on a fledgling democracy next door or for that matter, the uncertainty of the Naga political future is not being in on the joke. While we stare into our screens, so pleased with our wittiness, are we becoming the meme?
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