The creation of my meme was actually more difficult than I had thought it would be. The situation actually happened to a family friend of mine recently and the look on her face was too funny to not take inspiration from. The girl in the meme’s name is Chloe, and she is one of the popular memes floating around the web. I used it because I really liked her expression and thought it complimented my concept well. Since my meme is situational, I knew I needed more than just the picture of Chloe to better get my statement across. I’m not someone who is extremely well with Photoshop so it took me awhile to figure out how to crop someone’s face out, put it on to another picture, and then compress the pictures into one. It was also difficult in finding a background image where the words weren’t covering the food, and one that was large enough that I could also fit Chloe’s face in. The only tools I used besides Google to find the pictures, and the meme generator, was Microsoft Word to format the pictures together.
My meme references anyone that’s been to a restaurant and has had the unfortunate event of finding more than just food on their plate. The only specialized knowledge that the meme requires is someone who has been to a restaurant and has had a bad experience. Since the audience is so large it can be relevant to many people. It references indexicality by using Chloe herself. Her facial expression can be used in numerous ways to express feelings in different situations. Similarly, the templatability uses Chloe as a character, but also relies on a sentence structure guide that’s situational; when “something” happens, there is an accompanying facial expression or gesture to visually explain the result. My meme differs by not only using a recognizable face with wording on it, but by having two images to express the statement. The intertextuality present is a cultural relatability, of people who go out to eat at restaurants often and have made it a normal part of their lives.
My meme looks at culture within developed countries where restaurants aren’t just there to go to for special occasions; there are now restaurants you can go to for all occasions, whether it’s someone’s birthday, or you’re just hungry with your friends. Going to a restaurant is equally a social thing as it is about the food being served. We’re so worried about getting our food quickly but when it comes out and something’s wrong with it (whether it be a hair, or an ingredient you don’t like) we don’t think hard about sending it back and waiting to get another one. We are fortunate enough to have options and live in a place where if you don’t like one thing you can easily get another. From having worked in a restaurant I know that there is a lot of food that goes to waste, and it goes unnoticed. We are a culture that acts first with self-interest and thinks about repercussions later, if we even feel the need to. But it’s really not our fault. It’s just become our norm and our standard way of living.
nyssal 