Why watch and create memes - says the creator of “The Suffering Middle Ages” Yuri Saprykin
Miscellaneous / / September 20, 2023
When we created The Suffering Middle Ages, we did not set ourselves an educational goal. We didn’t have the feeling at all that the meme public would grow into something more. In 2014, it was simply a community for communication between classmates, where we posted funny pictures about teachers and studies.
One day a medieval miniature with a funny caption appeared there. I realized that this could become a separate humorous genre, and I started a hobby - making memes in between writing academic papers. For me it was the same as hitting a punching bag: relax a little and relieve tension with all the seriousness of the educational process. At first, people just found it funny, only then the public began to have an educational background.
Watch memes - develop yourself
Some people think that watching memes means procrastinating. But I almost never encountered this. I remember that a few years ago some cultural expert was very offended by the “Suffering” memes and said that they demean cultural heritage and only promote intellectual
degradation. But I don't agree with this. When emotions are connected, information is remembered better.For example, instead of forcing students to cram a paragraph, a teacher can collect a selection of TikToks on the topic and say: “Tomorrow we’ll do a test on them.” Or he can start the presentation with a funny picture so that the students perceive subsequent information more relaxed. Another idea: show a complex funny meme and start explaining what's going on in it.
Any activity in which you go beyond the dry reading of a textbook and receive or provide knowledge with the connection of emotions is beneficial for everyone.
For example, several years ago, together with Mikhail Zygar*, I did the project “1917. Free history». It looked like a social network during the revolution. When you went to the site, you saw what kind of posts the heroes of 1917 could post. For example, we took Miliukov’s speech and posted a post with it on his behalf. It got 5,000 likes. People found it very funny. At the same time, hardly anyone could say that watching this tape contributes to degradation and does not provide anything useful.
Some wrote personal messages to the heroes. I could go to Rasputin’s page and see 200–300 messages with the content: “Gregory! How did this happen?” A friend later told me that at school the teacher asked them to make their own social network in the likeness of our project. This is great!
Memes are simply one of the tools for obtaining information. Memes do not necessarily make a person lazy and stupid. If you look at the history of this term, you can recall the definition of Richard Dawkins, who argued that a meme is any culturally significant unit of information. It, like human genes, is subject to natural selection, mutation and selection. That is, it is simply something that reflects cultural processes in society.
Plus, memes are a way to stay sane.
Create memes - educate others
At first, we posted only funny pictures in “The Suffering Middle Ages”. But later subscribers wanted to know what the background story was for the miniatures depicting strange animals and people in agony.
That's why we came up with the idea to publish a book about the suffering Middle Ages. I remember that I once posted a poll on VKontakte like “Have you become more interested in the Middle Ages after watching our memes?” Several thousand people responded: “Yes, I started reading more.” This is a very good result for a survey of this type.
If before this the authors told us that no one needed the book “The Suffering Middle Ages” and that it would sell 100 copies, now I could refute their words with numbers. And although I did not have clear statistics on how such coverage was converted into sales, I understood from sensory experience that it could have circulation of many thousands. And so it turned out: we sold and printed 150,000 pieces.
"Suffering Middle Ages"became very famous, won the Enlightener award. The publisher told us that this even increased sales of Umberto Eco, a philosopher and expert on medieval culture. The book market has changed: on the shelves where previously there were tomes about Stalin and the 20th century, texts about the 13th–17th centuries began to appear.
We popularized the very word “Middle Ages”.
A teacher from the Higher School of Economics, who taught medieval studies at our institute, said that now people come to him and say: “I want to learn from you, because I love the public “Suffering Middle Ages"". It means something.
And although we really like to go in the educational direction, we do not believe that entertaining worse. Our project had and still has two equally important tasks.
We are not guided by the principle: “Now we will teach you.” We promote: “Look how cool it is.”
Memes have become a method of promotion and education. I have noticed more than once that a meme works as a good spreader. You can write a news article that will be seen by hundreds, or you can make a funny picture that will be seen by thousands. If it catches your attention, people will want to understand what meanings are hidden behind it and learn more new information.
There is even a word for this approach: infotainment - a way content delivery, which aims to both entertain and inform its audience. For example, we are now planning to release an entertaining mini-series in short video format. The script for it is written by Mikhail Mayzuls, who teaches our course at Stradarium.
So I don't think people should be ashamed of viewing or creating memes. They can be used to create books, games, lessons, online courses in the humanities and much more. But first of all, it is a great way of communication.
*Recognized by the Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent.
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