A meme is a ’package of culture’’ that would spread via word of mouth as a humorous story, a joke, a fable, or an expression of speech. Today, the internet speeds up the spread of memes enabling them to travel much faster than a mere speech. While some memes are funny, some are spreading social awareness.
Considering our generation, memes will continue being shock-value curiosities and humour as these can grab the attention of many people more quickly than deeper meme content. But expect memes to become progressively more philosophical and intellectual as people become more sophisticated in their thinking.
While memes have become a special part of our culture, using it as a means of propagation of ideas and ideals were not unexpected. This is exactly what the city of joy- Kolkata, has done to spread awareness about the environment. On the occasion of world environmental day which was on June 5, Beacon Kolkata decided to change the stereotypical environmental awareness program into something more acceptable to the world.
While most of us were sending and receiving environmental friendly messages on World Environment Day, this organisation decided to use memes to spread awareness about being more cautious towards the environment!
This is how trees in Kolkata have started bearing memes instead of fruits:
