Minion memes are taking over the world. Seriously!
Fact #24 in 125 astonishing WOW facts about minions that you should know is ‘Internet, these days is abuzz with the memes featuring minions’.
All those who use the internet might have come across a minion meme at least once.
Let us start with meme.
Meme.
Urban Dictionary defines a meme as an idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media).
A meme is a virally-transmitted cultural symbol or social idea as stated by Paul Gils.
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist coined the term ‘meme’ in 1976. It comes from the Greek word, ‘mimema’ meaning ‘something imitated’, according to the American Heritage Dictionary.
In the past, a meme was passed to one another verbally, as story or fable or joke. The pace of passing/sharing memes kept increasing with the development of the communication media. Today internet has become the instantaneous medium of sharing memes.
Memes are a combination of pictures and words which tend to be humorous, motivating, cultural, personal experiences, and attitude. The main reason why memes are so viral is that they are so relatable to almost all the people.
Minions are one of the famous characters featured on the internet memes these days. It would not be so wrong that they have already taken over the internet meme world.
Minions have taken over the modern world. They are everywhere.
Everybody knows who the minions are. No?
Ok!
We have a different post about minions’ descriptions but let’s have their brief intro here too.
Minions were first featured in the movie, Despicable Me from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment in 2010. They are the animated creatures created by French storyboard artist, Eric Guillon who also happens to be the art director of the very movie.
Minions are homunculi, naïve, and weird, humorous, and are yellow in color, evil ones are purple. They love bananas and apples; they go crazy if they come across butt or bottom. They are hard-working and are extremely loyal to their masters. And they are cute.
Daniel, for Time, describes the minions as a band of subverbal, blobbish yellow creatures. They are the henchmen of supervillain, Gru, the main character of the movie and they ended up stealing the show with their yellow appearances and insanely funny nature.
Minions have been living on this earth long before we humans came to existence. They originated from the ocean as a single-celled organism and came to the earth in the form they are today. Apparently they appear to be immortal and invincible.
These minions seem to have taken over the meme world and the internet. The major social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram are flooded with minions memes. The ratio of memes being shared is way greater than memes being created. Why? It is because minion memes are so relatable to most of the internet users in one way or the other.
So when did the minion memes appear? Talking about the history of the minion memes, it does not date way into the past. Minion memes got their fame in recent years. Erik, for cracked.com, says, ‘even though Despicable Me came out in 2010, the search term “Minion meme” did not get popular until July of 2013 when Despicable Me 2 came out’.
Minions got famous during the promotion of the second movie, Despicable Me 2. More than 10,000 minions were seen during the ad-campaign of the movie. The audience loved minions more than the main characters of the movie. With the ever-growing obsession for minions, minions fan pages were created on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks. There are many sites like ours committed to the minions, only minions.
These fan pages or the fans started creating the memes with minions on them. The research done by Erik shows that the official account of Despicable Me movie has not created a single minion meme so far. The growth of minion memes gradually picked up the pace after the release of the second movie. Minions got their own movie in 2015; they have a handful of short movies and advertisements.
And in the present day, the internet is bursting out with these minions memes. People seldom hesitate to click like & share buttons on the minion memes because they find it either funny or relatable to themselves. You know you can pin the images in this post. 😉
The minions are ludicrously accepted online. The minion memes (quotes or sayings with minion images) depicts attitude, friendship, love, love of food, madness, social responsibilities, hate, sadness, and many more. The expressions of these yellow, goggly-eyed, oval creatures make the words (whatever it says) on the memes even more strong.
The more you look into the meme, the more perfect the minions appear to be in the meme. Why are minions so damn meme-able??? Why, oh why??
The appearance of the minions is just weird, like seriously weird. Yellow body, 3 fingers, no nose, 1 or 2 eyes with big ass goggles making their eyes look like compound eyes. Weird.
But no matter how weird they appear to be, they are kind of cute, actually adorably cute. Even the evil minions are adorable. And with such weird facial features, their facial expressions are so amplified that every emotion is strongly illustrated.
You cannot be mistaken to identify the kind of smile plastered on his face whether he is just happy or he is flirting. At the same time, a single minion expression can be used to portray different emotions. Maybe this is why they are perfect characters in the meme-world.
Feldman, on theawl.com, says, ‘But Minions are not tied to ay central emotion. They occupy an odd middle ground as a specific piece of intellectual property unbound from a specific feeling or worldview. Minions are sarcastic, honest, smarmy, snarky, playful, mean, and downright sour depending on the need.’
Jones, on vulture.com, says,’… Minions are essentially anthropomorphized emoji. … they don’t really have individual personalities, which makes them the perfect canvas upon which to project whatever desires you want.’
Minions are like blank pages and you can write whatever you want to onto them. Their innocent mischievous acts, funny nature, madness, etc. match the people’s feelings which they don’t want to share personally. They find minions perfect for the job; they make a minion memes and share them around.
Feldman, on theawl.com also states, ‘Minions are basically emoji. They’re yellow, they run the emotional spectrum, they function as a malleable shorthand for almost indescribable feelings. …. Minions are emoji with arms, legs, and goggles.’
So, this why there are so many minions memes and people are not stopping to share them. While minion fans are enthusiastically creating and sharing these memes, there are also haters of these memes in this world. Just like the idiom ‘too much of a good thing’.
There are critics who say minion memes are the evil taking over the world. Minion memes are stupid, dumb, and bullshit; they just hate these memes so much. Not surprising though. It is natural, it takes a while but something that is appreciated immensely will soon start getting criticisms.
One of the Redditors has said that minion meme is wrong because minions cannot speak the English language. S/he is right but not 100% because minions do speak English language, maybe not exactly like we do but they do. Their language is a jumble mumble of languages over the world. And we are not saying every word or quote on minion meme are said by minions.
Authenticity is one of the problems that haters have against the minion memes. Their question is why people are creating so many minion memes with the quotes & sayings which are not said by minions. Also, they don’t see any urgency of using the images of minions in the memes.
Some teenagers hate minion memes so much because they have had enough of such memes from their mom and teachers.
Well! No words for haters!
Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate
Shake it off!!
Minions are not being used to project different human emotions through memes but they are found as different personas on the internet, here and there. People have found minions to be a perfect medium to show their skills and creativity. Minions are not just minions; they are turned into superheroes, football players, celebrities, and many more.
Getting off of the online world doesn’t let you escape from the minions. Minions are everywhere even in the offline world. People are dressing themselves and their kids with minion outfits, sometimes their pets too. The stationeries are minion-ized, shoes and slippers, bags, foods, and almost every other thing is minion-ized.
Everything yellow and blue seems to be a minion. Or is it just me??
Minions have become a part of our life. There are hundreds of DIY minion tips and tricks shared every second. There are meme generating app, making it easy for a non-technical person to make a meme of his own.
Let us just sit back, relax, and watch the minion memes rule the world. Also, laugh if the memes are funny.
Here are some mindblowing minion memes:
Don’t be afraid of a few extra pounds. Fat people are harder to kidnap.
Just because I’m awake doesn’t mean I am functioning at full capacity.
You know you’re getting old, when you feel bad in the morning without having had any fun the night before.
I’m not trouble. I’m just a challenge to handle.
A real friend is someone who knows how damn crazy you are…but is still willing to be seen out in public with you.
Today I’m doing nothing cuz I started doing it yesterday and I wasn’t finished. I’m no quitter!
Arguing with a woman is like getting arrested. Everything you say can and will be used against you.
Home is a place where pants are optional, bras don’t exist, and the wifi works.
I always say “morning” instead of “good morning” because if it were a good morning I’d still be in bed asleep.
I’m not fat. I am fluffy.
My teacher pointed me with his ruler and said, “At the end of this ruler, there’s an idiot!” I got detention after asking which end.
After 99 selfies, I realized that the beauty of the soul is more important.
Cooking for 2 hours just to eat for 10 minutes is the biggest scam in the world.
True friends don’t judge each other. They judge other people…together.
Never use a guy to forget another. Use two or three.