Memes in India: An Uphill Battle for Prosperity

Diversity is one of India’s fundamental traits. Each state, or rather districts within states, are highly diverse in terms of language and culture. Although our constitution lists India as having 22 languages, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages. Amidst all the diversity, few things make all kinds of Indians come together online. Google released its global and country-specific lists of the top trends in online search data for 2020. In India, showbiz and cricket dominated as usual. The pair was followed by politics. With 455 million people having access to the internet in India, it is puzzling how memes are not being discussed in the same league as these cultural unifiers. Memes possess all the ingredients to succeed in India, but the Indians have not treated memes with open arms. Through this write-up, I will try to find out the root cause of why memes are not catching on among the masses in India compared to other countries.

India’s diversity creates a closed culture. Although now the barriers are broken to an extent, intra-culture marriages and relationships are still not seen in large numbers or encouraged within communities. Acceptance of new thoughts across cultures is not easy. If memes have to hit the mainstream, they should be available for creation and circulation in more than 100 languages. Compare this with a country like the USA, where there is only one language for communication. With the advent of social media and the mobile revolution, we now have apps like WhatsApp and Instagram, making it much easier for people to share thoughts, ideas, jokes and satires. People communicate more freely through these apps today.

India’s literacy rate is 69.3% which means over a quarter of the country does not know to read and write. This again puts a barrier for even the basic news to reach people. Indian culture traditionally rests on philosophies of respect to elders, teachers and rulers. To comment on them in a satirical way is taboo in many places. An average Indian wants to live in their comfort zone. Most of us are non-confrontational. The acceptance of memes is not easy, as in many ways, it involves critiquing one’s way of doing things.

India is a relatively new entrant to the world of memes. The first Indian memes started flooding the internet in early 2017. The main contributors to memes in India were sites like ScoopWhoop, meme pages on Instagram and Facebook and comedians.

Indians have a different understanding of memes. Indian memers tend to relate to significant contemporary incidents. Once the buzz about the incident wears down, the memes stop becoming relevant. This is another reason why political and sports memes tend to dominate the internet, as they are timeless and can be used repeatedly in new forms without saturating.

Notable categories of Indian memes:

Political Memes: — Political memes are the most liked and created memes by Indians. When a political leader passes a weird statement in a speech, this becomes a simple template for a meme.

Tagline Memes: — Tagline memes are memes formed using trademark movie dialogues or song lyrics as captions.

Sports Memes: — Memes about comical moments in sports.

Why memes are not doing well in India: -

Indians have particular tastes of humour. Growing up, my generation was exposed to humour as something that gets the viewers sustained laughs over large periods. Shows such as Takeshi’s Castle and Mr Bean were all the rage during my childhood. Thus, several Indians, I included, believed that physical comedy was peak humour. While the rest of the world was laughing at sitcoms or stand-up comedy, Indians were busy laughing at Japanese teenagers trying to balance themselves on a rope, with balls being fired on them from a cannon. The transition for the rest of the world, from sitcoms to early memes, was a smooth one as they have the same core fundamentals: A build-up and a punch-line. On the other hand, the transition for Indians was not so smooth. Indians felt the need for longer laughs as memes usually provoke a smirk at best.

Reddit is the biggest hub for memes. Reddit memes get the most views and likes. r/memes has 15.9 million members, r/dankmemes has 5 million members and the future of memes, r/surreal memes, has 798 thousand members and rising. Reddit memes are of the best quality, and the audiences are well versed with the concept of a meme. These subreddits have stringent rules about the kind of memes posted. If a particular meme does not follow all guidelines, moderators immediately remove the meme. This ensures fresh, relatable content to a highly specific audience, who know what to expect and get precisely what they want. It is fair to say that Reddit is the present and the future of memes.

Reddit is criminally underused by Indian meme makers. Reddit audiences understand references and have been exposed to memes in the past, thus making it the perfect audience for Indian memers. This lack of a common platform is an alarming issue, as memes shared on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook get saturated very quickly due to over-use. Apart from a few people from my generation, not many Indians were introduced to Reddit memes, especially during the 2016–17 boom in dank memes and surreal memes. This boom completely changed the meaning of a meme, and this message has not got through to Indians. Today, on average, a surreal meme such as “eating beans at 3 am” gets more upvotes than a typical meme from r/memes. This shows a clear shift in the identity of what a meme is. Absurdity is the future of memes. I believe that India is four years behind the rest of the world in meme-making, which is a considerable lag. I conducted a survey among my batchmates about their knowledge of memes. Out of 142 people who answered the survey, 59 people had no idea what dank memes and surreal memes are. This is 41.5 per cent of a sample of people who all have access to mobile devices for three or more years at least. These numbers show that not everyone in India, despite having access to the internet for almost all their life, is well-versed with the concept of a relevant meme.

The present and future of memes: total absurdity

There are only a handful of Indian memes that have attained fame. These memes were visible for significant periods and used extensively. The list includes The Trivago guy (2017), Link Aadhar (2017), Nagar Palika ko bulao (2017), Irrfan Khan in the Drake template (2017), Bolna aunty aau kya (2017), Baahubali 2 (2017), Sacred games (2018), Kamlesh (2018), Nikal l*wde (2019), Mirzapur (2019), Tik-Tok memes (2020), Ramayana memes (2020), Sigma male memes involving known celebrities (2021). Indian memes rely heavily on photoshop, which contributes significantly to the reduced lifespan of memes.

Other vital observations are that all of the memes which did well in India are Hindi based memes. Apart from the occasional Tamil and Malayalam movie dialogues, no other Indian language boasts of a meme that did well in India. South Indian memers tend to share their memes among closed Facebook and WhatsApp groups, hindering their reach outside a select audience. This language barrier has severely affected memes from trending in India. This is why several Indian meme pages are private. With such strict boundaries, regional memes do not get enough exposure, even if they have potential. The preferred platform for meme posting in India is Instagram and Facebook. Twitter has only recently started to become a hub for memes in India.

Another factor for memes not doing well is the lack of variety in Indian memes. India has not caught on to modern formats such as dank memes and surreal memes. This, coupled with the lack of quality meme templates, makes Indian memes repetitive, contributing to their short lifespan. India’s usage of dank memes is not true to the actual meaning of what a dank meme is.

Gradually, dank memes have started to pop up on Indian meme pages. Several pages like mememandir, Dank meme Sangh have managed to attract up to 2,50,000 users to their Facebook and Instagram pages. However, if one looks at the content in these meme pages, one will notice that the most popular memes contain casteism, religion, violence and sexism. India is a sensitive country, and the people get offended very easily. The basic idea of memes and offensive humour is still at level one in India, and it has a long way to go. Instagram meme pages like huncho.nacho (106K followers) have risen to popularity by using nostalgic and situational memes. A large number of language-specific meme pages have popped up too. Kannada Instagram meme pages hiddenmemestash, TrollHaiklu, footykannada and yaarivanu_official are racking up followers.

Another piece of evidence to support my argument is the massive failure of the ‘MemeChat’ app. The app was created in 2017 as a platform where Indian memers can make memes and post their creations on the app, and if their meme gained traction, the creators are paid money based on the number of views, likes and shares their meme got. Indian memes finally got a solid foundation for meme-making and sharing, and the initial responses were good. But as of today, 30% of users have rated the app just one star and the reviews are firmly against the app. Many users felt insulted and were disgraced by the quality of the memes. This provides a threshold about what Indians think about memes. Several memes shared on the app degraded specifically targeted communities, such as Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.

IANS’s Radhika Parashar writes in an outlook article, “To earn profits and maximise engagement on their pages, some creators spread fake or provocative news, harmful content and social negativity via memes. Now, comical or satirical representations of social issues through memes have emerged as flag-bearers of dark humour and untraceable digital revenge that can spread within fractions of seconds and potentially cause irreversible damage to the targeted people and organisations. Experts are now warning that unchecked use of memes could disturb the social fabric in India, saying that the “meme culture” in the country seems to have blurred the line between harmless light jocularity and insensitive detrimental mockery.” I completely agree with this analysis. While many memers (me included) :) tread the tightrope of dank humour overly carefully; some abuse it to offensive levels just to garner attention and gain followers.

If memes have to do well in India, meme creators must find the right balance between making trending memes and, at the same time, not offending a certain community. We have seen that the quality of dank memes in India is not assuring. Through Reddit, Indian memers can use untapped potential in surreal memes.

Instagram meme pages like The Sarcastic Indian, contagiouscurrymemes, smartindianboy, noncontextualmemes, and realnormies have understood what it takes to appeal to an Indian audience. Their usage of video clips as templates for dank memes and relatable templates sets them apart from regular Indian meme pages. In the beginning, these pages posted obscure memes to attract views but now, they balance out their content well. This strategy appears to be working. Several newly formed or lesser-known meme pages have also started to follow this strategy.

Sport-related Indian meme pages are flourishing on Instagram. Pages like crazycricketmeme and its sister-page thefootballshithousery, gothamgemphir, f1ndia.meme, theisltrolls post a heady mix of content, but the memes are hilarious and compelling.

All Indian memers need to do is experiment with different content. Soon, they will realise what the audience wants. After that is attained, it is only a matter of time before memes become a cultural unifier in India.