Design Art Papers 2025 | No. 13

2023; Watercutter et al. 2018), resulting in rapid experimentation at the cost shorter cultural relevance. Memes would often just last a couple of weeks, in contrast to the years-long prevalence of earlier meme formats (Gale 2019). If the memes of the Image Macro Era can be described as a shorthand containing in-group jokes, then the Ironic Era is an overexaggerated ridicule of the concept as a whole, while still being entirely dependent on it. The “E” meme (see Fig. 2.3) best exemplifies this dualistic nature, as the viewer needs to be able to identify the face of YouTuber Markiplier superimposed on Lord Farquaad from Shrek, overlaid on a photo of Mark Zuckerberg, as well as know the relevance of using Impact font, while being aware of “meme deepfrying” (Adam 2017a; Hathaway 2019). It results in a meme that is both highly critical of standard meme structure and overly reliant on said structures, while through its sheer exaggerated need for context, compounds on itself so that the requirement of context becomes the meme in-of itself. This type of meme humour, derived from the active rejection of established meme customs, and inclusion of meta-textual humour highlights a counter-cultural movement within thememesphere, an act of resistance against the mainstreaming of meme culture, as well as a push towards a more insular meme culture. As a result of the wider popularization of meme as a format, there’s a notable increase in the relevance of political memes, primarily those pertaining from conservative, right-leaning demographics. Examples like “Thanks, Obama!” (Don Caldwell 2013) and “Social Justice Warrior/SJW” (Ohlheiser 2015), while indicative of a reaction from right-leaning users against the predominantly left-leaning ideology of the era, denote the political expression possible through the participatory nature of meme creation and dissemination (Mihăilescu 2024). Through this perspective, memes become a shorthand signalling their political affiliation, instead of their community/ fandom membership. This political character would itself become increasingly apparent during the 2016 US presidential elections, and the subsequent Inauguration of Donald Trump (Don Caldwell 2017), when memes across the political spectrum would proliferate meme culture, as exemplified by the “Crying Liberal Woman” meme (tatoomagoo 2017) from right-leaning users, and “Trump Yelling at Lawn-mowing Boy” meme (Adam 2018c) from left-leaning users. The culmination of the ‘Ironic Era’ halts in the wake of the socio-political polarization that would come to define the latter half of the decade, the abrupt shift brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and an expanding number of social-media platforms employing algorithm-controlled feeds. 2.4. The Brain Rot Era (2019-2023) The advent of the COVID-19 lockdown, following a series of politically charged and tumultuous years, brought upon a social shift that can be traced across popular culture, as well as internet culture. With their lives significantly disrupted, and restricted from leaving their homes, most individuals began to rely on the internet, and social media, to maintain social connections. Simultaneously, the pandemic was surrounded by multiple political events taking place before, during and after, notably Brexit, the 2020 US presidential elections, and respectively the George Floyd protests. Within this highly polarizing and uncertain moment, more individuals are actively browsing the internet, utilising social media, and engaging with meme culture (Statista Research Department 2021). However, in contrast to previous analysis, there seemingly isn’t a through-line connecting the structure, theming or subtext of most memes pertaining to this era. Instead, under the weight of real-world events, an influx of internet users, an over-exhaustion with post-ironic humour, and algorithms further sectioning and insulating communities, meme culture begins to splinter into multiple diverging sects. While overlap between these sects exists, they seem to evolve independently of each other, with their own separate meme structures. It’s within this contextual framework that brain rot emerges from meme culture, not as a meme but rather a genre. As Emilie Owens (2025) proposes in a recent paper, brain rot can be conceptualised as a “decompression-driven genre of participation” utilised primarily by teens (young Gen Z), a way of engaging with the internet through a detached lens that fundamentally view it as wasteful or eroding (Phillip Hamilton 2023a). This type of engagement seems to cross over into the real world, as evidenced by vernacular usage of internet brain rot slang such as gyatt (Owen 2022a) and rizz (Owen 2022d) by teens in the day-to-day life. Perhaps due to this perspective, memes pertaining to brain rot seem to have no clear cohesive structure, instead tend to rely on trends relevant to teen culture (or pop-culture at large), among which show great potential for virality, but less so to other demographics (e.g. “Amogus”, Philipp 2021a). Further building on Owens’ theory, by viewing the divergent sects of meme culture into genres of participation, we can further extrapolate other four rough genre frameworks onto which most memes of this era can be mapped onto. First is the political genre, characterized by users engaging with memes as ideological shorthand, tools of propaganda, or acts of resistance. Structured after political memes, it’s likely this genre emerged in the wake of increasing socio-cultural polarization, and radicalization stemming from increased internet usage (Mihăilescu 2024). While not as wide reaching, due to an inherit political divide, memes of this genre have a greater lifespan withing their respective circles (e.g. “Bernie Sanders Wearing Mittens,” Adam 2021) Second, the shortform genre, arguably the new norm within meme culture. Users engage almost exclusively short-from, vertical video content, its inception largely be attribute to TikTok’s rise to prominence during the pandemic. While the versatility of the format allows for memes to use visuals, text and sound, they are severely limited by their runtime. The predominance of the format leads to a lower attention span of the common user, and in turn lower lifespan of memes. In addition, shortform genre memes tend to be insular, as their potential for virality and community association is heavily dependent on algorithmic decisions (e.g. “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical,” Matt 2020: n.pag). Third is the text genre, denoted by the way it de- emphasises engagement with the visual component of memes, and recentres in on the text. Whereas conventional meme structure requires knowledge of both the shorthand and the in-group joke, this genre requires only the context of the in-group joke while always designating it the meme’s text (Greene, Schmid 2024). As such, text-memes become separate from visuals, while reaction images (Jostin Asuncion 2010) become modular, able to be inserted into any relevant text-meme (e.g. “Me, An Empath”, Owen 2022c). It’s highly specific meme usage, and fundamental incompatibility with the video format, it can be interpreted as a reaction against the shortform genre. The format itself provides a wider reach but lacks the cultural mainstay power. Fourth, and final, is the ironic macro genre, which retains the pre-established method of engaging with meme culture. While retaining elements from previous eras, it shifts away from the ironic detachment and meta textual humour of The Ironic Era, instead adopting a reliance on the in-group joke element of the meme. It often overlaps with other genres, sometimes even borrowing from them, due to its open-ended and prevalent nature (e.g. “Sadam Hussein’s Hiding Place” Philipp 2021b, “Trade Offer”, Philipp 2021c). The end of the Brain Rot Era coincides with the general easing of lockdown restriction, as well as the growing divergence withmeme culture, but is primarily denoted by the advent of large language models alongside AI- generated content. 2.5. The Slop Era (2023-2025) The aggressive marketing of the past years and implementation of LLMs into most social media platforms causes the internet to be flooded with AI- generated content (Constantino 2024; n.pag.), seeping into an already splintering meme culture. Due to the relative recency and concurrence with this paper, the main analysis of this era focuses on the evolution of the previously outline genres of engagement, and the holistic impact AI content has on meme culture. It's worth noting that while some AI-generated content can be tentatively described as meme-like, most do not function as such due their inherit lack of a shorthand and in-group joke structure, instead adopting facsimile of memes and trends. “Italian Brainrot” (Owen 2025) is the closest example of AI memes operating under previous meme establishments, yet it has a dual existence in two genres. In the brain rot genre, where it originates and experiences most of its popularity, it acts more as a trend artificially extended by AI image generation withing the conventions of the meme. In the ironic macro genre, the reaction/perception of ‘Italian Brainrot’ (see Fig. 2.5) is the meme itself. This comes off as an inter-generational clash, as “Italian Brainrot” is often associated young Gen Z and Gen Alpha, likely attempting to engagedwithmeme culture bymimicking meme customs of older users (Thinkhouse 2025). Brain rot genre memes, as previously noted, continue to interface, or even transcend the digital realm, as more internet slang is integrated into the vernacular language of teens (Aizin 2025), and memes such as “Skibidi Toilet” (Phillip Hamilton 2023b) turn from viral videos to multi-media franchises (Wallenstein and Steiner 2024). The ironic macro genre, alongside the text genre, continues to cross over mediums, as exemplified by the “500 Cigarettes” meme (Owen 2024), yet due to mainstream popularity of short-form video, these memes have on average shorter periods of cultural relevance. Ironic macro genre in particular has started to adopt a subtext of pessimism and general disillusionment with the states of the internet, AI, and mainstream culture, as highlighted by the phenomena of ”Slang overload” memes (Philipp 2020) in conjunction with the popularisation of terms like enshittification (Shepherd 2024), clanker (Davies 2025) and AI slop (Read 2024; Warzel 2024). Yet examples of ironic macro memes utilising AI effectively, such as the “AI Presidents Gaming” (Philipp 2023) show there is some leeway for engaging with AI as part of meme creation, but not as the sole essence of the meme structure. In contrast, there are signs of a possible new genre of participation, tentatively defined through the users’ enthusiastic engagement with AI trends, AI-generated images, and LLMs. Whereas ironic macro criticizes or ironically adopts AI images, especially notable in cases like “Facebook AI Slop” memes (Aidan Walker 2024), these users sincerely engage AI-generation, primarily evidence by the “Ghibli AI Generator” trend (sakshi 2025), despite cultural pushback. As a counter argument to this new categorisation, AI images have already begun to insert themselves into other genres, such as brain rot and political, further diving it from other participation genres. Memes belonging to political genre are becoming increasingly used as tools of propaganda and memetic warfare (Stockwell 2024), further underlining the impact memes have over the real world. As a whole, the genre is divided into right-leaning and left-leaning users, each adopting different meme aesthetics and usages. Right-leaning memes have wholeheartedly incorporated AI-images and AI Slop (Warzel 2024), while their memes have taken on an antisocial and antagonistic character (Gallagher and Topinka 2023; Peeters et al. 2021), as seen with the “NPC” (Gallagher and Topinka 2023) and “I Support The Current Thing” (Owen 2022b) memes. Left-leaning memes have placed themselves direct opposition to ironic macro and text genres, arguably as a reaction to surge of memes originating, or adopting, 251 250 / / / / Caiete de Arte și Design / nr. 13 / 2025 / / / / Publicație a Centrului de Cercetare și Creație în Artele Decorative și Design / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /