Any creator who shares their work on the internet secretly hopes for the day they go viral. (Or, maybe not so secretly!) But, how does it happen? What makes a meme go viral, and how can you increase your odds?
Whether you’re a veteran meme maker or new to this intriguing internet phenomenon, this guide has the meme-ing essentials covered:
- What is a meme?
- Six popular meme styles over the years
- Six tips for getting your meme to go viral
- Quick instructions on how to make your own meme online
What Is a Meme?
If you were ever curious about the dictionary definition of a meme, here it is: “An idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”
Another definition, probably more in line with our shared understanding of the term, is: “An amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video), or genre of items, that is spread widely online, especially through social media.”
A more practical way to define a meme would probably be to call out a few of the most famous ones:
- Success kid
- Be like Bill
- “What if I told you . . .” (from The Matrix)
- “It’s a trap!” (from Star Wars)
- Distracted boyfriend
- “One does not simply…” (from The Lord of the Rings)
- “Change my mind” man
- Grumpy cat
- “This is fine” dog (by artist KC Green)
- Disaster girl
If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the last decade, you were probably able to picture each of those memes in turn—even if you hadn’t seen or thought about it in years.
That’s the power of a meme.
Typically comprised of text over imagery, internet memes make such a deep impact on us because they speak to some universal human experience. They tap into something we’ve all thought, felt, or gone through—usually in a particularly wry, witty, clever, or otherwise humorous way.
And, a final fun fact: The word meme was actually coined by Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist, back in 1976. Even he couldn’t have predicted how memes would take off!
6 Popular Meme Styles Over the Years
You could write a whole dissertation on the history of internet memes and how they’ve evolved. Since we can’t cover the millions of memes in existence in every corner of the internet, let’s focus on a few of the most popular and recognizable styles.
1. Top and Bottom Text
One of the oldest internet meme styles, top-and-bottom text memes (generally using the classic white Impact font) are instantly recognizable and super versatile.
The best memes in this format will make use of the line break for dramatic effect—posing one statement at the top and then extending it, contradicting it, or cleverly commenting on it at the bottom.
2. OG Memes
Hearkening back to the internet’s original memes is always a popular choice.
This sort of self-referential humor plays well with any topic and helps memes get noticed and shared—especially among Millennials who are old enough to feel nostalgic for characters like philosoraptor.
3. Videos
Unlike photo-based memes where text is almost always superimposed on the image, videos can speak for themselves.
They go viral because the footage itself is inherently delightful in some way, but they become memes when they’re remixed and shared.
Maybe the video is mashed up with other music or juxtaposed with commentary for humorous effect.
4. Rage Comics
Another fairly early meme that has seen a resurgence in recent years is Trollface (sometimes classified in the category of rage comics).
This character is extremely popular and often used in self-deprecating ways, in which the meme maker self-identifies as an internet troll who’s about to do something, well, trollish.
5. Multi-Panel Memes
This meme style showcases a series of photos or graphics to illustrate some kind of progression, sequence of events, or comparison.
Think the clown-getting-ready meme (with four panels in a sequence) or the Drake-approves-disapproves meme (with two panels in contrast).
6. Deep-Fried Memes
Absurd, surreal, dizzying, bizarre, dark. “Deep-fried” memes are straight from the Gen Z playbook and often make no sense whatsoever. They may have a serious social commentary beneath it all, or they may not. That’s part of the game.
Deep-fried memes are typically created in the style of a ’90s desktop paint program with oversaturated colors, glitch effects, grain and noise filters, and wavy image warping—all layered on top of each other, over and over again.
In some ways, memes have come a long way from the earliest days of the internet. In other ways, they’re exactly the same.
Whether we’re talking about the ’90s “roflcopter” or 2021’s Bernie Sanders in mittens, the essence of meme-ing is the same—including what makes memes go viral.
Here are a few tips for creating something that sticks and gets shared.
1. Make Something Original
The beautiful thing about memes is that you can create literally anything and find an audience for it. If you have an idea, head to a meme maker online and make it!
There’s no right or wrong answer, and the act of creating is worthwhile enough.
If you want the biggest chance of going viral, though, you should probably try to make something funny. Humor is by far the most shareable content, and there are tons of ways to be humorous:
- Parody something (like the excellent example above!)
- Be sarcastic or deadpan
- Exaggerate something to comic effect
- Be absurd or silly
- Create a visual pun or clever wordplay
- Be self-deprecating
2. Or Build on an Existing Format
A lot of memes are popular not because they’re original but because they play off of other memes and existing internet culture.
Memes are like a giant inside joke, and you want to find the sweet spot for yours—where enough people know about the meme to give it traction, but without it being so universally known as to be old news.
There are several simple ways to make your own mashup of an existing meme:
- Change the text but keep the image
- Change the image but keep the text
- Deep fry it
- Make it into a multi-panel meme
- Keep the general format but use new imagery
- Make it meta by mashing it up with another well-known meme format, text, or image
- Insert random words or chop off part of the image, making the meme recognizable but nonsensical
3. Consider Your Audience
Are you looking to go viral with the deep-fried memes crowd on Reddit? Or with your sweet Auntie Lee on Facebook? Generally speaking, the types of memes that appeal to these audiences will be drastically different.
Think cute squirrel giving wholesome advice vs. bizarre 3D rendering with nonsensical commentary and a million colors.
4. Use the Meme Correctly
If you’re remixing an existing meme and your audience is a younger crowd, it’s essential to be sure you’re using the meme correctly. This cannot be stressed enough. (Otherwise, you may go viral for all the wrong reasons!)
The internet is full of examples of memes used incorrectly, and nothing says, “I’m an outsider here” like a meme that’s targeted to an audience who instantly spots it being used the wrong way.
This tip is especially important for brands as it can be difficult to earn back trust among internet-savvy consumers when their marketing feels too inauthentic.
5. Make It Relatable
The reason that memes get shared so much? Viewers relate to them! Any successful meme has to have some kind of shared core truth, experience, insight, opinion, or commentary that people can connect with.
There are two ways to approach this:
- Make your meme as relatable as possible to all audiences
- Make your meme as relatable as possible to a very niche audience
The first route obviously gives you a larger pool of people to reach, but the second gives you a group with much greater dedication and a stronger sense of identity.
It’s often easier to be relatable to a single group—super fans of a particular K-pop band, for example—than everyone on Facebook.
To help your meme get traction, you’ll want to post it online in as many places as possible. Good options include:
Send it to your network or tag your friends in your posts to help more people see it, too.
Ready to make your own meme? Shutterstock Creative Flow is an online meme maker that makes it easy. Here’s how to create your own meme in a few minutes:
- Browse the meme template library and click on one you love.
- In the editor, replace the template’s text with your own.
- Upload your own imagery, search millions of stock photos, or stick with the photo in the template—whatever best complements your text.
- Make additional creative adjustments if you want, such as hand-doodling, inserting emojis, or adding outlines to your text.
- Download your file as a PNG or JPEG and get it out there on the internet!
If you’d like to adjust your meme’s layout to fit different channels, try out Smart Resize, as well.
Click Smart Resize from the left-hand menu and then select any number of layouts for Instagram, Facebook, and more. Create will automatically adjust the layout according to the required dimensions for each social platform. Easy.
By the way, don’t get discouraged if your first meme doesn’t go viral—or your fiftieth, for that matter! It takes a healthy amount of pure luck for anything to gain traction online.
And, even if you don’t go viral right away, you’ll get great practice at creating things that connect with people, which is what meme-ing is all about.
License this cover image via Antonio Guillem.
