Rage guy, forever alone, troll face. They all have something in common: they are part of the internet’s new fad, memes.

“Memes are something you use to tell a funny story or make something awkward. They are quick and easy to find or make,” Evan Rojek, senior, said.

Memes can describe a feeling or moment. Most commonly, one takes a cartoon or picture and adds a caption to it. This caption is meant to be humorous and is also supposed to spark a reaction in the viewer, such as agreement, disgust, or even embarrassment. For example, if one was talking about how he or she went to the movie theater alone, he or she would say “forever alone” with the forever alone picture (see picture).

“Memes are all pretty dumb, but they’re funny. Memes are mainly just on the computer, and not really [outside the internet],” Joel Lima, sophomore, said.

Although every meme cannot be traced to a certain creator, most memes came from 4chan, a website mainly for sharing pictures, cartoons, and anime. There are, however, websites designated for making memes, such as http://memegenerator.net

“[A meme] becomes an inside joke with people, and then more people see it and join in. It spreads all over [the internet] and becomes a huge joke with lots of people in on it,” Lima said.

Memes can come from all sorts of places: day-to-day life, video games, and pure imagination. For example, the phrase “I took an arrow to the knee” comes from the popular video game, Skyrim.

“[‘I took an arrow to the knee’] basically means you used to do something, but you stopped because you took ‘an arrow to the knee.’ Like I used to play football, but I took an arrow to the knee. It’s a ridiculous statement in the game, because it’s a baby accident compared to the rest of the things he did, so it was just funny enough for people to use,” Lima said.

Rather than keeping memes inside a computer screen, recently, some people have been using meme phrases in real life.

“It’s kinda dumb if you say it in real life. You seem foolish because it looks better on the internet with the pictures,” Rojek said.

Instead of saying them in real life, one can make a meme on a meme generating website, or one can search for one they want to use on a search engine, such as google, according to Rojek.

Next time you cannot find the right words to say, let the memes do their magic.