memes

Yeah, I would say that a bit more moderation of content would be preferrable.

First, I do think that pure text screenshots should not considered memes, that includes witty online conversations (though they can contain memes).
Second, this is not exclusive to text. Just a few days ago, someone posted some picture of something in a car and the title (nothing on the picture, the poat title) was the question if anybody still knew what the depicted thing was.
I don't think that's the kind of content that fits a meme community.

Besides that, I do think image makros (picture with text) is a little too restrictive. Videos and GIFs can fit, too, if they show a meme. Even the a sound can be a meme.

1. Is a meme anything that gets repeated or shared? (this is the broad definition, but not necessarily the norm in how it's used)

No, again, I don't think so. And I don't think we should go that direction. Because then, anything could be posted, including essays about how my poop looked like and how that's a symbol of something. There's a german subreddit called einfach_posten (meaning "just post") where you could just post anything (except stuff like gore, nazi stuff, cp, suicide stuff and, ironically, memes). I don't know whether there are english (or other languages) equivalents or if there's something alike on Lemmy, but if we allow everything here because everything's a meme, that's the kind of content (plus memes?). If there is no such community on Lemmy, maybe someone should create one if there's a nees for a space to post just anything.

2. Does a meme require an attempt at humor?

Not necessarily, but memes usually are humorous and satirical in nature.

3. What about news? (What if a headline is funny?)

Even if memes did require humor, not everything funny is a meme. A news headline alone wouldn't fit, but the headline and a funny depiction of it ( or maybe of an absurd interpretation) would suffice.

4. Is an image required? Should a picture of text (not from another platform) be removed?

Well, some kind of imagery (a video is a series of images) and pictures of text only should be removed IMHO (with exceptions, of course. There could be text that can be recontextualized into a meme, like an older text with a caption that shows how something holds up today, or an old tweet of a politician compared to his contemporary statements (like a photo of a decades old book with some lines about something that is supposedly a very recent developement or a screenshot of JD Vance calling Trump the next Hitler contextualized with his role as VP for Trump and maybe some snappy comment about some people just swimminh with the flow to grab power (though the latter example would probably get deleted for a violation of rule 2)).

5. Are we overthinking all of this?

Depends. Within the context of discussing how we want this community and what content we want to shared here, no, it's a necessary discussion I think. And honest discussions are good.
Within the context of how much impact this will have on life and society? Yeah, this would be overthinking.
But I do hope that most people here understand which context we should discuss this in.

My take is a meme is a humorous repeated and shared idea/joke/schema/etc. Screenshots fall under this for me, espcially if the text is in reference to more conventional memes. This is because I count copypastas as memes, which makes it hard to differentiate a copypasta from social media screenshots and such. I would consider screenshots from social medias to be a low effort meme, but a meme nontheless.

My take is we should allow it, but soft moderate it by constructively and politely suggesting other communities that might fit the content better. This would ideally spread more awareness and engagement in other more niche communities, allow people to still post memes in good faith here, and provide a way for people to help softly moderate without ruining other people's fun.

If this was practiced though, I feel there should be a rule that community suggestions should not be spammed in a post. This is to prevent the comments from devolving into brigading and spam.

I think it's 5. for the most part. What could be done is forcing a mandatory tag like [TextOnly] or maybe the platform the screenshot is from [Reddit], [Twitter] etc. That way the people that don't like those types of posts can just filter them out

We have !microblogmemes@lemmy.world specifically for that kind of thing.

I'm not bothered too much by it, but since we have a dedicated space for that sort of thing, it makes sense to post them there rather than here.

The explosion of this type of garbage is a big part of what killed Reddit imo. Or at least when the decline became noticeable.

We stopped seeing memes and the front page was just twitter screenshot after twitter screenshot and then the video garbage came along and it just spiralled.

I personally think it's worth limiting this kind of thing to avoid the same fate. Though at the moment I don't see it as a problem because lemmy users don't seem to be going overboard with this stuff. There's some restraint and judgment in place at the moment but who knows how long that'll last.

I think if anything the complaining about what is and isn’t a meme needs to be cut back. If someone wants only high quality OC memes and not just posts of whatever then subscribing to a generic meme community and being annoyed when you get a mix of meme types is silly.

I would just say with the news related posts, some kind of humorous edit should be happening. With unedited screenshots of twitter, the twitter OP is doing something funny, but unedited screenshots of the news are just the news.

Blanket banning social media screenshots would remove many posts which i would consider "valid" memes, so think that would be too much

#2 is highly subjective so that's difficult to moderate

#3 i have seen headline posts that i would say qualify as memes so same goes for that as for social media screenshota

#4 same here, the alternative would be links, and i don't want to have to open xitter to see a funny tweet

1. Yes. A meme is a meme.
2. No. Not all memes need to be funny or this would be !funny_memes
3. news might be a meme I guess. Certainly some headlines and articles have become memes themselves.
4. Non-text image… not really required, but it helps I guess.
5. yes, absolutely.

I guess it depends what the community purpose is: should it be a breeding ground for potential new memes where some might hit and others miss? Or are only variations on well-established memes to be allowed?

(My 2¢: the light-touch moderation method is the correct one. You’re doing fine, no change needed)

There is a reasonable discussion to have about politics. (Not because they aren't memes, but because it really annoys some people.)

For everything else, yes, people are overthinking it. How many people consistently come around here? Do we need to subdivide?

Are screenshots of other platforms like Reddit, X, Bluesky 'off topic'? Or, do they count as memes?

I'm not a fan of them but they're not something I would report as off-topic. But given the chance to voice an opinion on them, I'd say they're more appropriate for the "people Twitter"-style social-media inception communities.

2. Does a meme require an attempt at humor?

I would say yes. I don't subscribe here to be preached at. But there'd be some potentially awkward judgement calls for the purposes of enforcing that.

3. What about news? (What if a headline is funny?)

There's !nottheonion@lemmy.world and similar for those and news/politics permeates everything. It's nice to have a place away from that.

4. Is an image required? Should a picture of text (not from another platform) be removed?

That's a tough one. I've seen pictures of book text being presented, but that often (but not always) bumps up against #2 (attempt at humor)

IMO, its #5 (overthinking it). I just want to see funny shit, puff some air from my nose, hit the upvote button, and keep scrolling.

I couldn't care less. But I still define a meme in my head as being an imagine that presents an idea, with text that presents a situation that you are relating to that idea. As in a meme with bad luck Brian or, chaos wolf, you see and read the words, but the image gives you context, or a "world" in which those words were intended to be read.

IMO, memes are internet folklore and should not be tightly regulated. Memes have a story to tell or a message to convey.

I don’t necessarily agree with screenshots of twitter posts being memes but many others do.

Allow memes in all their forms, whether there is 100% consensus or not. I believe tight regulation is what drove people away from other sites, such as Digg and later Reddit.

Well that’s my 2 cents. Thank you for reading.

Dan :)

There needs to be humour, and ideally there's something visual beyond text.

Categorisation is a good thing - it means you can find what you want and avoid what you don't.

I'd say #5, with a caveat that maybe we add a rule giving temp bans to users who complain and whinge and gatekeep memes.

I think it's a bit of #5, but like others have stated, we have other communities on the Threadiverse that meet the requirements of the other numbers, like !nottheonion@lemmy.world for silly news headlines and !microblogmemes@lemmy.world for social media text post memes/funny posts. So I think we could gently encourage users to post to those communities instead.

The onky thing I'm not chill with is people just straight up posting the news/screenshots of serious political takes, but that's an issue at !microblogmemes.world, not here imo. Outside of that were not too bad here.

I feel like the community has spoken through the votes. Everytime a post or comment about the content not being what they think a meme is supposed to be is posted, it gets ratio'd to hell.

If those types of posts were actually seen as bad for the majority of users, they wouldn't be getting upvoted more than downvoted.

I don't think directly political or news posts should be allowed, but I don't see an issue with allowing them (* the rest of the examples). Like someone else (@Firey@lemmy.dbzer0.com) said, make people have to tag that stuff so the complainers can filter out what they don't want to see.

I do it all the time for shit I get sick of, and forcing tags means people can filter out their annoyances.

I come here to see memes, not screenshot. If I wanted to see screenshot i go to the screenshot community

I don't think screenshots really fit the criteria for qualifying as a "meme"—humorous or not.

I understand why screenshots feel meme-adjacent. They can be funny and shareable; however, I think memes (as we've come to be most used to the term today) are chiefly expressed through image panels containing text that succinctly convey humour. Screenshots rarely fit this criteria because while sometimes funny, they often lack the visual aspect that makes "memes"... memes.

Think about the distinction between 'xkcd's' and 4chan screenshots for example. We often come across the phrase "insert xkcd about 'x' topic here" but we can't do the same for 4chan or Xitter screenshots. This is what i think meme communities should represent the most: image panels that succinctly convey humour and can be (and often are) deployed at a moment's notice to satisfy a humourous intent.

Additionally we already have communities like !greentext@sh.itjust.works, !microblogmemes@lemmy.world and !whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works for forum and image board posts and !funny@sh.itjust.works for more generally funny posts. Putting those same kinds of screenshot posts here feels like clutter to me.

So yes, i think we need a rule banning screenshot posts because they don't fit the vibe of typical memes (although i get this is subjective) and there are already numerous communities for those kinds of posts.

Defiantly 5, but if there's more than 15 words delete it?

That should clear out the walls of text and keep the "1 liner" screen shots.

You could also require text walls to be transcribed, no transcription = delete. If the poster can't be bothered to type it all out, why should we bother reading the jpeg distortion? (Again option #5).

One thing that stunk about reddit culture was the hyper-focus of the "meme/joke" communities. "Oh sorry your cat meme doesn't fit r/happycatmeme, it must be on r/cheerfulcatmemes", here's an account ban for your mistake."

Sure, we have a microblog community, but like someone else said, we don't need to go nuclear on people for posting here. Just tell them microblog exists. If they keep posting text here, baring any spam/malice, we can individually choose to block them.

I kinda personally agree that screenshots of someone making a joke isn't a meme, that's what !funny@lemmy.world and etc are for.

But I don't think it deserves moderation. It's not so egregious that it's harming the community.

I dont think rules are needed but in the about could be added a section for meme types and their communities so that posters may find better places for their funny like !microblogmemes@lemmy.world

1.) No, a meme is not anything that is shared or goes viral. Then anything would be a meme.

2.) Generally speaking, yes, but I wouldn’t necessarily make it a requirement for the community.

3.) If it’s just the headline, no.

4.) Yes, to me, a meme has always been an image + text. An image of text only is not a meme. Text only is not a meme. I would say images of other posts are okay, so long as something is added to it that makes it substantially more than the post itself (so, the post is a part of the meme, but the meme also involves something added by the memer).

5.) No, not yet. Healthy discussion is always good.

Shamelessly stolen from wikipedia: "Two fundamental characteristics of internet memes are creative reproduction and intertextuality."

I'm other words, memes have to derive substantial meaning from its overall positioning in Internet culture.

As an example, this post derives most of its context and meaning from horror movies, outside of Internet culture.

This meme, however derives its visual elements from a tv show, but these have been recursively co-opted by Internet culture, and is further embellished with internet-centric experiences (steam friend activity).

In a more hypothetical approach, imagine a news headline with the subtitle "I FUCKING KNEW IT!" A headline like "rising home prices linked to decreased fertility" would not really be a meme, but one like "tube breach causes historically large Internet outage" would. Both posts are materially similar, and either could be a meme in differing circumstances of Internet culture, but context is everything.

This is a pointless discussion.
Most people don't care, they want their doomscroll and will upvote anything. They don't care about categories or definitions, we could have a single community with everything posted there and wouldn't care, they'll just consume.

Those who care will always be a minority so the things will never change when asked to the majority.

This is basically what happened multiple times in reddit, the mods didn't think something was that important, the majority didn't care, so someone took it in their hands to create an alternative sub that would actually fill that void.
That's basically the only answer here, someone creating a meme comm that's actually for memes and not a combination of !microblogmemes@lemmy.world !whitepeopletwitter@lemmy.world !greentext@sh.itjust.works but as we know it requires dedication and time so... not that easy.

Multicultural existence is difficult everywhere at the moment.

Nah its good being a catchall community where people can quickly dump anything they find funny. There aren't enough posters for us to try and neatly categorise and contain every type of post.

the community will do what it do. if nobody likes it they can leave and start their own.

could be said right now for the memestasi. they don't like text screenshots being posted, go make your own community where that's a rule. I would assume !picturememes@lemmy.world is available.