Memes in Motion 

If memes once spread through people, they now spread through platforms. The digital “ecosystem” where they live isn’t neutral, it’s powered by algorithms that decide what thrives and what vanishes (Stanusch, 2024). On social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram, what we see is shaped by engagement: the faster something spreads, the more the system feeds it to others. Virality isn’t always an ‘accident’ anymore; it’s an engineered behavior. 

Think of audios like PinkPantheress’s viral soundbite, “My name is Pink, and I’m really glad to meet you.” The same sound, the same format, is endlessly remixed. It becomes a digital template, keeping the content loop alive. Users slot their own faces or jokes into the rhythm, turning a single version into many variations. 

This trend isn’t just playful, it’s also reshaping marketing (Kiljańczyk & Kacprzak, 2024). A meme’s success no longer depends on a single creator, but on the collective power of other users. In this environment, creating earned media has become easier yet much more complex (Ayele et al., 2025). 

Algorithms accelerate both evolution and extinction. A meme can be born in the morning, saturate feeds by night, and be considered “cringe” by the weekend, only to resurface months later as nostalgia. The system doesn’t care about meaning, only momentum. 

The result? Culture moves at the speed of the scroll, and attention becomes the new form of oxygen. 

‘Why are you running?!’ Why are we sharing?! 

Memes might seem like jokes, but at their core, they’re about belonging. To share a meme is to say, “I get it… Do you too?” It’s a form of social signaling, a shorthand for identity and in-group understanding (Weng et al., 2014). The kind of memes we share, whether absurd, political, or self-deprecating, often reveal more about who we are (or who we want to be) than we realize. 

Humor works as a kind of social glue. In moments of uncertainty or tension, people turn to irony and absurdity to stay connected. During the lockdown, for example, the internet was filled with jokes about sourdough, toilet paper, existential dread, etc. It was a collective coping mechanism wrapped in punchlines. Memes let us process fear and chaos together, without having to name it directly. 

Psychologically, their spread mirrors emotional contagion: the way feelings can move through groups almost invisibly (Tabatabaei & Ivanova, 2021; Tabatabaei et al., 2024). A single meme can transfer comfort, outrage, nostalgia, and more at remarkable speed, carrying emotional tone faster than words can.  

But there’s also a layer of self-performance: the desire to participate in what’s “happening.” Sharing a meme isn’t just communication; it’s positioning oneself within culture (Mukhtar, 2024). It’s how we tell others, “I’m part of this conversation too.” This conversation includes these micro-expressions of culture that are multiplying and amplifying. 

Soundbites, Symbolism, and Spreading 

If memes were once simple images shared on Facebook walls, they’ve now evolved into complex, shape-shifting organisms. Technology hasn’t just accelerated their spread, it’s changed what a meme is. On platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, the meme isn’t a single image or phrase anymore, but a living, evolving idea with shared characteristics that are spread through interactions online (Newton et al., 2022). 

Audios like “No God, please no!” from The Office or the distorted “I’m just a baby!” clips have become shared digital skeletons, endlessly reanimated by new users. Each recreation mutates slightly, keeping the original DNA but gaining fresh meaning through its captions and contexts. 

And the evolution doesn’t stop there. The lines between memes, brainrot, pop culture, and edits have blurred. A more recent one–the Louvre robbers. From users recreating their own versions to even using it as Halloween costume ideas, this leap from pixels to parties doesn’t even need a punchline anymore. It just needs to be recognizable enough to participate in. Whether an inside joke, aesthetic, sound, or simply a feeling, technology shortens the distance between creator and audience, evolving from cultural artifacts into living languages (Xiaomanyc, 2025). 

So what is a meme now? A joke, a performance, a shared identity. Or perhaps is it the digital world’s closest thing to real-time evolution? 

‘What do you want? It’s not that simple!’ 

But with this new speed of evolution comes both beauty and risk. Memes can unite millions in laughter, comfort, or shared absurdity, yet the same mechanisms that spread humor can also spread hate and misinformation (Bilal, 2022). What once took decades to define culture can now shift overnight. 

In a sense, memes reveal the double-edged nature of connection itself: they show how easily ideas can travel, but also how quickly meaning can dissolve. What began as a harmless inside joke can transform into a global symbol, or vanish entirely, before anyone remembers who laughed first. 

In the end, memes are the modern microbes of culture, tiny and fast-moving meanings that thrive on contact. They infect our languages and even our politics, reshaping how we express and understand the world. Their beauty lies in this democratic chaos: anyone can create, mutate, or remix an idea until it belongs to everyone and no one. But that same power makes them volatile, a reminder that what spreads easily doesn’t always last. Like any living system, meme culture is a delicate balance between creativity and contagion, between evolution and erosion. And perhaps that’s the truest reflection of the internet itself, a place where everything spreads, but not everything survives.