Hahaha, Hehehe, Lmao, OMG, I literally can’t, LOL, I am DEAD, etc. These acronyms or phrases might be a comment you left after looking at a “meme” or a text you attached while sharing it your friend(s) on social media.

From young children to adults, everyone enjoys memes because they are usually funny.

A meme is a humorous image, video, or text that is imitated from individual to individual with slight alterations being made to it and spread through the help of Internet users that admire it. Today the Internet is full of them. People make a meme out of anything, and those that do so are called “memers.” [Oh come on, everyone knows what memes are!]

Memes have given birth to an industry where memers are able to earn moola by using smart advertisements and often by promoting similar meme accounts.

Memes are not necessarily harmful or destructive in any way, but certain people might be addicted to them as a way to get rid of boredom or as sophomore Victoria Kapusta says, “It might just be a really strong passion for them.”

Kapusta further adds, “I spend usually an hour scrolling memes on the explore page of Instagram, and I don’t think it’s harmful because most people treat them as humor to make someone’s day.”

Even though Kapusta’s statements denote the good and pure sides of memes, there are individuals like math teacher James Whittaker, who believes, “People are obsessed with memes, I think the human brain obsesses over them and follows them for the search of another current meme just like drugs.” Even though he thinks, “memes are hilarious.”

Mr. Whittaker’s opinions unleash the dark sides of meme and how they are responsible for thousands of people failing to finish their work on time.

Whereas, Naimul Hasan, another sophomore at the iSchool, offers an opinion from a different perspective as to how “A meme is funny by all means unless it offends someone because of the religious, political, ableist or socially offensive joke that is deeply embedded within that meme.”

Hasan has a point because there are memes that are meant to specifically spread controversial issues like homophobia, xenophobia, anti-semitic ideals. It is hard to avoid those sort of memes.

But there is a solution for that too because there are memers that will never resort to these sort of cheap means to produce funny and quality content. If you really want to enjoy memes that are not necessarily problematic, you can follow accounts like @tank.sinatra, @theonion, @drgrayfang, @adam.the.creator @shitheadsteve @sonny5ideup @kalesalad, @mytherapistsays, @_theblessedone, @lukehanontv, @dabmoms and many more on Instagram and some of these accounts were even featured in an article by Harper’s Bazaar called “The 9 Funniest Instagram Meme Accounts To Follow.”

Just like everything else, memes have good and bad sides, and the bad aspects of it can be avoided with the help of some simple steps like reporting offensive contents immediately no matter what the social media platform is. And the good sides do outweigh the bad sides of it because at the end of the day the purpose of memes are to provide fun for others, and it ultimately depends on the person as to how they are going to enjoy memes.