What Makes a Meme Hilarious?

Do you know what separates a funny meme from a hilarious meme?

How relevant it is to the viewer of the meme.

What is a Meme?

At its core, a meme takes something such as a scene from a film and adds a new context to it.

This is done through adding text above the photo/clip, editing the photo/clip in some way, or by several other creative methods that add to the new context. This can be done in a professional photo editing software, Canva, or even Microsoft Paint, with each method of editing adding to the new context.

How to Make a Funny Meme

Every Meme is trying to be funny but, like most things online, it’s all about who ends up seeing the meme and even the context of how they come to see it. For example, if a friend sends them a meme that’s about their work then they’re likely to find it hilarious due to the connection of the friend sending it too, it becomes their shared joke.

I believe that there are 2 core principles for how funny a meme is to a viewer.

How Relevant the Meme is to the Viewer

People engage with content that affects them, usually by making them laugh, and one of the ways that they can be affected is through being reminded of personal situations that they’ve been through.

As in the earlier example of the 2 friends who work together, the meme is about their place of work which immediately makes it relevant to them as well as millions of others. We have all worked in jobs where the boss acts like a baby or you have weird co-workers or you’ve woken up late to work and the boss has left you voicemails. There are certain topics that apply to everyone and here’s a small list of them:

• School (not doing homework, x class being the funniest, swinging on chairs)
• A fast food/ retail job
• Relationships (weird behaviours that x does)
• Being in a shop/ out and about

Relevant situations are one part of a funny meme but there also comes the original media of the meme and the viewers connection with that. This is the reason why so many memes are used with Star Wars Media, 1 because there’s a lot of content to choose from, and 2 because everyone has seen star wars.

Obviously you won’t always have a choice of where the original media comes from, and in most cases you should find media first and then develop a new context from there, but in most cases it’s a good idea to have some understanding of what people have/haven’t seen or are familiar with. For example, more people have watched Breaking Bad and are familiar with that series than have watched Better Call Saul so will recognise and have more connection with Breaking Bad memes.

Here is a small list of Movies/ Shows that are great sources for memes:

• Star Wars (films and tv, the fanbase is massive)
• Game of Thrones (not so much the spin off but everyone knows series 1-5)
• Marvel (mainly the infinity saga, especially anything featuring the core Avengers)
• Breaking Bad (most people will recognise Walter White, stick to his lines/ scenes)

The More Creative the New Context the Funnier the Meme

Do you know why whit is so funny and a trait that’s admired? It’s because a witty person can take a subject and make a joke that uses that subject but changes something by taking the subject to its logical extreme or connecting another topic to it. What they’ve said is funny because you can see the connection they’ve made whilst also admiring their ability to make that connection.

The internet has a habit of respecting creativity and effort when it comes to memes and edited content. I don’t know why this is the case, if I had to guess probably because people wish they could do what was done or understand how hard it is to edit, but if you were to make a very original hilarious meme that uses a classic saying (such as “hello there”) then that meme will get engagement. It’s just the way of the internet.

Bringing it back to the point about relevancy, the more logically extreme but still relevant the new context is from the original media the funnier the meme will be. The viewer will know the original media, see the new context that’s given, and subconsciously respect the logical steps between them.

In Conclusion

• A meme takes something and adds a new context to it
• Viewers react to memes that are relevant to them
• The more logically extreme the new context is the funnier the meme

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