There is a new craze that is driving through the Internet like a sandstorm, and that craze is memes. What is a meme, you say? A meme is an Internet photo or video, with a recurring picture or pictures, often with a comment or phrase pertaining to a social, political, or viral issue. There are many popular memes including “Successful Black Man,” which downplays on racial stereotypes of African Americans; “Condescending Willy Wonka,” which provides a sarcastic rebuttal to social and political issues; “Joseph Ducreux,” which takes modern-day lyrics, phrases, and quotes and puts them in a Colonial manner of speaking. An example of one would be “I Fling My Locks, Hither and Yon,” which is a Colonial way of saying, “I whip my hair back and forth.”

This art form of creating memes isn’t limited to a few artistic people. There are new websites which feature a meme generator — a program that allows you to create your own memes. Anybody with a free account and a creative mind can create one.

There are many ways to network memes, and one such network is through Facebook “liked” pages. One such Facebook page, “I Do Things For The Lulz,” is run by someone using the pseudonym, Bacon Sandwich. He did not provide his real name even when I interviewed him: “It’s not because I am ashamed of my name, or anything like that, but the pictures and posts I make are quite offensive to some people, and I choose not to have my real name slandered for simply making jokes, which may be in poor taste,” said Bacon Sandwich. “These pictures are ways of making people laugh and making a statement… If you can’t laugh about something, then you might as well never talk about it.” The page has 41,871 likes as of 3/20/2012. This page is not the only one of its type, though. There are hundreds of celebrated pages as well as successful websites all over the Internet and the craze keeps growing as the days go by. Bands are using memes for their own benefit as well as political activists and comedians. It appears that memes are going to be around for a long period of time.