this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
332 points (95.4% liked)
Comic Strips
23229 readers
2792 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- AI-generated comics aren't allowed.
- Limit of two posts per person per day.
- Bots aren't allowed.
- Banned users will have their posts removed.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'll answer this sincerely, since you might really be either naive in your comprehension, or traumatized by some severe butthurt and attempting this as a protest performance.
Memes, as present on the web, are their own art form, born out of postmodernism. Specifically they are low-effort in their vast majority, and predominantly built on existing artwork. The person posting a new meme typically only adds new meaning to it, usually in text form — rather than artwork as such. This is why screenshots from Twitter circulate on par with image memes, and quantity prevails over quality in memes. I do appreciate crediting a zinger post such as those by Ken M, but if I'm making a meme I'm not gonna expect its provenance to be meticulously traced, and in almost all cases it's not important.
Memes are in fact a modern incarnation of folk art and folklore, which are largely anonymous.
Comics are a traditional art form, wherein the artist produces the art as part of the message, together with that explicitly delivered in the text. As such, the artist's identity is also integral to the art itself, since a) the artist usually produces art continuously and imparts their view in it (and the reader might want to discover more of it), and b) the identity may be deliberately built to work as part of the art, true to ‘The medium is the message’. (See e.g. Laibach, Andy Kaufman, Salvador Dalí, Petr Pavlensky, or any number of counterculture artists like Hunter Thompson and William S. Burroughs, for examples in other disciplines.)
If you want your memes to be treated as art where the identity is important (like Ken M's), you need to put effort into it that goes above typical meme activity. And by the way, if you think that comics art doesn't take effort, you're gravely mistaken: it takes lots of practice to produce any art consistently. It's the same situation as with Ralph Steadman's art: looks careless, but in fact shows many years of experience.
Also, I'm pretty sure this distinction was already explored in postmodern art, e.g. by artists modifying someone else's artwork and putting their signature on it. That didn't change things, and you aren't gonna convince anyone either.