The End

As this is my tenth and final post, I thought it would only be appropriate to introduce you all to the reason this blog exists in the first place. That reason, my friends, is Kilroy.

 

Thanks, pal. 

Kilroy is a bald man with a huge nose drawn peeking over a wall, usually accompanied by the phrase "Kilroy was here." Kilroy is widely regarded as the first meme to go viral, if not the first meme period; he began popping up during World War II, perhaps most famously at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, where Joseph Stalin saw him in a bathroom stall and demanded to know who he was. 

However, no one is quite sure who exactly "Kilroy" is. The most prevalent theory is that the image is meant to represent shipyard inspector James Kilroy, who wrote down the phrase on items to prove he had indeed looked them over. Then, U.S. soldiers spread the image all over the world, drawing it in bombed-out villages and on tanks, just to name a few places. 

It's funny to think how such a simple, silly little piece of graffiti went "viral", so to speak, in a time where that sort of cultural exposure was nearly impossible. Perhaps it's a reflection on the nature of memes themselves; maybe they don't need the Internet to spread like wildfire. Memes have often been used to typify the Internet: pointless, stupid, and trite. But if they existed before the Internet, and spread without its influence, can critics continue to deride them as meaningless drivel spewed forth by some clowns online.

Another noteworthy aspect of this meme is its lifespan, probably the longest in meme history. I've mentioned before how most memes are generally short-lived; they typically have a lifespan of a few week before fading away into obscurity, allowing the next one to come along and replace it. A certain few have been around for much longer, many of which you automatically think of when you hear the word "meme."

Love them or hate them, memes have absorbed into the fabric of our culture; Kilroy is the perfect example of that, having existed for 75 years, if not always in the public eye. And as I hope you've learned from this blog, memes have a lot to tell us about how our society and culture operate, which is not something you'd typically think of when stumbling across them on Twitter. And if that doesn't appeal to you, well...I have memes. They're funny. Everyone likes looking at them. No arguments.

Kidding, of course. I personally find memes hilarious, much more so than the garbage the Internet is always trying to shove down our throats. Something else you can take away from this blog: memes are treasures of the Internet, and a fair few of them will be remembered long after we're gone. (Probably not, but it's funny to imagine some future society treating them like fine art.) So with that hopeful sentiment, I'll leave you here, hopefully with many more memes for you to stumble across as you peruse the Internet for something entirely unrelated.

It's Simple, Really

This past week, I had a number of experiences that really shaped this week's post. By experiences, I mean bombing an exam or two, but they at least did me the favor of giving me a topic before sinking my GPA into academic hell.

Well, I try... 

But first, the meme, the beloved cornerstone of this blog. (And our society, if we're being honest with each other.) It's one of the true classics; Boromir from Lord of the Rings explaining the difficulty of a given situation with obvious exasperation. I know what poor Boromir is feeling, as I've felt pretty exasperated myself recently, and mainly because of the stuff I mentioned above. 

Naturally, when we do poorly on exams, we feel pretty bad about ourselves. We start worrying about how it'll affect our grade, then our GPA, then our scholarship...it's like a never-ending cycle of torment, all brought on by a letter on a piece of paper. But the amount of stress that we cause ourselves serves as a reflection of how overcomplicated we let our lives get because of all this academic stress, and we're feeling it almost all the time. Now, I'm not saying you should abandon all responsibility and go relax 24/7, but there's merit in taking a step back and analyzing what a bad grade, for example, can really teach us. 

My Spanish professor made an excellent point when some of us worried about our exam scores: we define our lives by numbers, achievements, and statistics, often to an excessive degree. We've gotten it into our heads that our GPA is somehow a reflection of ourselves, and that doing anything to damage that means that we've failed as people. It's no one's fault really; modern society has taught us to be competitive, and if you're like me, you've always taken pride in good grades. But we've gotten so focused on perfection and performance that we forget to just learn sometimes. It seems like a simple thing, but we make it needlessly complicated by hyping academia up to more than it really is. 

Grades are important, absolutely so. But they reflect something impersonal, cold hard data rather than what a person really is. It's the experience of being here and learning to be well-rounded adults that's teaching us to succeed, not percentages that show quantifications on paper. We put so much value on numbers that we seem to lose ourselves in the stress; ultimately, college is about being here and taking away what matters to you, not what some numbers show as "intelligence" or "effort". 

So, what should you take away? One, don't be like me: study for your exams and ace them instead of stressing yourself out over a letter grade. Two: take a step back from all the grades sometime and think about what your college experience means to you. Don't let grades be the sole standard by which you define your performance, intelligence, or anything else. There's value in those numbers, and you should want the best for yourself, but learn to relax and roll with the punches, too. That's how we learn; our mistakes are great teachers, and they may sneak back up and help you when you least expect it. 

Probably why I didn't pass those exams. 

Curse You, Igor Sikorsky!

As the moody, irritable, and rebellious teenagers most of us were, we often felt like our parents didn't understand us. We were embarrassed to be seen with them in public, didn't want them asking about any aspect of our lives, and certainly didn't want them involved in any personal business. But compared to obsessiveness of some parents these days, we should really be more thankful for our own.

And thus, a meme was born. 

You might be wondering how parenting relates to a meme; as always, I'll show you, probably in the most convoluted way possible. The meme itself, "don't talk to my or my son ever again," is a catchphrase that is typically featured with an image of an iconic character and a miniature duplicate. The first usage of the phrase is from the video game Mario 64, released in 1996. The meme itself first appeared on Tumblr in 2104, and has steadily grown in popularity through Tumblr and Twitter. The meme isn't all that deep, but thinking about it reminded me of a rather disturbing trend among parents and actually has severe ramifications for the children involved. 

That trend, which you may be familiar with, is helicopter parenting. (Now do you see where I'm going with this? There's always a connection!) If you don't know the term, it goes a little like this: helicopter parents "hover" over their children, controlling every aspect of their lives to an obsessive, and ultimately detrimental, degree. Obviously, having your parents hover over you like that would be both embarrassing and annoying, but it's the kids who have to suffer through it unknowingly that end up paying for it later. 

That time usually comes when the poor kids are about the start college, and boy, is it bad. Parents have called college presidents over roommate disputes, asked to sit in on disciplinary hearings, done their children's homework, and even camped outside to avoid leaving their children alone. Of course, it's hard for all parents to let go, but hovering and intervening critically damages a young person's independence and self-esteem. Both of those skills are crucial for living as an adult; you wouldn't have your mom sit in with you for a job interview, would you? But more and more, these are the types of "adults" that this style of parenting produces. These kids are incredibly dependent on others, have poor coping strategies, and lack conscientiousness and responsibility in a time where it's perhaps most important. 

There's a fine line between involvement and helicoptering, and crossing it has become increasingly common for this generation. My parents want me to call them every week and want to know about my grades, but trust me enough to live my own life away from them, and I can't stress how valuable of an experience that's been. Though a minor example, I've struggled without my parents too; I recently had the flu, and was basically bedridden for two days. This time, I didn't have my mom to look after me; I had to get out of bed and get my own medicine, all while juggling the coursework I'd missed. But having to do things on my own, fail on my own, and live on my own has started to prepare me for the adult world, which is even more different from a college campus than a campus is to our homes. 

So, quick parenting tip: don't hover, or your kid will be that kid that moves back in and doesn't leave until they're 40 or you're dead. Kidding, of course; it's a serious problem that often goes unrecognized, which hampers the great experience that college is. 

*Note: In reference to the post's title; Igor Sikorsky was a pioneer in the invention of the helicopter. Get it? 

Decent Men In An Indecent Time

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

A real hero would've chosen an iPhone. 

Last week, I used the above quote in regards to The Circle, but it really stuck with me after writing that post. Not to get bleak here, but morality and its ramifications are some of the most fascinating psychologcal creations of humanity, and exploring such a topic basically writes a post by itself. So are my self-serving goals immoral? We'll see. 

Harvey Dent speaks those words several times throughout The Dark Knight, sounding more and more ominous as he completes his own tragic fall to villainy. Of course, the rascals of the Internet wasted no time in turning them into a meme, typically used when public figures suffer some embarrassing incident that disgraces them in peoples' eyes. 

Yikes... 

Most people have beliefs about what's right and wrong, many of them being universal across time and culture. Harvey, too, has a strong moral compass; he's viewed as so pure and incorruptible that even Batman considers retiring to let him carry on his good deeds. Harvey is also consistently referred to as a "white knight", heroic and untarnished, which makes his descent into evil all the more tragic. But the true tragedy is that Harvey represents all of us; we all try to live by a moral code, and show our "true" selves when that code is stripped away, leaving our actions uninhibited. Such is the impact that morality has on our daily lives. 

But even today, there's still no clear definition for such a powerful force. Some see morality in a communal way; actions that are regarded as right, good, etc. Others have proposed the view that morality is subjective, and that each person should follow their own personal code and live by their own rules. These two views clash, of course, because the judgement of one person may not be the same as most of society's. Generally, we see killing someone else as wrong. But if the person you killed had done something unspeakably horrible to you, are you justified in taking revenge? With circumstances like those, it's easy to see how important morality is in guiding our actions, great or small, 

Morality has effects on religion, too; in fact, it's why most people seek out religion in the first place. We seek a power and ethical law that is higher than ourselves, because we cannot be objective enough to judge each other in a way that is both "moral" and fair. So we live by laws set down by higher powers, and seek absolution when we break those laws because they tell us when we do wrong. 

In the end, though, true morality is an impossible goal. We're bound to screw up sometime, no matter how hard we try. Now, we may not go crazy like poor Harvey and kill a bunch of people, but the possibility of human error always looms. But what Harvey teaches us is that we cannot let morality be all-consuming; we should strive to act morally, whether for societal or private reasons, but not let it consume us until we end up getting lost in it. The point of Harvey's downfall is to force us to face our darker, ugly side, and to remind us that light and goodness can be found in that darkness too. 

In the movie, it's the man dressed all in black that represents that goodness, an ironic twist on the "white knight/dark knight" role. In our lives, it's ourselves and others that have to be that light. Morality isn't like Harvey's coin, flipped to make black and white decisions; it's subjective and personal, and I think it should be emulated without becoming an obsession. It should guide us against becoming evil, but we should be cautious that it doesn't guide us to do evil for good reasons. 

So the lesson is: be good, or your face will get burned off. 

Kidding. If that happens, you should probably see a doctor. 

Nostalgia Wars

"Super battle droids, take 'em down!"

Nothing like children committing virtual space violence to brighten your day. 

If you were like me as a child, the proud owner of a PlayStation 2 back when you could be proud of that, than it's more than likely that you've experienced the chaotic appeal of Star Wars: Battlefront II. I can't fathom how may hours I spent shooting virtual enemies while doing a backflip off a staircase, but I know it was a lot. Like many memes, Battlefront memes have been making a quiet resurgence in the annals of Twitter and reddit, preying upon the nostalgia of man-children everywhere for the sake of being spread around. Nostalgia is a powerful force that is more than just a wistful little flashback into the past; it continues to shape our experiences and interests well into adulthood, and colors the memories of our past perhaps more than we'd like to admit. 

We all have our share of fond memories; vacations with family, hanging out with friends, absorbing the best moments from our childhood to look back on. But the past is a fickle thing. I've mentioned this in a previous post; our memories are colored by idealizations and ignorance, yearning for the good ol' days that we only every managed to glimpse. By recalling a memory, we see it as our brain has distorted it over the years, not the reality of what happened. This distorted feeling of pleasantness is known as nostalgia, and it's really quite fascinating. 

Nostalgia works by essentially keeping all the good memories and erasing the bad; we're not going to look back fondly on the death of a loved one, for example. However, nostalgia operates less on specific memories and more on specific emotions, hence the reason while powerful nostalgia tends to hit you while visiting a certain place or doing a particular activity. Research has also shown that nostalgia is linked most to a person's sense of smell, which is why we just feel good when we smell our favorite childhood foods in the kitchen. 

Nostalgia is also a collective experience; many people can express a desire to re-experience the same thing. Taking the above example, adults now wishing for the childish delight of video games, or our parents remembering the first time they saw Star Wars in a movie theater. It's a testament to our sense of empathy that we can all feel nostalgic, even when two experiences aren't similar at all. Everyone feels bad when a friend mentions a rough childhood, even if you haven't experienced it yourself. But the pull of nostalgia is just that strong; so strong, in fact, that nostalgia was considered a mental disorder during the 17th-18th centuries, with its "victims" being deemed incapable of looking forward or living in the present. 

So we can all be thankful for having nostalgia around; it makes us happy, and that's what's important. Most of us will probably remember our first taste of Creamery ice cream rather than the time we slept through our morning classes, but maybe that's for the best. And me? I'll probably remember my first meme or something equally trivial. 

East Halls War Journal: Vol. 1

If you're reading this the day it was posted, that means one thing: it's Thirsty Thursday.

Like college kids can afford fancy liquor... 

If you're reading this and you live in East Halls...well, you probably already knew what day it was. Every Thursday night since time immemorial (aka the start of the semester, which feels like it was 20 years ago) crowds of parched students have departed East Halls in a mass exodus of shrieking, underdressed clumps that apparently don't have to wake up at 7:30 in the morning to get ready for class. And make no mistake, they don't care if you do either. 

According to Urban Dictionary, the most reputable source on the Internet, Thirsty Thursday is the product of both impatience for the weekend and the perceived ease of Friday schedules. Personally, I don't know what school these people are going to, but if they have time to party on a weeknight then sign me up. College is hard enough at dark o'clock in the morning; complications from a hangover being added to that mess sounds like the equivalent of physical manifestation of demons in my room. 

I've been unlucky enough to live in Curtin Hall, "conveniently" (and they stressed that on the tour) located right next to Curtin Road and the CATA stop. That means I get to experience to soothing sounds of the freshman population drunkenly stumbling across the lawn and the weekly riots that occur when the bus inevitably leaves people behind. You think you've seen it all until people start climbing on top of the bus stop at 12:30 in the morning. 

Buy why do people get so excited for the weekend that they feel the need to get it started a day early? Myself, I've got a few theories. First off, weekends represent a period of non-regimented activity. In short, you don't have a schedule to follow, which produces feelings of relaxation and relief. Thinking about schedules makes us anxious; we have x amount of hours in the day to fit in x amount of classes, then squeeze in food, homework, studying, sleep...the list seems endless, which causes anxiety in a lot of people. Nobody likes to feel like their time is crunched into tiny, restrictive blocks of 24 hours, so the ability to sleep for 15 hours with nobody to hassle you about it is obviously something desirable. 

Secondly, and perhaps most noticeably, is the fact that college kids, freshmen in particular, love to party. For many of us, this is the first time we've been away from our homes and forced to assume adult responsibilities, which causes both relief and immense stress. It's a good feeling to be able to know that you're trusted enough to make your own decisions about a time that'll end up shaping your entire life. At the same time, that's a huge burden to bear for someone so young, and some of us handle it better than others. I won't get into condemnation of people who do like to party, nor complain that my schedule prevents me from going out to blow off some steam myself most nights. I find it fascinating how hard partying is a manifestation of our need for stress relief, when it seems like it would cause more trouble than it's worth on a weeknight. 

So enjoy these Thursday nights, folks. You're getting the real freshman experience, listening to your classmates wander around at ungodly hours while you angrily slam your window shut and moan into your pillow, imagining dragging yourself out of bed in a few scant hours to step put into the cold, half-sober morning to fight for a seat on the bus. 

And to think they told us that this wasn't a party school, and that East was "quiet and conveniently located." No wonder everybody feels the need to drink. 

Born Under A Bad Sign

As Mark Twain states in his novel Pudd'nhead Wilson, "When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.” Perhaps no one person knows this more than Bad Luck Brian. 

Ouch. 

This classic meme was born in the depths of reddit in January of 2012, featuring a middle schooler named Kyle Craven, dressed in a hideous sweater and smiling goofily for the camera. It quickly exploded in popularity, and has since become one of the most widely-known and  humorous Internet memes. The focus of this meme is Brian's truly awful luck; but is there such a thing as bad luck in real life? 

Sources say: maybe. It's true that some people really do have a lot of bad things happen to them simply by circumstance. However, those "bad things" are also influenced by one's choices, competence, the actions of others, and random chance. People tend to blend all of those factors together, attributing misfortune to superstition, or plain bad luck. Logically speaking, we should be able to determine why bad things happen to people by looking at their choices and actions, which may result in negative outcomes because of behavior. But our minds aren't wired to work that way; we believe in bad luck even when it's not there. 

Our brain is designed to find patterns in the massive quantities of information it receives; letters, numbers, sounds, and so forth. This is of course a crucial skill for human survival, but it also tends to make us spot patterns in that jumble of data that don't really exist. Essentially, our brain makes conspiracy theorists out of us all; we attribute random events to luck rather than mathematical probability and science. 

For example, people who believe that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day will attribute everything that goes wrong that day to bad luck, and will also have more things go wrong because they have preconceived expectations that can turn a minor incident- tripping over a curb- into falling into traffic and spilling hot coffee all over yourself, just because you think it's going to happen. With bad luck, we're basically the engineers of our own destruction. 

This perception of bad luck also has ramifications for how people view their own lives. This attribution of misfortune to bad luck is called psychological reversal, a subconscious method of sabotaging one's success.If we believe we suffer from bad luck, we're more likely to view events in a negative light than a positive one. Where one person might see getting locked out of their dorm room as an opportunity to walk around and explore campus, someone else (including me) could see it as another example of how nothing in their life ever goes right, woe is me, blah blah blah. Bad luck is entirely subjective; what's good for one person is terrible for the next.  As I said above, we find a good think and make it into a bad thing then blame it on the odds, all while ignoring the actual mathematical odds (or our own stupidity) that led to things going to hell. 

So if you ever find yourself blaming bad times on bad luck, just remember: it's all in your head. Don't spend the day cursing the Blue Loop for leaving you behind; instead, enjoy the walk to class and take in some of the scenery that Penn State has to offer. 

We are...

Go On, Tell Me More...

Ah, sarcasm. The crown jewel, in my expert opinion, of all humor; it requires both deep thought and thoughtlessness, and the right mix of bite and humor to either generate some laughs or leave your audience staring vacantly in confusion. It can range from barely-concealed contempt to witty banter with friends, though as with everything else on this blog, there's a reason for why we do it.

Denizens of the Internet will have seen this one before; the late Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, gazing off to the side as snarky text belittles some seemingly foolish proclamation. To those of us who see sarcasm as an art form, this meme's hilarity is endless. And to those who just don't get it, well...I'm sure you're just on a higher plane of humor than me. (Kidding, of course, but I needed to work in a sarcastic example somehow.) But seriously, everyone enjoys some well-placed comic relief, but psychological studies suggest our snark comes from more than just the desire to be funny.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, depending on how you feel about the targets of your quips), sarcasm can stem from feelings of inferiority compared to our peers. If we feel like one of our friends has bragged a bit too much about their fantastic test grade, we throw in a "Wow, you must be so smart," to knock them down a peg. Beyond the fact that nobody likes a braggart, people needle each other to establish dominance and intellectually superiority; we've made a clever joke and boosted our egos a bit at the same time. Even on a biological level, sarcasm is related to aggression and dominance, with being "top dog", for both the jokester and those who respond.  People who consistently had higher levels of aggression, and not necessarily in the physical sense, were shown to be more sarcastic in general.

However, contrary to popular belief, sarcasm isn't related to intelligence. Although your friends might belittle you if a witty jab flies right over your head, the perception and understanding of sarcasm is linked more to social and emotional receptiveness. Sarcasm isn't just in the words we use; it's our facial expressions, gestures, and the all-important, make-or-break tone of voice. Studies show that those who understand sarcasm the best are highly socially intelligent, able to read body language and vocal inflection more easily, which doesn't necessarily translate to academic intelligence.

Aside from determining whose banter is the wittiest, sarcasm also has important ramifications regarding our relationships with each other. People being sarcastic often see themselves as being innocently funny, but those on the receiving end may not feel the same way, instead experiencing hurt and a loss of self esteem over a supposedly harmless barb. I remember a conversation I had with a friend of my friend last week, as she commented on the copious amounts of people populating Penn State's campus.

"It's just so crowded here," she said, shaking her head in dismay.

Me being me, I elected to respond with a deadpan remark: "I know, right? It's a good thing we've got the plague going around; it's starting to feel a bit overpopulated around here, y'know?"

Suffice to say, she looked at me like I was a genocidal maniac for the rest of our conversation. I had unwittingly fallen into one of the traps of sarcasm: not knowing your audience. Our friends, for example, our used to our facetious ways, but total strangers are much more likely to take you literally, which can lead to disaster when you bring out a snarky comment.

To put everything into perspective, sarcasm is a basic social response to either a desire for humor or feelings of inadequacy, two very different concepts pooled under the same witty umbrella. So next time one of your friends makes a snide comment at you, you can spend the whole day thinking about what exactly they meant by it.

(Again, kidding. Isn't sarcasm great?)

How it feels at Penn State sometimes. 

Can I Have A Frame For This Meme?

This is Pepe. 

Credit: Fran Zi/YouTube.com 

Originally a character in cartoonist Matt Furie's comic strip, the saddened frog gained a permanent home on imageboard site 4chan before exploding into mainstream popularity in 2015, receiving the honor of being the most used meme on Tumblr that year. Since then, Pepe has enjoyed a quietly steady existence among the denizens of the Internet. That is, until this past Tuesday. 

This past Tuesday, Hillary Clinton's campaign posted a lengthy explanatory article about Pepe, who aside from being a meme has become something of the unofficial mascot for both the Alt-Right movement (a "mainstream" alternative to conservatism) and Donald Trump's campaign. This was in response to an image mocking Clinton's naming of Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables", with Pepe being featured in a mock movie poster alongside key Trump supporters. Quickly seizing an opportunity, Clinton's campaign explained to its meme-savvy supporters how Pepe is actually a symbol of white nationalism, and used it to tie Trump to the often racist and xenophobic Alt-Right trolls lurking in the dark corners of the Internet. However, since this isn't a political blog, I won't be discussing political ideology or whether Clinton's campaign was even correct in its explanation, but rather the social and psychological ramifications of Pepe's exploitation. 

Interestingly enough, using an image or symbol for some sort of gain isn't a new phenomenon; people do it every day without even realizing it. This is called framing; presenting something in a certain way to generate a specific cognitive response in people. For example, let's say I offer you a deal: I'll give you psychic powers that'll allow to predict the outcome of all Penn State football games. Naturally, you'd take it; the benefits of such abilities would be enormously rewarding for you. However, let's say i come to you a week later and tell you that your psychic powers could've been used to prevent a catastrophic war, and instead you wasted them on football ; now you feel like terrible person. What I've done was present the matter in a new frame, from positive to negative, without changing the original wording of our bargain. Is it deceptive? Sure. But it works. 

As you may already know, our perception of reality is subjective; it's not absolute, but based on our emotions, thoughts, and experiences, and how we frame things determines the value of those experiences. We can choose to look back at a day we got drenched by rain on the way to class, for example, with burning hatred or fond amusement. In fact, framing is actually a survival mechanism; it allows our brain to make order in a world full of chaos, its primary function. Essentially, our brain frames the one straight line in a jumble of curves and criss-crosses. Though I won't get too deep into it, framing also creates meaning out of nothing; why do we remember specific events vividly and other dimly? Because something, our emotions, our thoughts, made us look at that event in a way that gave it importance. 

What the Clinton campaign did with Pepe is an example of political framing, which is about as old as politics itself. The way people feel about issues is based on how politicians frame them; for example, abortion seems much more palatable as "a medical procedure" rather than "baby killing." Is a drug epidemic a "law and order" problem or a "medical" problem? Asking someone "How do you feel about Obama?" versus "How do you feel about that dirty Democrat Barry O?" obviously triggers a certain response because of the wording, one reason why all those polls the news loves to show often aren't very scientific. And yes, even the news media is guilty of "spinning" issues to suit a certain narrative; just look at how differently Fox News and MSNBC cover the same story. 

Alas, framing is an essential, often unnoticed fact of life. As much as we want to avoid being "played" according to our biases, we're hardwired to respond based on how we feel, and let cold hard objectivity take a back seat. You'll see framing no matter where you look, even, it seems, in the meme of a cartoon frog. 

Sources: 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201012/framing-your-most-important-and-least-recognized-daily-ment

Harambe: The Meme That Won't Die (Even If Its Subject Already Did)

Unless you've been living under an Internet-free rock for the past three months, memes regarding the slain gorilla Harambe have likely flooded your various social media accounts. The meme itself is fairly standard as far as Internet humor goes: frequently crude, always irreverent, and fueled by the hurt feelings of those who legitimately cared about the gorilla being mocked by everyone else who just wanted a quick laugh. But the truly remarkable thing about the meme is this: it won't go away. Months have gone by since Harambe was shot and killed, yet jokes and humorous image edits continue to pile up. And what's even more fascinating? There's actually a psychological reason for why that is.

The eponymous gorilla. Image courtesy of Reuters. 

First, a little background for those lucky few who might've missed the whole incident. On May 28, a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and was grabbed and dragged around by Harambe, a 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla. To prevent the kid from getting hurt, a zoo worker shot and killed Harambe. The whole event was captured on camera, and received international media coverage over the controversial decision to kill the gorilla. Scores of people were outraged, blaming the child's mother, the zoo worker, and the whole zoo industry for killing the gorilla. Scores of other people, however, quickly to took to social media to mock Harambe's supporters for their anger while the world was plagued with real, pressing concerns. And that, my friends, is where the memes began. 

Unlike last year's killing of Cecil the Lion, for example, legetimate animal rights activists were quickly drowned out by rampant memes from all corners of the Internet. Song lyrics, image edits, and mash-ups with other memes are just some of the examples of Harambe's post-mortem fame, which has only continued to rise as the weeks have gone by. Keep in mind, most memes don't last too long, typically being eclipsed by the next new one at a rate of about one a month; that makes the proliferation of the Harambe meme that much more curious. Even the Cincinatti Zoo fell victim to the memes, deleting its Twiiter account following the issuing of a formal statement condemning those pesky Harambe memers. Leave it to the Internet to chase America's second-oldest zoo away with memes. 

But despite appearances, the Harambe meme is actually a great example of the textbook definition for "meme". According to Richard Dawkins, the British biologist who first coined the term, a meme is a behavior, idea, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. The desire among people to replicate and spread the meme to others is called imitation. Essentially, Harambe has been given significance by our popular culture, and the social desire for people to be included in that culture is what drives them to replicate and disseminate the meme. Looking around campus, it's easy to see this is true; any whiteboard on the door to a dorm room is fair game to have "dicks out for Harambe" (one of the many branches of the original meme) scrawled all over it, and even mentioning "Harambe" in conversation will generate an immediate and familiar response.  

The psychology behind the process is relatively simple: people want to feel included, and the very nature of memes allows a common ground to form between them through a shared, often humorous, idea. In Harambe's case, the outcry over his death was replaced by mockery of said outcry, which transformed into ironic mourning for his death that is collectively seen as humorous. The irony surrounding the meme has been its primary staying power, which has been further fueled by the massive exposure the meme has gotten following Harambe's death. The more the media talks about how "out of control" the meme has gotten, the more people want to hop on the bandwagon and be a part of a societal trend. Now that a societal idea has been transmitted through mass media, it's become virtually unstoppable, a juggernaut of a dearly departed gorilla taken from us far too soon. (See what I did there? Meme.) 

Even the fact that some may consider the meme hurtful has done nothing to slow the Harambe train. This is due to a sort of "relief effect" of the joke: it's okay to joke about a gorilla being shot because he was, when you get right down to it, just a gorilla. However, it's not considered socially acceptable to joke about, say, 9/11. Why? Because real people were really affected, rather than a crop of butthurt animal activists quickly rendered irrelevant by a meme of their own outrage. Harambe memes are society's way of joking about typically untouchable topics, an expression of humor that's usually kept bottled up for the sake of propriety. Collectively, we've all unscrewed the pressure valve to let all that bottled up morbid humor escape, with Harambe as our glorious mechanism. 

Personally speaking, I find the meme to be hilarious, and for exactly the reasons I gave above. Harambe makes a funny, socially acceptable punchline to just about anything, and it's rendered more humorous by how rampant it is across campus. Even knowing that I'm spreading the meme because of human social behavior has done nothing to make me stop wanting to spread it. 

So, here's to you, Harambe old boy. May you find the eternal glory in memeified death that you never got in life. 

Photo: SelectALL/Cincinatti Zoo/Getty Images

Sources: 

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/harambe-forever.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/the-complicated-appeal-of-the-harambe-meme.html