Research On Emotional Expression Of Memes From The Perspective Of Internet Subculture

With the rapid development of new image production technology,the viral spread of memes on social platforms has formed a kind of "image landscape",which means that we have entered the era of "image transformation" from "linguistic transformation".Combining with subcultural sentiment,memes spread on social platforms in the forms of banter and buffoonery,which indicates that we are entering the era of "image carnival".This development trend of memes is exactly what Michele explained: images can present themselves like language.We’re moving towards an era where images are replacing words,where we’re trying to express our attitudes,emotions,and facial expressions in memes instead of words.By making,collecting and transmitting memes,young netizens have formed a new social landscape.In addition,Horst Bredekamp also pointed out that images have initiative and can act on people’s emotions and behaviors.In other words,memes,as an emotional amplifiers,can directly convey emotions as dejection,self-deprecation,self-dwarfing and dissatisfaction.The receiver can also obtain accurate emotional information through the decoding of memes.Memes on social platforms can take place of writing to communicate.This paper,taking the research of subculture,the rhetoric and symbolic advantages of memes as a starting point,and on the theoretical basis of communication,sociology,psychology and graphics,explores the emotional motivation behind making,collecting and sending of memes by young people.As a form of Internet subculture,memes inevitably have the characteristics of subculture.When the Birmingham School studied the youth subculture of the working class in the middle of the 20 th century,it pointed out that style is the outstanding characterization of the subculture.Even with the rapid development of network and mobile terminal technology,the Internet subculture still presents a rebellious,subversive,resistant discourse style.However,behind these styles is the realistic pressure that the youth group cannot release.The anonymity of the Internet and the compatibility of memes let the youth group find the valve of emotional vent.Under the mask of humor and humor,the memes gently release the dissatisfaction because of the social problems,like class solidification,different degree education and unequal opportunities.Given the diversity and complexity of Internet subculture,if we take Internet subculture as a single research object and summarize generically,which is kind of vague.In order to come to the targeted conclusion,I selected some representative Internet cultures as samples to makes a detailed analysis,like "Decadent culture","Ugliness Appreciation culture","Tsukkomi culture".I analyzed this three cultures from their generation background,rhetorical device and the emotion motive,which concluded that except resistance,subversion,rebellion in common,they have their own unique rhetorical devices and the emotion motive.The decadent memes use the resistant discourse style and the ironic visual expression to highlight the self-deprecating mood of the youth group behind the emotional resonance.By means of machining the ugliness of Internet and media celebrities,the ugly memes become the "substitute" of the youth group in the social platform.Meanwhile,the production mechanism of the role degradation is a metaphor for the social psychology of the youth group’s prying desire and curiosity.Through combining of pictures and texts,the Tsukkomi memes construct a discourse space for the grassroots,and provide a platform for the youth group’s personalized discourse expression.Finally,on the one hand,in the development process of subculture memes,there are also some changes in meaning,and even some problems,such as the infringement of personal memes,the vulgarization of memes,the group polarization and network violence caused by emotional dominance,which should arouse our attention,so as to correctly regulate and guide the development of subculture memes.On the other hand,when subculture memes began to appear on mainstream discourse platforms,their ultimate fate of be incorporated could not be avoided.