This meme originally appeared on June 6th, 2012. It began as a screenshot of a video youtuber wzr0713 uploaded of a Justin Bieber parody. The meme was quickly created and spread and became akin to the popular advice animals of the time. Many major internet publications picked up this meme and began spreading it through their own websites. The woman portrayed in the meme has embraced the notoriety and has interacted with the world as herself since.
These memes are clearly related to gender, as it is fulfilling the female "crazy girlfriend" stereotype. This meme did not create that stereotype but rather capitalizes on its existence. In particular these three memes encapsulate the jealousy and obsession of the stereotype.
I chose the overly attatched girlfriend meme this week as it was one of the most iconic memes of the last few years among my friends. This has been one of the most popular memes of all time and is an excellent example of shifman's concepts for virality. In particular, this meme represents postivity, and packaging. This meme is a call to reflect upon relationships of friends or ourselves to remember the "crazy ex". This simple and relatable story created both a humor of the past, present or future relationships of friends. Shifman says that the simplest memes are easiest to reproduce. Overly attatched girlfriend consists of a very basic image with only two lines of text, making it ideal for mass sharing and reproduction.
What do you mean by the "female "crazy girlfriend" stereotype". Can you describe what this is and how you see this as represented here. What message about the female gender does they typology communicate?
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