this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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[orange is cracking a joke at a crowd of diverse people who do not seem receptive at all]
Wouldn't it be hilarious if you lost all your rights?
Hypothetically, as a thought experiment

[orange is shaking with laughter, the crowd is looking pissed]
Chill buddies, it's just satire
I was joking haha you fell for my bait
Epic humor moment 100

[zoom on orange's eyes, which seem full of evil intentions]

https://thebad.website/comic/relax_its_just_a_joke

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.