How Memes Invite Users To Share Their Experiences With Others

Whitney Phillips, assistant professor of communication and rhetorical studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, was quoted in the New York Times piece “‘The Feminine Urge’ Meme Explained.”

With the rise in social media has come a rise in users posting their own renditions of funny graphic content, referred to as memes. Professor Whitney Phillips discussed a recent meme trend, ‘the feminine urge’ and why it grew so quickly in popularity, saying memes “create this wide open space to articulate the full range of a person’s experience, whether it’s the feminine urge or the nonbinary urge or the masculine one.”