Blog Post #3 - Kieran Sagar

    In this week’s blog post, I decided to do it on articulation 3. Looking at the “Woman Yelling at Cat” social media meme and Martin Luthers widely distributed 95 theses, it is clear that both media texts were distributed with strong spatio-temporal relations. This articulation was manifested because of the distribution and circulation, which played a role in their success. 

    Looking at Luther’s case, he used the media of his time, print, to nail his theses to a church door (Mohn, 2016), thus creating a media storm within the local community. As Standage expresses, “hardly fourteen days had passed when these propositions were known throughout Germany” (Standage, 2013, p. 53), so how did this media artifact become so widely known? Well, that’s where the third articulation comes into play; Luther was able to create a recognizable brand due to the creativity, production and circulation of his texts. Within his community, everyone shared his text and turned it into something that affirmed a sense of social status (Herman, personal communication, October 28, 2021). The readers took part in the distribution, thus leading them to become prosumers, which substantiated the success of his text. Therefore, the space and time of his theses allowed for Luther’s success to take off; without these cultural dynamics, the shared media phenomenon would not have been as successful. 

That being said, was martin Luther the first social media influencer to have a viral text?

On the other hand, looking at a more recent text, a social media meme of “Woman Yelling at Cat,” it is clear that the same articulation manifested itself within society. The cat meme was a pop culture phenomenon in which it saw 38,6000 upvotes in 12 days (“Woman Yelling at a Cat,” 2019), similar to Luther’s rapid growth. Furthermore, it grew to 50,3000 likes and reblogs within a year (Ritzen, 2019); this meme thus exemplifies how a media text was circulated and how it manifests the third articulation. 

In conclusion, both texts exemplify the created media ecology as assembled in articulation three. Adding to the conversation, the media storm of both the texts seems harmless, but in today’s day and age, do you think that the success of memes now relies on a deeper meaning? An article I found by the Washington Post expresses that the noise of memes has now fallen to pointless, neutral and even weird humour. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-is-millennial-humor-so-weird/2017/08/11/64af9cae-7dd5-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html 

The third articulation is evident in this article as it expresses how memes are manifested, even if they don’t add to society in any beneficial way. 


References

Mohn, T. (2016, October 28). Long Before Twitter, Martin Luther Was a Media Pioneer. The New 

York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/design/long-before-twitter-martin-luther-was-a-media-pioneer.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0


Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years. Bloomsbury 

USA.


P. (2021, November 16). Woman Yelling at a Cat. Know Your Meme. 

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/woman-yelling-at-a-cat 


The Daily Dot. (2021, May 20). “Woman Yelling At A Cat” is Derived From Two Popular Memes. 

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/woman-yelling-at-a-cat-meme-origin/ 

Comments

  1. Kaitlyn ChambersNovember 26, 2021 at 2:15 PM

    Hi Kieran,

    I thought your post this week was really interesting. I especially enjoyed reading about how you discuss Luther and his 95 theses as being a brand in a way where he could circulate his messages thoroughly. I also think the fact that these pamphlets were able to be printed vastly changed the extent to which people at the time were able to receive his message. Had printing not existed, this would likely change the entire success rate of his theses, as you mention. I also find your discussion question very interesting. I definitely think it's something to consider. When we consider the number of times a meme could be redistributed or recreated, it seems inherently possible that the meanings of these messages could become pointless and even boring. But I also think memes are a fascinating example of media messages because they can be consistently changed while also having the same central message (the image itself). I think memes are all about creativity, but I'd be interested to know what you also think.

    Thanks,
    -Kaitlyn

    ReplyDelete
  2. Teja GDecember 1, 2021 at 12:46 PM

    Hi Keiran! My analyses also looks at articulation #3 to discuss Martin Luther's 95 Theses and the "Woman yelling at a cat" meme, but I really like how you looked at Luther more as a social media influencer in your post. In my opinion, the success of memes relies heavily on their ability to be applied to our everyday lives. Memes are quite versatile as they can include varying texts, however, it is important to recognize that a meme would simply be unsuccessful if the meaning behind it was only applicable to certain individuals. To go off of this point, the reason why Luther's 95 Theses was able to travel through so many German communities in 14 days was due to its applicability in each one of these contexts. The ability to change a meme's text enables it to manifest within a particular instance in society, while still keeping the same mood supplied by the actual images, shows us the advancements made in our current digital era.
    Great post!
    -Teja

    ReplyDelete

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