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WAYS OF CREATING:
MEMES AS DIGITAL NEO-DADA
Memes are the digital embodiment of dadaism. They perform avant-garde functions because of the medium in which they are created, the elements which remain the same, and the aesthetic they follow.
Microsoft Paint
MS Paint made it easy for a consumer with limited graphics-making experience and an internet connection to produce sloppy images and release them to the digital sphere, especially as the internet rose to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The program is well-known for the poor quality of images creators produce, images which are “often immediately identifiable by this ‘shittiness’—erratic mouse-drawn lines, uneven edges, blocky dumps of color” (Davison, 283). Any computer novice can produce child-like scribbles on MS Paint.
Impact Font
The Impact font's association with earlier memes primes the target audience of meme to know that the image they are viewing falls under a specific genre. Historically, the “very freedom of the world wide web has been dependent on restrictive norms,” and the standardization of Impact in meme generation allows the user to replicate and transform an idea while preserving the conventions of the initial idea (Brideau and Berret, 311).
The Internet Ugly Aesthetic
A key facet of internet culture that points to the internet meme as an example of digital neo-dada is the rapidly growing Internet Ugly Aesthetic. Just as the Dada and Neo-Dada movements countered and mocked traditional art forms, Internet Ugly opposes the sleek New Aesthetic, imposing “messy humanity upon an online world of smooth gradients, blemish-correcting Photoshop, and AutoCorrect” (Douglas, 315). Amateur meme creators eschew the potential perfection of digital art, exploiting software meant to perfect art by creating intentional accidents.
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