Basketball memes or political memes?

During the opening week of the new NBA season, there were also other culturally significant events happening around the world, notably, the United States Presidential election. Interestingly, there were several politically inspired memes that were circulated within basketball meme communities which incorporates images of presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mit Romney to interact critique and commentary regarding the world of basketball. The semiotic elements that are embedded into the texts is interesting due to the different conventions that exists within politics and sports, and yet, can be intertwined into discourse that is creative and also easily identifiable. The multi-layered meme below combines an image taken from a white house visits by the Los Angeles Lakers with a singular image of U.S President Barack Obama. The first layer of the meme reads "not yet..." with Obama holding a #1 Lakers jersey, the second layer reads "My people need me". The meme was circulated after Obama's presidential victory and combines the Laker's one-win start to the season to Obama's victory for an additional four year term, thus serving as a signifier to reflect the Lakers 1 win - 4 loss start to the NBA season. And whilst the meme may have been difficult to understand for some, this example shows that memes as texts can be used singularly or combined with other texts to broaden discourses and developing new genres in style, textual production and expressions.

This trend has continued throughout the NBA season. The image of U.S Preisdent Barrack Obama has been consistently used to convey ongoing basketball headlines throughout season, as well as, existing connotations within the basketball meme community. The meme below refers to the popular belief of Nuggets' Center, Javale McGee, as a less than intelligent individual in which Obama corrects McGee's misconception of Mavericks' Guard O.J Mayo, for Mayonnaise. 

The San Antonio Spurs organisation was controversially fined $250,000 by NBA commissioner David Stern when coach Gregg Popovich made the decision to rest his star players in a nationally televised match against the NBA champions the Miami Heat. Popovich cited player burn out as the decision to rest his stars, and many felt the large fine imposed by Stern was a tyrannical decision, without any sense of care for the well-being of the athletes. 

The meme below alludes to perhaps one of the more popular existing memes, of Kobe Bryant as a ball hog, who does not like to share the ball and assist his team mates in scoring points.

While diverse political commentary did occur, it happened sporadically and was not the central theme when political figures were used for basketball memes. This does not imply polyvocal participation was absent in memes. In fact, memes were a means to transform culturally established texts into new ones, with images from all aspects of society becoming cultural artefacts to negotiate the wealth of diverse identities and ideologies, and to engage in conversations and debates regarding the sport of basketball. Memes can be seen as a form of communication that represents contemporary participatory culture in which this newfound form of engagement can potentially have larger than expected cultural implications. Fishkin (2009) refers to such implications as the "trilemma" of democracy: equality, participation and deliberation. Jenkins (2006) sees all three instances of "trilemma" in the works of Harry Potter fan fiction and Star Wars mash-ups. Atton (2004, p. 9) argues that media created by "''you', have been powerfully  characterised by their potential

for participation...rather than media production being the province of elite, centralised

organizations and institutions, alternative media offer possibilities for individuals and groups to

create their own media”. Conversely, Lievrouw (2011, p.9) suggests that amateur media "have opened up the possibility for fulfilment of a greater range of the potentialities inherent in the idea of democracy itself. A more participatory democracy, facilitated by digital tools, is a democracy more fully realized”. In order to facilitate a better understanding of new media phenomenons like memes and the culture that is entrenched within it, we need to acknowledge and embrace the creativity, multiplicity and participatory of the public. Amateur media may be the perfect tools for just that.

NBA Opening Week

The 2012-13 NBA season begun on October 30th 2012, and with it, came a host of new memes concerning various facets of the game, as well as the return of some of the more familiar themes from previous seasons. As is the case with a majority of the memes collected throughout this blog, the dominant framework within the memes is that they hold a contemporary relevance. That is, the majority of the memes are being created to coincide with fresh news and rumours within the media, or in many cases they are being produced "on the fly" while live matches are being played out. Additionally, the framework of creating humour by underlying popular cultural perceptions of flawed masculinity, and cultural and racial stereotypes of the players, as well as critiques of their performances through sarcastic mockery, remains prevalent. For instance, dominant perceptions from previous seasons such as Brian Scalabrine's greatness, Kobe Bryant being a ball hog, Michael Jordan's failure as a team owner, JaVale McGee's low I.Q or Jeremy Lin's "Asian-ness" still remain the most popular trending topics for NBA meme makers.

Below are some of the NBA's top headlines being told through memes:

After the off-season acquisitions of all-star center Dwight Howard from the Orlando Magic and two-time league most valuable player Steve Nash from the Phoenix Suns, many expected the Los Angeles Lakers to be the best team this season. However, they finished opening week with only one victory from five matches, culminating in the firing of head coach Mike Brown. The distinct pattern of the memes below portrays the sense of dismissal towards the seriousness of the issue. Interestingly, none of the memes were direct critiques of the Lakers’ poor game play, with focus instead pointed at the personalities of the players. 

During this past off season, many online fans and especially those within meme communities believed Dwight Howard was the catalyst for the firing of his former coach at the Magic, and after making numerous trade demands, Howard was finally granted a trade from the Magic, to championship contenders, the Los Angeles Lakers. Because of his perceived selfishness and his constant demands for a trade, he given the nickname “Dwightmare” in several online memes, a pun derived from the horror movie “Nightmare on Elm’s Street”. Many fans saw Howard’s actions as something that was against their ideals of fair play and team work, and perceived to him as a disloyal individual. The memes below exhibit such sentiments, such as him attempting to get his new coach fired and him wanting a trade back to Orlando.

Below are several memes that remixes popular cultural texts with the Lakers’ less-than-impressive start to the season. The memes uses well known cultural images as a foundation for humour regarding the Lakers’ crisis.

And the opening week's other major headline was James Harden's trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Houston Rockets. After contractual negotiations broke down between Harden and Thunder management, Harden was surprisingly traded to the Rockets. Many fans and analysts believed this move would significantly decrease the Thunder’s chances as championship contenders this season, while ensuring the Rockets would have a legitimate superstar to build their young roster around. Much like with the rise of Jeremy Lin and Brian Scalabrine's unexpected popularity, as soon as the story of Harden's trade became a piece of trending sports discourse, it became a subject of discussion on meme communities. And whilst, Harden has only played a handful of games for his new team, these commentaries have begun influencing fan perceptions of him as a player. But not all of the discourse within the memes appropriated an obvious side, and in fact some of the macro images were subjective jokes towards Harden. His bushy beard, his contractual demands and his former team have been a canvas for witty, playful remixes intertwining popular cultural texts, as well as offline scenarios. For example, the combination of Harden and Jeremy Lin as Houston Rockets team mates was incorporated in the poster for the movie "Rush Hour", and the same theme has been applied for billboard advertisements in the city of Houston.

These images below apply Harden's image to pop cultural texts that are widely known and often referenced within online and offline subcultures- "Beard-sanity" is an obvious mesh-up of Jeremy Lin's nickname of "Linsanity". The tag lines "Houston we have a beard" and "The beard has landed" pays homage to NASA's long affiliation with the city of Houston. The "Rush Hour" poster alludes to the notion of a partnership between an African-American and Asian player. The images do not directly appropriate a specific stance of support or rejection, nor do they spawn additional discussion of Harden's trade to the Rockets but the methods in which the pop cultural texts have been incorporated into the meme serve as a signifier of particular emotions. For instance, while the "Rush Hour" poster meme is a clear example of racial stereotyping within contemporary culture, but because the movie was popular and highly successful, readers who encounter the meme would usually identify the notion of support for Harden and Lin. The last four memes are embedded with images of former Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, as well as remarks regarding Harden's contract dispute with his former team. On the surface, these examples represent the overwhelming trend of meme makers trivialising things regardless of its importance or sensitivity, but the notion that a good number of memes draw from popular cultural texts such as Rush Hour and appropriate the perspectives of both heroes and villains within those texts indicate the indifferent perception of Harden appropriated by fans. This creative play not only acknowledges the enormity of Harden's trade to the Rockets from different viewpoints but it also focuses on the speculations and the rumours surrounding the deal, such as the break down in contractual talks between Harden and his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

There is a distinct pattern where there are similar ambivalent uses of the recurring Linsanity, Scalabrine and Bitch Please themes. That is, the convention of finding a particular image and finding new methods to apply it for a witty and humorous effect, appear to be the most popular creative method in the world of memetics. While the majority of NBA memes show support for the players featured, there are also a lot of memes that reject such notion and tend to trivialise the attention directed at the players. Class, race and gender discourses were predominately created from the perspective of the dominant social group. The conventions tend to favour men over women, the athletically gifted over the less athletic, whites over minority races, and so on. For the most part, memes may appear innocent on the surface, but a lot of image macros give dominant social groups the authorial voice. For instance, meme makers may combine an image with a familiar piece of cultural discourse to make a pun using Jeremy Lin's surname, to cultural stereotypes, or to participate in the popular trend of making fun of individuals with red hair, as is often the case with Brian Scalabrine memes. In addition these memes tend to take a dismissive tone towards reality, from showing support for poor performance, to exhibiting disdain for extraordinary feats. There are other examples that are more explicit such as downplaying the existence of a women's basketball competition (WNBA) or voicing homophobic slurs towards singer Justin Beiber, who was included as a playable character in the NBA 2K13 video game. When news of his inclusion in the game became public, so did the memes. Within the Beiber memes that saturated basketball meme communities, he was labelled a "girl", and a "faggot", among other antagonistic sentiments.

In the first two examples, singer Justin Bieber's masculinity is questioned and is compared to that of his girlfriend Selina Gomez. The images show Bieber texting on his phone and playing with a young girl during an NBA basketball game, while his girlfriend appear to be enthralled by the actions on court. The images along with the captions "don't bring your girl to the NBA" and "never take a girl to the play offs" conveys the dismissiveness towards Bieber's masculinity. The third and forth examples is more antagonistic. It shows NBA star Metta World Peace with Bieber's head in his hand in place of a basketball, with Beiber's body faltering in front of him, the meme reads "Kill all faggots". The last meme mixes an image of Dwight Schrute, a character from the comedy television program "The Office". The meme also has a homophobic tone, using the image of Schrute to voice the opinion that the only reason Bieber was included in the NBA 2K13 video game is because he wanted to "have more balls in his face". While these macros can be interpreted as popular cultural satire, the context of the discourse within the memes also reflects the diverse reading processes of fans in which, the notion of sensitivity appear to be relevant. The potential problems this may pose is not only due to media convergence where texts can go viral within minutes, asserting influence on a global scale, but also, the rapidly growing popularity of meme creation. The phenomenon of memes has quickly grown into a staple in the various ways we communicate on the internet. And because there appear to be no boundaries with regards to content, memes have the potential to build new perceptions and new consensus that at times may work against the commercial imperatives of industrial commercialisation. Such as, memes that continuously embraces Brian Scalabrine as a hero, when in reality he is perhaps one of the least talented players to have ever played in the NBA. 

The memes attempt to see the lighter side of things, many of which perhaps can often be interpreted as inconsiderate and insensitive. However, this does not mean these remixes are negative. In fact, it is exactly this kind of mesh-up that inspires broader participation with memes. Thus far, the memes that are most replicated and have sustained considerable longevity tend to capture audience attention through controversial themes or unsympathetic, relentless commentary which generates further discussion, replication and reproduction. Additionally, these kinds of skills and remixes invoke extended discussion and could perhaps constitute into more serious discussions. The disparity that exists within the memes are important because it reminds us that, not everything is always a simple binary and regardless of topic, there will always different degrees of engagement, perhaps more than we can ever imagine. 

Despite the notion that most internet memes are centralised around humour, but beyond the shock value and the drama, they also tell a story, from the obvious news headlines to one's personal cultural perception, which often attempts to tout some kind of lesson about life (such as the "Bitch Please" memes). Whether it is an attempt at humour, social commentary or blatant absurdity, memes have become a conversational expression as well as a viral curiosity that captures people's attentions and imaginations. Instead of expressing themselves over long narratives, the compactness and straight forwardness of memes allows people to express themselves in a creative way via interesting images accompanied by captions that are usually no more than a few words. In any case, this package of cultural or personal experience spreads between people in a virus-like manner. In that sense, can memes be used as a primary form of industrial campaigning and promotion? There have already been glimpses of such potentials, as shown with the Jeremy Lin and Brian Scalabrine memes. And in this year's U.S Presidential campaign, memes have been used by the U.S Democratic Party. The "This seat's taken" meme, which shows the back of U.S President Obama's chair accompanied by the caption "This seat's taken" went viral, spreading into the headlines of main stream media, creating significant buzz for President Barack Obama. These instances only further suggest that memes deserves significant attention.

Bitch Please

Background

The Yao Ming face, also commonly known as the "Bitch Please" or "Dumb Bitch" meme is a rage-style drawing of former NBA star Yao Ming. The contour image of Yao's grin has been typically used as a sarcastic reaction to convey a dismissive tone towards one's input or ideas within online and offline scenarios. The meme originated from a still image captured from a 2009 post-game press conference.

The meme was originally circulated in 2010 on social news website Reddit. The site allows users the opportunity to submit and share self-created images or captions. The "Bitch Please" caption originated from a Reddit forum member who suggested the image looked like Yao was mouthing the phrase "Bitch Please" (Knowyourmeme.com 2012). 

Since its 2010 creation, the meme has spread throughout various aspects of contemporary culture, beyond the sport of basketball. It has been used to convey the notion of dismissal, rejection and sarcasm, to name a few. A search using the keywords "Yao Ming" on Tumblr resulted in the following memes. These memes demonstrate the diversity that has been generated from the Yao image which originated from what would normally have been a routine post-game press conference during the basketball season. Additionally these memes also further affirm the notion that memes are increasingly being used as a tool of communication to express one's opinions in a unique and yet effective manner. 

More than any previous communication medium, the internet has proven to be suitable for large-scale distribution of data and it is no different for the spreadability of memes. Online transmissions also facilitate for higher rates of fidelity because the digital environment allows a higher degree of transfer efficiency (Lankshear & Knobel 2005, 2). The element of fecundity is also improved since computers can produce thousands of copies at a time. As a result the potential for longevity is increased since large volumes of data can be stored and also spread (Lankshear & Knobel 2005, 3) These three properties as introduced by Richard Dawkins (1976) ensure that memes can successfully replicate via online networks. Additionally, the internet transcends cultural and national boundaries, allowing successful memes to spread globally, as shown by the following memes. These memes were collected throughout the web and portray the common theme of using Yao's facial image accompanied by captions in various different languages.

Despite the internet's distinct compatibility for meme circulation, there has been little research directed at the phenomena of memes, such as its potential industrial impacts. As exhibited with the "Bitch Please" meme, despite being a multi-time NBA all-star, Yao Ming has become renowned as an internet meme rather than as one of the greatest basketball players of this generation. A more insightful perspective on this rapidly growing trend will assist in a more precise understanding of the nature of memes and how it is used as a contemporary communication variable. Such study may benefit from both a cultural and an industrial standpoint. 

In reference to the global potential of memes, Shifman (2009, 3) makes an important point in suggesting that a truly successful meme can break linguistic and cultural barriers. This is achieved through translations of captioned texts or particular themes such as an image, incident or event that has been so widely spread and talked about that it has developed a universal meaning, such as the image of Yao's smile. This process not only ensures the meme's longevity but it also increases the possibility for unique textual production with altercations to the meme, potentially creating new meanings (Shifman 2009, 2 -3).

In theory, internet circulated memes can have high fidelity, however most memes will be edited and in some cases users will drastically alter the texts. Despite the mass replication of original versions as well as the creation of counter and new versions of the meme, the core theme of exclamation and sarcasm towards both serious and outlandish socio-cultural scenarios remains prevalent.

The meme is also popular in Yao's home country of China. Interestingly, it appears Chinese net users prefer the original screen cap image over the vectorised drawing. Even so, the core ideology of the meme remains. That is, despite the memes being created and shared in a different language and within a different culture, the memes still deliver the obvious notions of sarcasm and insensitivity that is evident in the english versions of the meme. Below are the most popular Yao memes collected from the Chinese blog website, Weibo:

The dominant global versions of the meme tend to involve situations in culture such as events in our history or everyday situations. The seriousness of the particular event or the circumstance is either dismissed or downplayed by incorporating the contour image of Yao's hearty smile and is usually accompanied with a witty caption to further emphasise the sarcasm of the meme.

In comparison to Jeremy Lin and Brian Scalabrine memes where much of the derived humour came as a result of making fun of cultural stereotypes, the ideologies encoded in the "Bitch Please" memes were of a less serious approach in which the jokes were mostly regarding potentially awkward situations one may encounter in one's personal life. That is not implying the degradation of stereotypes within "Bitch Please" memes do not exist because the collected images from social networks and search engines only covers a segment of the internet. Memes that are shared privately through email and other forms of private exchanges is difficult, if not, impossible to collect.

Political and cultural ideas were marginal in the "Bitch Please" memes which are a distinct contrast when compared with memes of Jeremy Lin and Brian Scalabrine. This point is significant because regardless of the different languages that the meme has been replicated in, the core theme established by the original creators of the meme remains intact. That is, while the meme has continued to evolve and remixed over time, the central ideology of the meme still remains. In the case of "Bitch Please", it is the distinct tone of sarcasm, exclamation and dismissal.

The popularity of "Bitch Please" has also inspired variations of the meme, either incorporating Yao's face or producing new memes featuring images of other popular societal figures such as U.S President Barack Obama and U.S First Lady Michelle Obama.

"Bitch Please" has also inspired commercial innovations from t-shirts to button pins and from drink bottles to poker coins. 

The "Bitch Please" meme even became a tattoo for certain individuals:

Memes stand for many of the contemporary characteristics of cyber culture of collaboration and participation which entices user-created content within a globalised networked environment but they also stand for a number of more significant ideas (Shifman 2009, 3). For instance, along with Yao's hearty smile, there are messages regarding various aspects of culture, from situations we may potentially encounter in our daily lives to important world events. Furthermore, it illuminates a contemporary online culture that is determined to create and share humour, with a distinct disregard for the sensitivity of the core content and the audience. For instance, the image shown in the preceding section of this blog post, of Yao's "bitch please" image in place of a prisoner being executed by a U.S soldier during the Vietnam war, may be disturbing for many audiences and would not be the source of humour in most cultures. Yet, the very notion that such a emotionally sensitive image from history has been used for the sake of humour further emphasises the original 4chan ideology of "doing it for the lolz", and it is an aspect of participatory culture that is clearly thriving. In the case of Jeremy Lin and Brian Scalabrine memes, whilst on the surface, the purpose is to create humour- the embedded ideologies within the dominant macro-images convey opinions of race, class, politics and masculinity.

As evidenced by the meme phenomena, the desire for instant entertainment is more prevalent than ever (Shifman 2011, 3). Social networks like Facebook are feeding this desire perfectly, allowing users to provide commentary on all aspects of culture through a variety of interactive formats such as memes. The field of commentary was once dominated by professional analysts, satirists and artists within mass media. However, largely influenced by contemporary media convergence, the power relations between producer and audience has transformed rapidly in the last decade. The digital environment is now crowded with amateurs equipped with computers and design software that once were exclusively accessible by industry professionals. Sharing the same digital space and using the same tools as professionals, along with a witty sense of humour, amateur textual production can reach a global audience and has the potential to influence audiences on a universal scale. As users, we can also easily scroll and scour for the most popular memes to either consume by ourselves or share with our friends. We can comment and "like" the images we find interesting and in turn this contributes to the meme's success and longevity. Increasingly, narratives are becoming more compact and to the point, where pictures and videos are used to convey a host of different meanings. Clearly, this has been a successful trend and we are gradually outsourcing other means to identity ourselves with. Traditional means of identification such as history, friendship or family ties are being conveyed through images that have become identifiable as a result of mass spread on the internet. This notion is perhaps more so significant in contemporary culture in which communication within the digital environment is heavily emphasised by visual interpretation. Whether we are reading an e-mail or watching a video on YouTube, online communication is largely dependent by our responsive actions to what we see on the computer screen. In that sense, memes seem like a perfect fit for contemporary web communication since it can serve multiple purposes, from humour to everyday conversation, and from contributing knowledge to building consensus. People are increasingly voicing their opinions through widely recognisable images of cats, birds, penguins, celebrities, politicians, athletes, because their voices appear to feel truer than their own, when a meme appears with a noticeable image, it obviously attracts more attention. Beyond the overwhelming desire to identify through iconic images, memes ultimately are fragments of our existence. As exhibited within the more dominant Jeremy Lin and Brian Scalabrine memes, racial and class profiling is a prevalent aspect of contemporary culture and most of us at some point may have purposely or inadvertently appropriated similar sentiments. Conversely, there are times we attempt to approach serious real-life issues with a more casual response, as shown in the Yao Ming memes.

Technological evolution has changed the way people use media and how they relate to each other. These technological changes have bought about a digital revolution where media convergence has transformed the cultural and industrial relationships between people (Jenkins 2006, 33-34). Increasingly, new technology formats allow people to collect, share and remix content, resulting in a scenario where traditional values of consuming information has gradually shifted to producing, managing and sharing information. And currently, memes appear to be the most popular, interesting and resourceful way to do so. 

Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene, edited by Oxford University Press. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Knobel, Michele and Colin Lankshear. 2005. "Memes and affinities: Cultural replication and literacy education." Paper presented at the The Annual NRC, Miami, November 30, 2005.

Knowyourmeme.com. 2012. "Yao Ming Face / Bitch Please." Accessed October 12th. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/yao-ming-face-bitch-please.

Shifman, Limor. 2011. "An anatomy of a YouTube meme." New Media & Society 14 (2): 187 - 203.

Shifman, Limor. 2009. "Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics: The Spread and Evolution of a Popular Joke". Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.