A lot of instructors have their students write introductory blogs about where they’re from, or what their history is with writing courses, or what kind of soap they like.

I’m done with all that.

WEEK 1 REFLECTIVE WRITING

I want you to write me an introductory blog of 200-500 words that addresses the following:

1. What is your favorite meme? It can be a picture, gif, video – anything in that realm. Provide a link or reference, or embed an example of the meme in your post if you’d like.

[FOR REASONS, I ask that you please avoid writing about anything related to the following memes/virals:

• Chocolate Rain
• Friday/Rebecca Black
• Damn, Daniel
• Average Homeboy
• The Room/ “OH HAI”]

2. Why do you love it?

3. What aspects of the rhetorical situation do you think are important to making this meme funny or interesting or popular? Does it rely on knowledge/experience held by a specific discourse community? Does it play with genre conventions, or reflect a certain kind of ethos? What can you say about the meme’s rhetorical situation that you think we don’t already know, and that no one else may have considered?

Submit this response here as a discussion post (you’ll find the “reply/submit post” button below this text box). Read some of your classmates’ posts once you’ve posted to see the range of responses.

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT MEMES ARE:

Don’t worry. You’ll learn quickly! I’d recommend you go read our Shifman readings before completing this assignment. You should also check out this primer on what memes are (Links to an external site.), and then go poke around knowyourmeme.com (Links to an external site.) to see the range of weird stuff that goes memetic. Fair warning: this is the internet, and some of these memes might be Not Safe For Work (NSFW) – meaning inappropriate for various reasons. The NSFW ones should be clearly marked on the sites I linked— just use prudence if you want to avoid them. Enjoy the strange new world of memes.