Analyzing The Nyan Cat Meme
The infamous Nyan cat meme that took the world by storm. A good exercise with this gif image would be to try and analyze it and by that, I mean really look into it.
So what do we see here?
A cat, pink pop tart, rainbow, stars, a cat flying through space dressed like a pop tart, and leaving a rainbow trail.
1.What does this image mean in the context of the internet?
It represents a ‘golden age’ of the internet before anonymity was lost. It came from a Japenese pop song inspired by a real cat. Then it went on to become a mobile video game.
To analyze this better we should probably look into what is a meme and how do they work.
A meme is considered to be a socially relevant joke that can be shown to someone generally whose more up to date with the online platform. Originally it’s just a picture with a caption but now it has become more cryptic. It includes more media like videos, gifs, abstract pictures, etc (such as vine, TikTok, etc.
I think it’s important that we look at things in more detail/more consciously of their intended purpose versus the actual use. Describing things in terms of how they're used rather than what they were intended for. To actually take the time to observe. This gif at a glance might just be a funny cat picture leaving a rainbow trail but we should be analyzing it deeper and asking questions like, what, why, how, when, etc.