I have a question for you about the way you relate to memes.
When you share an image with a text caption, do you feel as though you are actually endorsing the text that you are sharing? That is, do you only share pictures with text that is an accurate statement of your thoughts or feelings?
Or do you share things that you may only generally agree with, even if there are some details that are inaccurate, or some phrasing that might be stronger or more pejorative than you would use yourself?
Similarly, when you see a captioned photo on someone's wall, do you percieve the caption as being essentially the same as if those words were coming out of their (so to speak) mouth, or is there some difference? And what is that difference?
(These questions brought to you by the department of "I probably won't get many answers to this but am damned curious regardless")
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A follow-up written after some responses to this on Facebook:
My instinctive (that is to say, not-thoughtfully considered) response is to feel that the words being reshared are being endorsed by the sharer as representing hir thoughts or feelings. Cases like (Facebook friend) noted where there is some additional text added by the sharer are an exception to that. I have reposted things that I have partial or conditional agreement with, and I make that clear in my preface. Thus, when other people share memes and don't provide any commentary, my reaction is that I should take the captions at face value as being espoused by the sharer.
This led me to unfriending someone who posted a meme that disparaged a provably true belief of mine as false, and characterized that belief as one that would be held by "liberal dumbasses".
I unfriended this person because, though I like debate, I don't like uncivil debate and being insulted. But I've thought about the incident on and off ever since. I really don't think he would directly call me a liberal dumbass. And I'm also not sure if he really believes that the people described by the meme are "liberal dumbasses", whatever that may mean. He may or may not feel that way; I don't know what his intention was in reposting the image. But even though rational consideration makes me think that it may not have been directed at me, I emotionally felt as though I was directly being insulted, and I decided that having him on my friends list was not worth the negative feelings his posts engender in me, even though he's someone that I would like to remain in touch with.
Still, I keep wondering how people in general relate to memes in the terms I asked about. I've wondered if my feeling, that when people post a meme without any text of their own to add to or qualify that meme that they are then in full agreement with the text, is one that applies to most meme users.
I have a feeling that it's not. That the way most people look at them is holistic. By that, I mean looking at the meme as an encapsulated bit of expression that is indicative of a general belief or agreement. That people aren't really deconstructing the meme down to the individual elements and deciding that they agree with each one. Personally, if I did not deconstruct and analyze and qualify, if necessary, a meme before sharing it, I'd feel that I was misrepresenting myself. But I'm feeling more and more like I am significantly different from most people in this respect.
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