Okay, it’s the newest Internet trend. It’s flooding your wall. It’s meme time. You see one almost every time you log into Facebook, large white text conveys a snazzy statement on top of a hilarious photo of a baby, celebrity, or my personal favorite, cats.

“LOLcats” were possibly the first memes I saw, but from humble beginnings with ridiculous puns about cats, they have grown into a cultural phenomenon. Memes might be one of the most efficient ways of expressing anything on the Internet.

The message is short, the picture grabs your attention, and I’d say that within seven seconds of looking at a meme, the average person would completely understand the message it is trying to convey. This may be the most ideal delivery system for the online generation.

Within the last week, meme pages from DU and CMU have flooded my Facebook wanderings. Sometimes it’s just some witty criticism of various college stereotypes, but sometimes, rational criticism and positive discourse arises. One from the CMU meme page brings attention to the fact that CMU’s student-run radio station, which has its office and studios in the University Center, is never played in that building.

This is good. One little meme brought a pretty interesting situation to my attention. The best part is, to spread the information all you have to do is hit the share button. Memes give any individual with half an ounce of creativity and a Facebook account the ability to express and distribute opinion.

Of course, most memes are just jokes, comedic banter about other cultural issues and topics. However, the simplicity of the medium, text on top of a photo, can be used to convey an extremely complex message. Quotes from the past can be superimposed over images from the present. The newest cultural trend can be used to blur cultural borders from the past.

Like other mediums that convey cultural ideas, photography, editorial journalism, or the Internet itself, memes have the potential (much like these other mediums did in the past) to speed up the communication of ideas. Communication is always progressing, even within the vast internet universe. Memes aren’t just another online trend. Their versatility will bring the medium to a much higher purpose than the distribution of pictures of cats and babies.