Making sense? The structure and meanings of digital memetic nonsense

ABSTRACT

This paper offers the first systematic analysis of ‘digital memetic nonsense’– clusters of seemingly meaningless digital texts imitated and circulated by many participants. We evaluated this phenomenon through two conceptual lenses: theories on nonsense in the pre-digital age and the techno-cultural conditions that facilitate its contemporary formations. A grounded analysis of 139 nonsensical memes led to their typology into 5 genres: linguistic silliness, embodied silliness, pastiche, dislocations, and interruptions. In each of these genres, we show how digital nonsense may potentially serve as a social glue that bonds members of phatic, image-oriented, communities. If, in the past, nonsense was depicted in both intellectual terms, as defiant deconstruction of meaning, and in playful/social terms, its current memetic manifestations lean heavily toward the latter. Rather than being a reflection on ‘referential meaning’, digital nonsense is analyzed as a generative source of ‘affective meaning’ that marks the formation of social connections preceding cognitive understanding. We conclude by highlighting the potentially subversive implications of this shift for participatory barriers and community membership.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• meaning
• memes
• nonsense
• re-mix

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Asaf Nissenbaum, Noa Shakargy, three anonymous reviewers and the special issue editors for their valuable comments. We are also grateful to Eli Shenker and Naama Vahab for their assistance in the sample selection process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yuval Katz is a graduate student in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the construction of meaning in various digital environments [email: [email protected]].

Limor Shifman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests include the social construction of humor, digital media, memes and popular culture [email: [email protected]].