Your Memes Are Belong to Us: Why Memes Matter for Information Literacy

My first classroom had been strip-mined of almost everything potentially useful before I arrived.

Beyond rows of the traditional one-piece student desk-chair combos, there was only:

• a teacher desk and chair (both older than I was)

• a single empty cabinet, and...

• a small bell, like the kind you might see at a hotel front desk.

That was it.

No stapler. No paper. No pencils. Never mind books or teaching materials. Even the pencil sharpener had been ripped off the wall. The cinder block walls were completely bare and the three stripped bulletin boards were covered in some fairly unkind graffiti about the previous teacher.

Over the course of that first year, I begged, borrowed, and bought as many supplies as I could get my hands on. A friend from the local little theater brought me a roll of zebra print fabric for the bulletin boards. Some veteran teachers, who felt sorry for me, shared extra office supplies. Eventually, I was given access to the “book room,” where I found piles of classroom novels, most of which I had read when I was in middle school. Then, later that year, our school’s Instructional Technology Facilitator (ITF) (shout out to Dick Shaw!) brought me a single Macintosh Performa 5200.

The year was 1997. A full year before a little company called Google introduced the world to its search engine and, eventually, reshaped how all of us find and share information. I have been an "extremely online person" ever since.

Some of my fondest memories from that time include:

• Building my first website, using Dreamweaver, to advertise a class field trip. Of course, this turned out to be a mostly useless resource because none of the families I served had computers, never mind internet access, at home.

• Having my students build their own websites, using GeoCities, to collect book reviews. Each student added a link to another student’s page at the bottom of their site so that students and families could move from one review to the next. This was before blogs or social media. We called it a “web ring” and thought we were very cool. (Shout out to my ITF at the time and forever friend, John Downs!)

• Using a Sony Mavica MVC-FD73 to photograph* students during presentations. While it never occurred to me to post those photos online, I noticed even then how the possibility of a broader audience changed how students approached their work. (*This camera stored upto 5 photos at a time, using a floppy disk!)

  
  

It was also during this time that I first encountered what we now call memes. The earliest examples I remember include:

• The Dancing Baby from Ally McBeal. It may be hard for younger readers to imagine, but without social media or even texting being a thing yet, the Dancing Baby meme was spread primarily through email forwards.

• The Hamster Dance, which is arguably the ancestor of the later...

• Badger, Badger, Badger  meme. (Feel free to argue with me, but I think there is also a case to be made that both paved the way for something like the still-relevant Rickroll).

• And then there was All Your Base Are Belong To Us, perhaps the first meme I remember seeing remixed and reshared in multiple forms. The phrase came from a mistranslation in the 1989 video game Zero Wing, and even today, when someone says, "all your base are belong to us," it's like hearing the secret password to an exceptionally nerdy speak easy.

To be clear, at the time I had never heard the term meme. I had no way of knowing that these tiny digital punchlines would eventually both reflect and shape culture. But even then, I sensed that something interesting was happening. I might not have fully understood the full picture yet, but I could see that memes were important, because they:

• are a form of communication built on shared knowledge and inside jokes

• rely on connection, which fosters a sense of belonging

• can be analyzed, edited and shared in seconds

• invite remixing

  
  

Naively, I assumed memes would remain tucked away in nerd culture, and for a while they did. Eventually, though, they went mainstream in ways educators can no longer afford to ignore.

Meme Wars: Memes As Weapons of Mass Distrust

I first became aware of how memes could be used to spread mis-, dis-, and mal-information around 2014, when stories about Matt Furie’s Pepe the Frog becoming a symbol for hate groups began circulating widely online. This post isn’t about Pepe the Frog, or any single meme in particular. Still, there is something to learn from how this simple digital drawing became associated with extremism.

“The laidback character was quickly adapted as a meme on internet forums such as 4chan and Reddit. By 2014 and 2015 politicized Pepe memes began appearing against Furie’s wishes, notably from the emerging ‘alt-right’. A stream of racist and anti-semitic Pepe renderings led to the meme being added to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols in 2016.” — Chatham House

Even if you did not know his name before reading this post, chances are you have seen images of Pepe. The article quoted above contains an in depth timeline of Pepe's evolution over time - which I find fascinating.

Anyway, years later, I discovered the book Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America by Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg, who describe how memes have become powerful tools for spreading extremist messages online.

While the target audience of this book is not necessarily K–12 educators, I found its central ideas both compelling and highly relevant to those of us who are devoted to helping learners (of all ages!) navigate an online world that profits from our radicalization.

Here are a few of my takeaways from their research.

Unlike traditional propaganda, memes rarely present themselves as serious arguments. They arrive as jokes that spark big feelings such as:

• Connection (the person who sent me the meme was thinking of me!)

• Belonging (this is an inside joke that I get)

• Superiority (someone else is not getting the joke)

• Relief (I am not being left out of the conversation)

• Validation or certainty (this meme confirms what I already believe)

• Trust (my friend liked this meme too, so it must be safe to pass along)

• Urgency (I want to be part of this moment, so I share it or create my own version)

Memes can function as both messages and membership cards. Researchers studying online extremism have documented how:

• some communities use memes to create a shared visual language

• symbols, phrases, and references circulate within a group, allowing insiders to recognize one another while outsiders miss the meaning entirely

• memetic language can act as a kind of purity test that signals who belongs, who does not, and who may even be an enemy

Memes can normalize extremist ideas by introducing them gradually.

• a meme may begin as something funny, ironic, or provocative - challenging the status quo

• repeated exposure can make ideas that once felt uncomfortable begin to feel familiar and even acceptable

• over time, that familiarity can normalize ideas that might once have been rejected

Memes resist many of the strategies educators traditionally use to evaluate information.

• locating authorship, authority, or publication context is often impossible

• a meme that begins in a small online forum can spread widely across mainstream platforms, detached from its original creator and context

• by the time journalists or scholars analyze a meme, it may already be embedded in a cultural moment

• humor and irony allow creators to dismiss criticism

• people who challenge a meme's credibility are easily gaslit, being told they simply do not understand the joke or are being overly sensitive

Memes over simplify complex issues. The humor and visual shorthand can make an argument feel obvious or self-evident, even when the issue itself is deeply complicated

• complicated social, political, and scientific topics are compressed into a single image, video, or short phrase

• nuance disappears because the format rewards speed and certainty over depth and the discomfort that can accompany debate

• complex ideas are reframed as simple binaries such as good vs bad, smart vs stupid, or us vs them

• viewers often encounter the conclusion before they encounter the evidence or the broader debate

Memes rely on the participatory/performative nature of social media. Algorithms reward content that generates interaction, which encourages the rapid spread of highly emotional or polarizing memes.

• people are encouraged to like, remix, caption, repost, and respond

• each act of engagement signals identity and belonging within an online community

• sharing a meme becomes a public performance of humor, beliefs, or political alignment

• algorithms reward content that generates interaction, which accelerates the spread of emotional or polarizing memes

• as engagement increases, the meme appears more popular and more credible than it may actually be

TL;DR: Memes are not just silly images of grumpy cats or overconfident babies that we share to escape the crushing weight of doomscrolling. Although they are certainly that, too.

From a teaching standpoint, memes matter because they are often big messages disguised as small packages. They are quick to read, easy to remix, and often genuinely funny. Those same qualities make them powerful tools for shaping how ideas move through online spaces. Memes trigger emotion, reward participation, and spread faster than most forms of

traditional media. When millions of people are nudged to like, share, or remix the same piece of content, those small actions begin to shape how ideas move through our culture. What's more, helping our students recognize memes as legitimate containers for information, worthy of scrutiny and thoughtful analysis, feels like an important next step in the evolution of how we teach information literacy.

All Your Memes Are Belong To Us: Let's Remix How We Use Memes Instructionally

If memes are powerful containers for information, then they deserve the same kind of careful analysis we give to news articles, videos, and advertisements. The good news is that memes are also incredibly useful teaching tools. Their small size, cultural relevance, and remixable nature make them perfect entry points for practicing information literacy.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how we might incorporate memes into other work that helps learners think critically about the information they engage with. Here are a few of the strategies I've been exploring:

1. Identifying the type of message. This simple move can help learners recognize that not all memes are trying to do the same thing.

Using memes of my own creation (or ones that I find online that are appropriate for the group I am working with), I ask learners to decide whether a meme is:

• making a factual claim (something that can be proven or disproven)

• expressing an opinion, or...

• functioning as satire or parody

2. Looking for logical fallacies. Okay, I know this is old school, y'all, but hear me out: this move can help learners recognize the rhetorical shortcuts that memes often rely on.

Using memes of my own creation (or ones that I find online that are appropriate for the group I am working with), I ask learners to decide whether a meme is:

• straw man arguments (misrepresenting someone else's position to make it easier to attack)

• false dilemmas (presenting only two options when more possibilities exist)

• hasty generalizations (drawing broad conclusions from limited examples)

• ad hominem attacks (criticizing a person instead of their argument)

• post hoc reasoning (assuming that because one thing happened after another, it must have been caused by it)

3. Interrogating the missing context. This move helps learners recognize that memes often rely on cropped images, truncated videos, partial information, or shared assumptions.

Using memes of my own creation, I ask learners to consider questions such as:

• what might have happened before or after the moment captured in this meme?

• what details might have been cropped out of the image or video?

• what background knowledge does someone need in order to understand the message?

• what other perspectives or explanations might exist?

4. Identifying the emotions the meme is trying to trigger. This move can help learners understand how feelings influence engagement online.

Using memes of my own creation (or ones that I find online that are appropriate for the group I am working with), I ask learners to consider:

• how does this meme make me feel?

• what emotions this meme is trying to spark?

• who benefits if I feel this way?

• how are they hoping these feelings will affect my urge to like, comment, or share?

5. Remembering that all media messages are created by humans with motivations. This

   move can help learners focus on the people behind the meme and the goals that might shape the message.

Using memes of my own creation (or ones that I find online that are appropriate for the group I am working with), I ask learners to consider questions such as:

• who created or circulated this meme?

• what motivations, beliefs, or goals might be shaping the message?

• who benefits if this meme spreads?

• who might be harmed if it circulates widely?

• what communities might be sharing or amplifying this meme?

• who could I talk to or learn from before deciding whether to engage with it?

6. Practicing influence through meme creation. This move can help harness learners' natural interest in being influencers and invites them to think intentionally about how messages gain attention online.

Using meme templates of my own creation, I ask learners to create their own memes and make deliberate choices about:

• what emotions they want their meme to trigger

• what visual or textual elements might increase engagement

• what message they want their audience to take away

• whether humor, exaggeration, or irony might make their message more shareable

• As learners experiment with these choices, they begin to see how small design decisions shape how a meme spreads.

• Practicing these moves as creators can help learners recognize the same strategies when they encounter memes in the wild.

As always, I hope you’ll approach these instructional moves in the remixing spirit of the meme that inspired this post's title. Try them, tweak them, remix them for the learners in front of you. After all, if memes teach us anything, it’s that the most powerful ideas are the ones people feel invited to adapt and pass along.

One Does Not Simply Teach Memes

Because I know your plates are already very full, I've been working on some new resources to help this work feel more attainable. That said, while I always share my resoures for free, they come with some expectations:

1. If you share them, please give me credit.

2. Please do not sell or post any version of them or post them to TpT

3. If you use them with students, I'd love to hear about it. Please tag me on any post you might share on social media.

Google Slide Meme Activity (This link will force you to make a copy)

Memeland GAME (Designed for HS students - Teacher Should Preview First)

The Sneaky Truth About Memes [This Article Contains an Activity)

The Dungeon’s Dragon: A Game About Memes + Aristotle’s Logical Fallacies (for HS students)

Match the Meme To the Emotion (for upper ES or MS kids)

Finally, I've been doing some PD related to memes. Here's my latest slide deck. Perhaps it goes without saying, but it is set to read only. The options for downloading your own copy have been disabled. Still, I hope you find it (and everything else I have shared!) useful.

BONUS: Meme FAQs!

If you've read all the way to the bottom of this post, thank you. What’s one more section, right? Before I close, I thought I’d share a few of the questions, along with answers, that I frequently get from educators when I talk about memes.

What tools do you use to create memes for students?

I use Canva for most of my meme creations. That said, I often find that Google Sheets offers a more accessible, student friendly way for teachers and librarians to use my creations with kids.

What if I want to show my students video content instead of static photos or text based memes? Where can I find examples?

I locate almost all of the videos I use for this work on TikTok. If downloading is available, I download the video and then upload the file to Google Drive so I can easily share it in a presentation or classroom activity. That said, before sharing meme content, or any content from the increasingly chaotic internet, be sure to review it carefully and keep the needs of your learners in mind at all times.

What about AI?

What about it?

More seriously, while AI has made it easier than ever for people to generate images, captions, and even entire meme templates in nanoseconds, until Large Language Models become sentient, I think it's more effective to focus on the human behavior that influences both how we connect with memes and why some people use them to cause harm. After all, even when LLMs are employed to create memes, it's humans who write the prompts and it's humans who choose (or choose not) to engage with them.

What if my students already know more about memes than I do?

Chances are they do! I'll never forget chatting with some library workers in CA about memes when one of the participants in my workshop texted their teenage son with a simple question: "how many memes do you think you see each day?" Their answer? "I dunno. 100?"

When we invite students to explain a meme or share examples they encounter online, our learning spaces are transformed. Not only are we validating how kids really engage with information, but we're also modeling what it looks like to be constantly learning.

What if my school is limiting the amount of time students are allowed to spend on screens?

Putting aside that I think that is part of a bigger conversation, memes lend themselves to lots of analog applications - after all, they are very easy to print! And, there's nothing to say that kids need to be online in order for us to engage them in conversations that challenge them to interrogate their online lives. In fact, dare I say, those conversations might be easier to have without screens.