1/26/15: MY FAVORITE INTERNET MEMES

Today I'm going to be talking about memes, specifically Internet memes, which---like normal memes---are "cultural ideas, symbols, or practices" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) conveyed to and through people by various public-communication techniques---but unlike normal memes, are conveyed through the Internet. They're usually something deprived from pop culture phenomena that is shared and shared by a large amount of people that can turn something random into an Internet meme. If these memes are shared and shared more and more by more and more people, they can become viral, becoming viral trends, viral videos or even hit mainstream.

These are 5 of my favorite Internet memes, or at least one's that I've heard/seen a lot of or know of. Let's take a look:

One Does Not Simply...
"One does not walk into Mordor" is a phrase from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where Boromir tells the Council of Elrond about the dangerous place that is Mordor, which is where Mount Doom is, and where the Council of Elrond could destroy the One Ring by throwing it back into Mount Doom (seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). Eversince, fans of LOTR decided to take that phrase and turn it into something funny. The meme fired off with "One does not simply [blank] into Mordor," where [blank] could be replaced with any verb, like this:

Eventually, it transitioned into making fun of simple but difficult things that we humans simply cannot resist/give into/or cannot do, as much as we know we shouldn't:

As you can see, the meme is a screenshot of
Sean Bean's character in the actual movie,
just with added text, usually split between
the top and bottom.

That's where the One Does Not Simply... memes, as well as Internet memes in general, get their humor from: relatable sad but true things.

I Used to be an Adventurer Like You, Until I Took an Arrow to the Knee
"I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee" is a phrase you hear a lot in the RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Syrim, told to your character from many A.I. pedestrians. Well, people heard this phrase so much throughout the course of the game that it was turned into a meme (specifically the "arrow to the knee" part):

Trollface
The act of "trolling" on the Internet is people messing with other people online, using ridiculous methods to draw attention to themselves. They're there to make you mad, my friends, and keep doing it if you "feed them" so to speak. But with all this trolling going around, it eventually became a meme, and this viral video,  was the poster child:

With some research, this weird, random but hilarious (the three words that usually create and define memes) music video by a Russian singer Eduard Khil, and in this song (if you want to call it that) he's interpreting "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," but sung in a vokaliz style. This song probably has a deeper meaning, with some pointing out that this was satire on Soviet censorship, for Khil was born and made this in the USSR. The reason it went viral just a few years ago, even with it being decades old now, I can't answer, but whenever you're getting trolled on the Internet, trolls will sometimes use this meme, created in representation of Khil's facial expression:

This anonymous drawing has basically defined all Internet trolls, who creepily smile out of satisfaction of ticking people off online or for taunting purposes:

This is what's called a GIF.
It's a moving set of images
used to get someone's
point across in a short period
of time.

Illuminati Confirmed
For quite a while, people have been obsessed with the Illuminati, a secret society thought to have dispersed a long time ago, but conspiracy theorists have spilled their silly propaganda all across the web, saying that the Illuminati still exists to this day, who many famous and influential figures are members of, and plans for a new world order.
      But if you don't know, the symbol for the Illuminati is this:

A human eye within a triangle
shape 

Eventually, people decided to make fun of conspiracy theorists and their outlandish theories by satirizing them.  This was the birth of the "Illuminati Confirmed" meme, where people spotted triangles in random images and "confirmed the Illumainti" still existed, making believe that the secret society was behind it all.

This is an example of someone making fun of the people
that make fun of the conspiracy theorists.

Face-Switch Memes
Of all the bizarre memes on this list, this last but definitely not least meme claims the top spot, with the highest "Seriously, da heck?" measurement on the scale. With a glorious image-manipulating program like Adobe's Photoshop, it wasn't long before people discovered that they could create some of weirdest pictures out there, and really skilled Photoshop hobbyists can create pictures that make them look like "average, normal, every-day pictures" even when you're not. The Face-Switch Meme is a great example:

I'm going to have nightmares now.