Welcome to the Ada's English Podcast.
My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host, Xochitl.
And Xochitl, you and I have been kind of brainstorming like a reset to the podcast in some ways.
And we'll talk about that in the next episode.
And one of our new episode categories is something you call Memology.
And what does that mean exactly?
Okay, so for me, Memology is like the study of memes, right?
And so I think it would be interesting to give our students an inside view on some of the trending memes every maybe like couple of weeks or every month in America, and like what they mean and the context behind them and how to use them in conversation.
And it's great because it encourages people to also be able to use English in like a more natural and local way.
Yeah, it's like language evolution on the speed of light.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, language evolution on steroids or something.
Yeah, on steroids, right.
Because I can't keep up with it.
There's some new meme happening or some new word that people are using.
And usually it comes from a meme that somebody had created.
And and the kids start using it.
And I don't know what's going on.
You know, like I I'm more familiar with like the Korean ones because I teach university students.
So there'll be some expression or something that they're using.
Usually it's some like combination of English and Korean mixed together, a Konglish term or something that some comedian or somebody came up with and it just went viral, you know, and it takes over.
They usually don't last for like a long time.
You know what I mean?
It's not like our idioms that are have been around for you know hundreds of years, but but they it does last for a season or so you know like it's several weeks.
You know something like that.
What, what gave you the idea for that?
I like it.
And I, I apologize for pronouncing it wrong.
It's me-me-ology, not me-me-ology.
Is it me-me-ology?
I think me-me-ology.
I thought me-me-ology made more sense because it's like meme, not a me-me.
Right?
Yeah, that's true.
Right, right, right.
But you said me-me-ology, so I was like, oh, I'm saying it wrong.
I thought I said me-me-ology.
I thought... Okay, so I...
I meant to say memeology, but I think it just sounds weird the way that I said it.
Memeology is more like a kind of self-centered, you know, it's all about me, memeology.
Yeah, memeology.
No, so memeology is like yeah well, I think the idea.
I got the idea because memes have become such a part of language, like how we use language and how we interact and how we communicate with other people.
You know, the jokes we tell and our cultural context and just, it's just a way to interact.
Like you can send somebody, in fact, a lot of people my age just send like memes.
We don't really have like too many conversations anymore.
Sometimes we just send memes back and forth.
It's like a low effort way to stay in touch and say, hey, I saw this and thought of you.
And so it's cool if our students can tap into that and have a way, you know, to communicate with their English speaking friends, or like if they go to university in the US or get a job in the US or have friends abroad or whatever like they can.
It's like a whole other language world they can tap into.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of like a famous one.
Like, I don't know.
I don't usually, you know.
I don't usually You're thinking of like the old, I don't.
Usually It's like the Heineken guy or whatever.
I don't usually eat cereal for dinner, but when I do, you know something like that, it's like I have Captain Crunch or whatever.
Yeah.
Or the Tell Me More Willy Wonka guy and stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
This is so funny because, like, Jack was thinking of, like, the oldest memes ever.
These are like the, the original, the original, uh memes that were like the first ones that ever came out.
You know they're not quite the first ones, they're like they're maybe like 10 years old.
The first ones i remember were like super different, like i remember they had like awkward penguin that was like a big one.
I was like a child, like a literal child, when these were becoming popular.
But it's like when you feel awkward and people would use like awkward penguin as a meme or like um, like winning baby or something.
It was like a baby doing a fist pump.
Oh yeah, I've seen that one.
Yeah, like when the teacher forgets the homework and it has, like the baby, doing a fist pump and stuff.
Like those were like the very first memes in America.
And then, you know, they transcended from there and they became like more memes.
And then, like up to 10, maybe even five years ago, like before COVID times, I feel like our memes lasted a bit longer as well.
Like, we would have, like, these specific formats for memes.
Like, we had one called, like, I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.
And it would, like, pop back up.
Like, that was a meme.
And then it would use, like, other memes.
It would be, like, very meta.
Like, a meme within a meme.
And then at some point, I noticed that memes have gotten, like, very... shorter, a lot shorter.
The time frame that a meme lives its life has become very condensed.
Trends for memes, it's less like one meme trends for two weeks.
It's more like just a bunch of little memes.
I feel like I see that in micro trends.
I feel like I see that a lot in social media.
I don't know if it's just because our internet space is so saturated now, because we have now three full generations that use it as that use the internet natively, you know, like millennials, digital natives.
Yeah.
Yeah. and and an alpha.
And so I think we're just like seeing a total saturation.
So there's like a lot of micro trends.
And it used to be back in the day, like when I was a very little kid it like a funny cat video would trend.
And that was the funny cat video of like the month or whatever.
And it had 100,000 views.
And that was viral.
And now like, 100,000 views is nothing.
And if something amasses 100,000 views, most people haven't seen it.
There are entire communities of influencers that are quite popular, that have millions of followers that I've never even seen or heard of at all.
Right, right.
It's so diversified now.
It's ridiculous.
Because whatever you're into, you can find it's, it's all niche now.
Yeah.
Like niches are very good.
Yeah.
Or just saying yeah, it's all niche.
You know which is is is good and bad.
You know, because if you are, you know if a person were a racist, you know they can find their little racist group and they can never leave the bubble.
You know.
And so that gets reinforced.
This like negative force in the society, gets reinforced over and over again.
Where they feel normalized and it's like no this, your thinking is wrong, it's not normal.
But they never get pushback because they're only in a circle of people that think in the same way, you know, and that's fine if you're into like baking, but if you're, you know, hate immigrants or hate black people or something, you know what I mean like Yeah, something terrible.
Yeah, something terrible, something evil.
Then then it's it's really a bad thing.
So, yeah, I guess we're getting a little off topic for me because I'm thinking like we typically do.
But yeah, we're just thinking of echo chambers and like how memes have, have become micro trends, basically like it's not a big overall arching trending meme now.
It's just the lifespan of a meme is much shorter and not everybody sees it, and it's just they're like all these tiny little communities, because everybody in your little community sees it.
You know, it's like it's your thing in that bubble of of where you spend your time on the internet, um yeah, which we all think is like everybody's here, And it's like no, it's just your, those are your people, you know.
Like it's just right.
Yeah.
Like, yeah.
I mean, for like, for me, for example, I never see anything like pro MAGA on my timeline.
Cause I don't have any like friends or anyone who's like MAGA, you know?
So like, yeah, but a lot of people do.
Yeah.
I get a bunch of those.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
A lot of people's like family, like my family, is all uh, what we call in the us yellow dog democrats, like they'd rather vote for a yellow dog than vote for a republican right right um, so i come from a long line of democrats and stuff, but anyway, must be nice, it is.
It is a little nice.
So um yeah, i think uh, what was i gonna say?
So that's our thing about memology.
I think we want to do memology and we're gonna talk in the next episode about a few other things that we're planning to do.
I also want to do like, separate videos about contemporary slang and, like you know, as slang words as they come up and how they've evolved, so that our students can use that.
But we'll talk more about that in the next episode.
So make sure you guys tune in to hear about the pivot and the rebrand that we're going to do and all the new stuff we're going to introduce to you guys.
So we will see you guys next time.
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Thank you.
