Ironic and Meta Memes

About
Ironic and Meta Memes are memes that have recently gained popularity with dank memers due to their absurdity and non normie understanding. Ironic Memes are memes that parody dead memes or make no sense to the average memer. Meta Memes are memes that make fun of the memes format itself. Meta Ironic memes can also exist.

Origin
There is no known origin of ironic and meta memes, but in 2014 reddit user self.SAMS posted on the subreddit /r/SAMSA a definition of ironic memes. He suggested that the use of irony in memes “is using something that is sincerely used by someone else to make fun of them.”

Breakdown of Ironic Memes
Ironic memes are commonly bizarre and may lack a simple structure. Ironic memes are memes that make fun of the source material in a satirical way. The most common usage of ironic memes is parodying twitter and hood twitter memes. The images used in these memes are usually grainy, include distortion, over saturated, include some sort of blur ,and have characters with illuminated eyes suggesting that they are woke. If the meme makes the viewer question if it is meme, it has succeeded.

Examples of Ironic Memes
A popular meme that is used ironically is Damn Daniel and My Name is Jeff. With these memes being considered dead, dank memers have taken these memes as source material for their memes. A meme does not have to dead for it to be memed ironically. Memers tend to make fun of anything that is popular. A combination of both is considered the ultimate ironic meme due to how it can make no sense.

Another common example is the use of the crying laughing emoji. The emoji itself is a character laughing so hard it can't contain the laughter forcing it to cry. Memes with this emoji attempt to distort it to the point where it can not be recognized. The emoji became an ironic symbol due to its popularity with almost all phone users. The emoji can be found in most ironic memes.

Breakdown of Meta Memes
Just like Ironic Memes, Meta memes parody popular memes, but these memes go a step further and make fun of the format the meme is presented in. Ironic and Meta memes share the same qualities with their images but Meta memes may take the alteration further by poorly illustrating the image. A Meta meme follows the conventions of a regular meme but it does not act like a regular meme.

Examples of Meta Memes
A popular meme is bottom text and increasingly verbose. These memes are different from ironic memes in that it may appear that something is missing or the memes is expanded. Bottom text is considered Meta in how it makes fun of the classic meme format of having text on the top of the image followed by text on the bottom. Increasingly verbose memes are Meta because of how they parody a phrase by making it more grammatically complex each frame.

Meta Ironic Memes
Meta ironic memes are memes take the conventions of both Ironic and Meta memes but incorporate their own

. In most cases, these types of memes are Meta but with an ironic ending. The most common usage is combining ironic and meta memes to create one meme. Meta ironic memes are not as popular due to their strict conventions.

Ironic/Meta Memes and Depression
It has been seen that these types of memes can cause depression or are used as a distraction from depression. Satirical news source Unleashed Reality posted an article in which they interviewed some meme admins and asked questions about ironic meme and depression. Although, most people did not take it serious there were some genuine responses in which some revealed that these memes fuel suicidal thoughts and some said the complete opposite. It is thought that dank memers who are true meme lords are actually depressed due to the lack of human interaction.