Being and Doing Together Online: from Memes to Challenges

Abstract

The article provides a concise overview of Internet memes as prominent sociosemiotic phenomena, highlighting their importance for cultural dynamics in the last two decades. The text then focuses on some fundamental characteristics in relation to their nature as collective and serial practices, both from an aesthetic standpoint and in terms of the logic that drives them and their evolution through various Internet paradigms. Hence, the text discusses memes as ugliness, beauty, momentum, fragmentation, comparison, retrieval and agonism (with specific reference to Internet challenges from YouTube to TikTok).