Meme culture hits Sri Lanka

With the likes of 9GAG meme's had been the talk of the day in other online markets. Usually all trends come to Sri Lanka late but meme's have really been faster - probably because of faster internet growth these days. I would also blame the Sri Lankan expats for accelerating meme arrival in Sri Lanka ( @Binku xD)

An internet meme is an idea that is virally propogated through the internet. It can be a hyperlink, picture, video or even a small word or phrase. The spread is through social networking sites, blogs, email.etc,.Most popular being photo memes since they are easily shareable. Currently there are many meme generators with commonly used memes to which you can put a caption. One is http://memegenerator.net/.

One of the most popular memes this days are "LOTR Boromirs - One does not simply", "Success baby meme", "Obama - Not bad meme", "Facebook girl meme", "Barney Stinson - True story meme" .etc. Some of them are directly taken from famous movie,TV shows. For .e.g. Boromir saying "One does not simply walk in to Morodor" in Council of Elrond in Lord of the Rings.

Internationally meme sites of likes of 9GAG are very popular. Locally we have only the "Sri Lankan memes" FB page but its growing quite fast. 6000 fans in mere 3 weeks is quite astonishing without any kind of commercial advertising. A barrier i see for Sri Lankan memes to reach mass internet population in Sri Lanka is that certain movie & TV show memes' are better enjoyed when one has actually seen the feature. For e.g. If you assume 20% of internet users in Sri Lanka have seen Lord of the Rings, its less than 1% who have seen How i met your mother - so memes of that origin might not be enjoyed by many.

Despite all that, Sri Lankan meme FB page is really happening these days, specially on Cricket match days. Admins are doing a great job with all the filtering & coordination. Hats-off to anyone doing the page.

So - start memeing if you haven't already! Feel free to share your thoughts on meme culture in Sri Lanka by commenting below....