This post is based on Lisa Nakamura's TED talk, "When internet shaming crosses the lines: racial spectacle and memetic culture."

I was glad to hear Lisa Nakamura talk about memes because it is a phenomenon that I have been interested in for some time. When I read Richard Dawkins “The Selfish Gene” many years ago, I didn’t realize that he coined the term “meme” because it seemed like an idea that had been around for quite some time. Now we use the term to talk about pictures and ideas that circulate the internet and carry some meaning for the initiated. Nakamura uses the word trope to describe the same thing. 
    Nakamura describes how memes are related to other media and ways in which it can go viral. Memes need to be funny, shocking, surprising, odd, weird, or otherwise pleasurable or intriguing in order for the consumer to ‘like’ it or pass it on. She also notes that, like a virus, we can pass it on without knowing what we have. In this way cultural stereotypes get passed around and fortified by the viral nature of memes. 
    I began to think about racist and prejudiced jokes while I was listening to Nakamura on YouTube. It is interesting how every culture seems to have similar jokes but the butt of those jokes are a different race or culture, usually one more localized. Every culture has some group that they disparage as lazy, stupid, cheap, or inbred, in the form of jokes. It is the type of thing that only works with a cultural context. If we were to remove the name of the group being mocked, the joke loses its punchline because the cultural context is needed. The racist or prejudiced trope is understood by most, even if they are not themselves prejudiced. 
    I think a point that Nakamura is trying to make is that the visual nature of media that abounds on the internet operates on a less overt level than other forms. With jokes, we must use words and elicit ideas in our interlocutor. With visual memes on the internet we need not even understand the underlieing racism in order to pass it on. 
    Between the article and the video I have come to realize that there are power struggles in the media that we consume on the internet that I never before considered. I think I need to consider what I watch, hear, and see, with a more critical lens in the future.