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Fleek, snek, stan: How internet culture bleeds into language and why we should care

The term “meme” was coined in 1976 as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads. That the internet has co-opted that term as a catch-all label for the highly viral in-jokes that catch fire and burn their way through social feeds and sometimes out into the wider world carries a kind of devastating irony. Memes, after all, are nothing if not cultural information spreading from person-to-person or at least device-to-device, but smart money says Richard Dawkins could never have imagined that his theory would come to the attention of the masses in quite this way.

He couldn’t have known that one day the lifespan of a mega-popular meme might look something like this. In June 2014, a Vine user named Peaches Monroe posted a video where she declared her “eyebrows on fleek.” The video blew up on its native platform, blasted over to YouTube and gained even more notoriety there as the subject of endless remixes and autotunes. Five months later it took hashtag form in a Kim Kardashian Tweet and the spread of “on fleek” was officially irreversible. And say what you will about the staying power of slang, but 2015 saw “fleek” and “on fleek” entries added to the Oxford English Dictionary. #JustSayin

And the more social platforms and web tools empower users to create their own content, the more power people will have to change the conversation while brands scramble to keep up. So, when you ask me if this is relevant to our work, I have no choice but to offer a resounding “yes.” Because having the wisdom to tell a client when it’s already way too late to try to get in on #LaurelOrYanny means keeping a pulse on the internet ridiculata that has everyone buzzing.

Which brings us to this:

And this:

And also this:

Does anyone want to venture a guess as to why Captain America has the head of Julie Andrews? Why he’s been faceswapped with Chancellor Palpatine? Or why he’s spitting Smash Mouth lyrics?

If you don’t, take heart, popular tech podcast Reply All has a recurring segment dedicated to explaining Tweets, many of which are meme-based. It’s called Yes, Yes, No and it’s wonderful. I can’t promise I’ll be able to unpack the internet with the same panache as the boys of Reply All, but I’ll give it the ol’ college try, as they say.

It all began with a throwaway scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming that spotlights a PSA-style video wherein Captain America comes to talk to youthful wrongdoers who’ve landed themselves in detention. He flips a chair around and begins, “So, you got detention…” For nearly a year, nothing came of this (the film bowed on June 28, 2017), but on May 11, some Twitter user thought to have a little fun with this speech and a meme was born. In the intervening days, a slurry of low-key judgy missives from Cap were created.

But as memes are wont to do, the format morphed over time, growing ever more niche until it arrived at laser-focused jokes meant to surprise and delight the few that would appreciate them. Kind of like this series of Kylo Ren x Lady Bird mash-up Tweets that sent me into howls of delight, but have barely elicited a scoff from people not already immersed in Film Twitter:

Which brings us back to:

If I’ve done this correctly, here’s the page we should all be sharing:

But I digress, even in the handful of days since I pulled these images, Captain America “So, You Got Detention” has been replaced by a new meme du jour: LeBron James’ NBA Finals Reaction, which was born on May 31.

Still, I know a lot more about the MCU than sportsball and the fleeting ubiquity of “So, You Got Detention” Cap serves my point well. As creators and curators, we can’t possibly react to, or participate in, every trend, but we do need to speak fluent internet so that we can identify what has staying power, what’s a flash in the pan and know when to draw inspiration from what’s popping now.

Though perhaps not admissible in say, an essay test, memes, gifs and emoji are the next iteration of slang. To know them is to stay fluent in the cultural consciousness, which remains, as ever, a critical key to audience connection and relevance.

If we’re to remain great storytellers, we must remain engaged.