Tim Martin
308J
2/5/12
Terrible Teacher
The “Terrible Teacher” meme is a popular meme on the Internet. It depicts a young teacher who looks innocent. Funny quotations are inserted from Internet users who have had bad experiences with teachers. These quotes are usually incompetent things that teachers do and say. This meme has a lot to break down because it is so popular; the meme is seen all over the Internet and connects to the Internet population easily.
This meme is so popular because of how well it connects very well to the Internet population. The general Internet user on these websites like memebase.com is around the high school or college age. This age is a great audience for a meme about a bad teacher because this age has the most experience with teachers in general, let alone bad teachers. Many students who are stressed look for someone to blame for tough circumstances and usually point to their teacher or professor. This meme is a great way to get your point across or to blow off steam using humor while being anonymous.
I think the best thing about this meme (and any online meme for that matter) is that the rhetor is also the audience. This meme can be changed and re-posted by anyone who has online access to it, which as stated previously, is largely a student population. This means that many students will be the rhetor and that the rhetor changes often. I think this makes this meme much more interesting.
The constraints of this meme are few. The biggest constraint I could see would be that some of the audience could get offended; this is a hard possibility to imagine because the audience is so often the rhetor. Other constraints could be if those reading this meme have never had a bad teacher and don’t understand the meme. There could also be a possibility of misunderstanding from different nations and cultures that don’t have the public schooling that America does.
This meme captures everything good you can find good in a form of entertainment. It’s very humorous and it connects well with the audience. I think that this meme sets a good standard for other internet trends and fads.
1.
ReplyDelete• When you go through the readings again, make sure that you include quotes that can help you explain the meme more in-depth. I would try to clarify the constraints of this argument and exigencies.
• Is there room for a quote from Carroll or Grant-Davie to help elucidate constituents? For this meme, I feel that you would benefit from adding quotes from Carroll’s article Backpacks vs. Briefcase.
• Are there additional exigencies, rhetors, audiences, or constraints they haven't considered? I feel that another constraint could be if a teacher looked at this meme, because I feel that if a teacher saw this, that they would have an excuse as to why they didn’t turn in a paper in on time…but this could also be what you said about the audience getting offended.
3. The essay should discuss how the visual arguments persuades the audience through appeals to our sense of logos, pathos, or ethos.
• Does the writer show an understanding of these concepts (appeals to reason or intellect, appeals to emotion, appeals to audience's sense of the rhetor's credibility)?
-If you go back to the reading (Backpack) I think that you could expand upon the argument of your meme and include the logos, pathos, and ethos.
5. Think about the form or structure of the essay.
• Are there paragraphs, passages, or sentences that seem disjointed or unconnected? I think the first and last paragraph need a little work and be careful with sentences like this, “This meme is so popular because of how well it connects very well to the Internet population.”
• Are there sections that are separated that might work better together? The third paragraph could possibly be used for the conclusion, because in his requirements for this paper, one of the suggestions is to use how well you believe that this argument came across to the audience.