ON MEMES & CHARACTER PSYCHOLOGY: USING MEME FORMATS TO ESTABLISH INNER CONFLICT

craft essay for the social media era

Hey friends, hope you are doing okay, despite despite despite.

This morning, I’m resharing an older craft essay of mine, On Memes & Character Psychology: Using Meme Formats to Establish Inner Conflict, originally published by Triangle House.

I came up with the idea after I studied what makes a meme successful vs. unsuccessful, and how similar successful memes are to successful—i.e. interesting, surprising, engaging, and often complicated—lines in a story or novel. And realized that the skills we are cultivating on social media are actually incredibly useful for our writing, if only we’d tap into those same muscles.

Here are some of the highlights from it:

What makes a meme good? I’m not the resident expert, but I have come up with a few qualities that successful memes typically embody:

• Funny (duh)

• Surprising

• Fresh/new

• True, to some degree

• Relatable

Now, compare these qualities to Jo Ann Beard’s infamous “Sentence Test,” which includes four questions we should ask ourselves when determining if a sentence we’ve written is good:

• Is it grammatical? (which I interpret to mean, does the grammar make sense for its own piece?)

• Is it true?

• Is it new information?

• Is there a surprise in it?

There tends to be some degree of truth and surprise in both good memes and good writing. I often think about how creative one must be to actually pull off not only writing great memes but doing so consistently. The difference between a meme that goes viral and a meme that flops can be the difference between a single word, punctuation mark, or conjunction. And the difference between an unforgettable and forgettable story can be as subtle as a single moment, turn, or surprise. It is not just about the turn or surprise—it is also about how we get to the surprise, and that journey often begins with inner conflict.

Me, Also Me Meme

Me: Sigh, everyone is always losing their shit over mediocre white men.

Also me: I would die for this man.

[insert picture of David Duchovny)

It wasn’t particularly funny or timely, so it didn’t perform too well (35 likes, not my best work), but it got me thinking about using this meme template as a jumping-off point for a short story. Or even—gasp—a novel. This is because cognitive dissonance, arguably the crux of human nature, is baked into the “Me, Also Me” meme. Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological distress a person experiences at holding contradictory beliefs, thoughts, or values. (Most likely, it is this very psychological distress that drives us to express ourselves via memes in the first place, as internet memes can reduce depression and anxiety.) Cognitive dissonance is so painful for us because we spend our lives creating a sense of self—I am a good person, I am kind, I am loyal, I am hard-working—and when we behave in a way that contradicts our values or self-image, we grow uncomfortable, anxious, ashamed, depressed, and so on.

It is in our very nature to correct this dissonance, to restore consonance, which is why we will justify thoughts and behaviors in order to make them fit our current attitudes and beliefs. For example, a person might say they think cheating on a romantic partner is wrong. But then, that person finds themselves in a relationship with someone they do not love—let’s call them B—and a few weeks later, they meet a new person, F, who sweeps them off their feet, and wrapped up in the moment, they kiss F. Now what? How can this cheater live with themself when they’ve gone against what they believed to be a steadfast value? Well, they justify their behaviors: “I don’t love B, so it doesn’t really count.” Or: “F is the love of my life so it was worth it.”

I, for one, will complain about my anxiety all day, drink three cups of coffee in the evening, have a panic attack, take a Xanax, and complain that I am taking Xanax too frequently, then do it all over again the next day. “I have to stay awake to get my work done,” I will tell myself when I brew coffee the following night.

We make these justifications all the time, whether we realize it or not. And these justifications, along with the existing contradictions, are what make for interesting character development.

I find this meme format helpful, especially when I’m experiencing writer’s block or just want a less Literary™ way into a piece.

Here is an expanded version of this exercise:

1. Without thinking, write the first “Me, Also Me” meme that comes to mind. The weirder, the better. Make each line no longer than one sentence.

2. Then, write a second version building upon the first. Make sure each line is two sentences long.

3. Continue doing this until you complete five versions, with the last version including at least five sentences for each line. Now you’ve got some meat to work with.

4. Draft up a micro, flash, or short story in which this character’s cognitive dissonance gets them into trouble.

A more sinister version of this meme is the outdated yet effective “evil Kermit” meme, which acknowledges two separate selves, the moral and immoral sides, that not only influence one another but operate as part of the whole persona. If you want to explore your character’s conflicting values, this is a great meme template to use since the second self encourages the first self to misbehave or make the problematic or inappropriate choice.

A quick example:

Me: They’re probably just having fun at the bar with their friends—I should go find something to distract me.

Me to Me: They’re hooking up with someone in the bathroom as we speak—go find someone to fuck.

Distracted Boyfriend Meme

If neither of these duality memes is doing it for you, don’t fret. There are many more memes to utilize in your creative writing practice. Take the “Distracted Boyfriend” meme. It is the holy trinity of desire, tension, and consequence.

In making your own Distracted Boyfriend meme, you can be as abstract or as concrete as you’d like.

Consider the inner conflict of queer desire vs. internalized homophobia:

The distracting woman = Kissing that gorgeous woman with the thigh tattoo who always flirts with you at the bar

The distracted boyfriend = The protagonist

The jealous girlfriend = Wanting to live a “normal life” (read: cisheteropatriarchal)

Once again, we have internal conflict here, a collision of competing desires. Which will win? What will tip the scales in either direction? How does that collision manifest, over and over again? What are the external pressures in this character’s particular environment?

When creating a distracted boyfriend meme as story inspiration, it’s important to remember that all you need for drama is the difference between the past, present, and future self. So, if you’re thinking of creating a character, you can always consider the tension between these selves, how it manifests, and what types of problems it causes for your character.

These Memes as Catcher in the Rye

What about a classic novel so many people love to hate or hate to love? The Catcher in the Rye as a few different meme structures:

Me, Also Me meme:

Me: I’m the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.

Also Me: If you want to know the truth, I’m a virgin.

Distracted Boyfriend meme:

The distracting woman = Romanticizing childhood innocence

The distracted boyfriend = Holden Caulfield

The jealous girlfriend = Growing into a mature adult

What’s cool about using memes as inspiration is I could assign each and every one of you to write a story based on the same exact meme and everyone would write a vastly different story—this is because everyone would create different explanations for the cognitive dissonance, different background stories, settings, demographics for the characters, external conflicts, etc.

Happy writing, friends!