Deprecate meme

BUR #53309 is pending approval.

deprecate meme

Too broad of a tag.
Right now, there are no visual identificators for memes. It just gets to applied everything that goes "viral".

It doesn't help you finding a specific meme either.
If you want a specific meme, you can just do a *_(meme) search or type *_meme into here:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/tags?commit=Search&search%5Bcategory%5D=0&search%5Bhide_empty%5D=no&search%5Bname_or_alias_matches%5D=%2A_%28meme%29&search%5Border%5D=date

That's much better to narrow down a certain tag for meme than the meme tag itself can provide.

For context, this topic was inspired by topic #34610.

evazion said:

I still don't know what the difference between a trend and a meme is supposed to be.

Damian0358 said:

The difference is that (meme) auto-sends posts to the meme tag and a lot of people are annoyed at how broadly the word 'meme' is used, mostly because they aren't aware that the word 'meme' today is how people used 'fad' in the past. A meme/trend distinction is pointless. If people don't want to call a meme a meme they should just follow in the footsteps of tags like Jack-o' Challenge and drop the qualifier entirely instead of following Brown Egyptian cat-eared loli (trend) (topic #33254).

nonamethanks said:

I think we should have a distinction between memes (Wojak, troll face, daijoubu? oppai momu? (meme)) and art trends (jack-o' challenge, cracked kawaii mask, one finger selfie challenge).

I'd say the difference between a meme and a trend is that trends are usually the entire picture, while the meme is usually a reference to something else or hidden away in the picture: a phrase, a character popping out, a reference to a real life event or person.

Damian0358 said:

While I don't wholly agree with this, in the sense that, as far as I can tell, your view of trends is generally lumped into memes anyway elsewhere online, I do think you highlight what is the ultimate issue here. Users on Danbooru choose to allow their own personal interpretation of the concept of a meme override how it is actually used online, regardless of how right or wrong it is, without actually doing anything about the meme tag itself, which follows the broader online view. If we actually want to seperate memes into shitpost memes, art memes, etc, a thread should be made to discuss that.

As for the BUR itself, I don't think we can reasonably deprecate meme, and that's for one major reason: I'm like, 99% certain, that people regularly use the tag. You'd need to actually propose alternatives for it.

Provence said:

If you want a specific meme, you can just do a *_(meme) search or type *_meme into here:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/tags?commit=Search&search%5Bcategory%5D=0&search%5Bhide_empty%5D=no&search%5Bname_or_alias_matches%5D=%2A_%28meme%29&search%5Border%5D=date

That's much better to narrow down a certain tag for meme than the meme tag itself can provide.

And this actually isn't a solution because of the trend of either removing (meme) qualifiers or using alternate qualifiers like (trend), which relates back to what I mentioned above (as I was writing this, forum #413004 was made).

Agreed. I don't think anyone wants to simultaneously search for anything from reaction faces to specific poses popular with porn artists, while excluding many things that are memes but don't have a meme qualifier for one reason or another.

*_(meme) only gets the 100 biggest tags with that qualifier fyi, it doesn't show all results.

nonamethanks said:

*_(meme) only gets the 100 biggest tags with that qualifier fyi, it doesn't show all results.

https://danbooru.donmai.us/tags?commit=Search&page=139&search%5Bhide_empty%5D=yes&search%5Bname_or_alias_matches%5D=%2A_%28meme%29&search%5Border%5D=count

That should be everything. Unless I misunderstood you.
The question is...does anyone even use the "Tags" tab on the top?

it's one of my most useful blacklist tags and I do wish there were a similar umbrella tag for trend. (you can't blacklist wildcards)

Nameless_Contributor said:

Agreed. I don't think anyone wants to simultaneously search for anything from reaction faces to specific poses popular with porn artists, while excluding many things that are memes but don't have a meme qualifier for one reason or another.

I search meme pretty often, and I highly doubt it's uncommon.

It can be useful for trying to search for memes which you don't know the name of but might share some features

i hate memes but i think this tag is useful for memelords who want to be on top of the latest memes

Alixiron said:

It can be useful for trying to search for memes which you don't the name of but might share some features

This, if we don't have meme I'd like a catch all of some sort for searching purposes. Especially since I find the name of the tag is not what I'm expecting.

I'm mostly indifferent to the meme tag, but I do often put meme requests under meme because I assume people searching meme would want to see those too (and could potentially ID the meme in question). Not sure what getting rid of the tag would do, but it seems nothing good going by the convo and downvotes.

Realistically I think the meme and trend qualifiers need to be more set in stone on which is which (and it be said on the wiki for meme, trend COULD have a parent tag as well, wouldn’t be the worst idea given some people do want it), as even my thread that inspired this BUR was based on my opinion on memes vs trends (IE I don’t think cracked kawaii mask is a meme, it’s an art trend IMO) and even Evazion is confused here which isn’t good lol.

My personal distinction is a meme implies in its origin at least, an attempt at humor or it being humorous, some straddle this like like the upward angle frieren drawing (meme) as the meme comes from the slightly scuffed nature of the original picture but most of the redraws here are very high quality, but regardless that’s my 2 cents.

Space_Force_Detective said:

this BUR was based on my opinion on memes vs trends (IE I don’t think cracked kawaii mask is a meme, it’s an art trend IMO) and even Evazion is confused here which isn’t good lol.

I'm going to point out here that the Cracked Kawaii Mask art trend is considered a 'redraw' meme elsewhere online, like Know Your Meme. The reason why evazion was confused is because no one is bothering to actually distinguish the types of memes, just insisting that a meme is not a meme.

Space_Force_Detective said:

My personal distinction is a meme implies in its origin at least, an attempt at humor or it being humorous, some straddle this like like the upward angle frieren drawing (meme) as the meme comes from the slightly scuffed nature of the original picture but most of the redraws here are very high quality, but regardless that’s my 2 cents.

Just because you or trapster or even NNT thinks that memes are something 'narrower' conceptually doesn't change the fact that the rest of the Internet does not agree with that assessment. It's more productive to be talking about types of memes in that context, as opposed to a false dichotomy between 'memes' and 'trends' that doesn't bother explaining what actually makes one different from the other. There is literally nothing in 'meme' that implies that its origin was an attempted at humor or it being humorous, that's just something people claimed because most memes they liked were funny. The fact that we used to call them 'fads' goes to show that virality is the actual main factor.

Provence said:

https://danbooru.donmai.us/tags?commit=Search&page=139&search%5Bhide_empty%5D=yes&search%5Bname_or_alias_matches%5D=%2A_%28meme%29&search%5Border%5D=count

That should be everything. Unless I misunderstood you.
The question is...does anyone even use the "Tags" tab on the top?

Searching for the tags specifically it'll give you all of them, but when doing a search for posts as in *_(meme), it'll only give you results for the top 100 tags (https://github.com/danbooru/danbooru/blob/56dc6f6f2f8d472149ae2eef172659aafd1396fb/app/logical/post_query_builder.rb#L14)

I wonder if it'd be more useful to split memes into different types? For example, I don't care much for things like troll faces, but I would love to just have a tag for every kind of drawing challenge under the sun.

Knowledge_Seeker said:

I wonder if it'd be more useful to split memes into different types? For example, I don't care much for things like troll faces, but I would love to just have a tag for every kind of drawing challenge under the sun.

That'd be a good idea IMO, that's essentially what the trend qualifier was intended to be for already I'm pretty sure.