Memes, which multiply in our text messages, emails and social networks, are “digital DIY”, summarizes Débora Krischke Leitão, from the sociology department of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). “It started in the 2010s from an idea of a culture of mixing, that is to put together content that comes from different sources, like a photo that comes from a place with a sentence that comes from another. »
The doctor in social anthropology gives the example of Woman yelling at a cat, published for the first time on Twitter in 2019. “The well-known meme of a woman pointing at a cat has been transformed so many times that it becomes part of the gag. These are two images that were combined, but were not originally together. They are removed from their context and a new context is created. As a creative practice, it’s quite new. It’s about appropriating digital material to create something else. »
According to Dani Rudnicka-Lavoie, who studied feminist memes during her master’s degree at UQAM, “memes have become a communication tool in the way we use social media applications.” “We’re going to send a meme to our friend to say ‘this is how I feel’. […] They also have cultural, humorous and artistic value. Creators spend a lot of time creating content and publishing it online, and then they do this work essentially for free. »
“Meme” Constance Massicotte agrees. “It’s like an art to me. Every little detail is thought of. It doesn’t look like it’s done very quickly, but I want them to be perfect and funny. »
“It’s like a caricature, but with a lot more aspects of popular culture,” says Louis, from the Instagram account Québécois Normal (formerly FLQueer). It’s repetition and recycling of ideas. We created meme cooperatives. We share our formats, our content and our ideas. »
There are indeed communities of memes – and their followers – in Quebec. Friendships were formed. Small rivalries too. But, contrary to what we too often see on social networks, the climate is healthy.
“Since I started making memes, people have been nicer to me. Before, when I went out, I didn’t get talked to that much, now I’m like a little star,” adds Constance Massicotte with a laugh. His Instagram page, which bears his name, is followed by 7,400 people.
“We have a very receptive and engaging community,” rejoices Vincent Houde of Fruiter. […] We do tests, then if there is enthusiasm, we go with that. A while ago, I made a simple status to say that people who climb often like to tell their friends about it, but those who don’t don’t really care. A lot of people tagged themselves in the comments and I figured I was on to something. So, I went with that. Memes with Dyson vacuum cleaners work a lot too. »
Last April, different Quebec memers jointly produced a series of memes featuring singer Émile Bilodeau. “In a podcast he said he was a clone. Someone wrote that in our discussion, then we decided to make a day of memes that suggested that Émile Bilodeau was a clone,” says Louis, whose Instagram page Québécois Normal has more than 1,300 subscribers after a year of ‘existence.
This type of relentlessness is not uncommon. “At one point, we decided to post a Marc Labrèche meme every hour for 24 hours. They weren’t very thoughtful, it was just spamming the world with Marc Labrèche memes, remembers Thierry Hardy-Lachance, of the trio behind Lynternait, pioneer of the meme in Quebec. I remember on Halloween, we made a meme with Marc Labrèche’s face and then we said: “make a mask with it and wear it at school”. The teenagers really got on board. To have the opportunity to start from movements on the internet is nice. »
Thierry Hardy-Lachance speaks in the past tense, because the Lynternait Facebook page, which has just turned 10 years old, has not been active since 2017. Despite everything, 82,000 people are still subscribers. The Instagram account still posts sporadically for its 25,000 followers.
“In the early 2010s, it was young people who were on Facebook. Now it’s my parents and baby boomers. In the mid-2010s, there was this sort of overlap where both age groups were on Facebook, and then it was chaos. We could just laugh and make fun of it [in our memes],” he recalls.
Memers have since taken to Instagram and sometimes TikTok. The styles have also diversified. Satire has somewhat given way to the absurd and more niche approaches have been born.
There is what we call shit posting, a popular discipline at the moment. “It’s humor, very absurd, very carefree. » For Louis, creator of the Instagram page Québécois Normal, shit posting is equivalent to “playing with ridicule”. “It’s a more colorful way of writing, of communicating, while remaining a little absurd. »
“More niche, more engaged creators will disrupt the more normative meme culture, such as [the account] FuckJerry. They respond to this culture with which they do not identify and at the same time, they create an object which also criticizes the surrounding society,” explains Dani Rudnicka-Lavoie.
The FuckJerry Instagram account has 17 million followers, making it a major business tool. Several other very popular accounts have become small media empires that generate significant sums of money. No Quebec meme creator makes a living from this work, but some manage to land a few contracts.
“We partner with companies who want us to promote their brand. Most of the time it goes very well and people are receptive because they feel it’s not too forced, says Vincent Houde of Fruiter, who spends about 30 minutes a day creating memes.
“I did collaborations with Robin des bas, Pockets
