miiim –the meme lexicon

Did you know that the first expectation-vs-reality meme dates back to 1920? That the first viral GIF from 1996 features a creepy dancing baby? Or that Pepe the green meme frog was misused as a hate symbol by conservative right-wing groups in the USA? We certainly didn’t. That’s why we created “miiim – the meme lexicon.” Our platform offers users of all ages added value, whether for information, browsing, or simply having fun.

Thinking

"Respect the memes" – initially meant rather jokingly, this claim nevertheless developed into our guiding principle during the design process. Memes are hardly taken seriously by a large part of the population and are stored as trash. We believe this should change. Because although memes are the opposite of serious, they have gained weight in the everyday lives of many people. Memes highlight where the problems of society lie, memes are a channel for processing anger, memes go viral, influence, and have power. That is why we pay attention to this topic in our design project. The overarching theme of the web design course was "Joy and Pleasure".

Home

Users are greeted on the homepage with a selection of well-known memes. Clicking on an image takes you to the corresponding lexicon entry. The presentation of the memes deliberately resembles an art exhibition without appearing too trashy. Although the topic is not necessarily associated with seriousness, internet phenomena have become one of the most significant phenomena of our time. Especially young internet users love and use them, so they are likely to continue gaining popularity.

Knowledge Page

On the knowledge page, users are presented with general information about the history of memes and other interesting articles. For example, users can learn more about the first known memes, such as the viral Dancing Baby GIF.

Feed

In the feed, users can scroll through dozens of memes and search for them. The filter functions allow the memes to be sorted. A toggle switch enables the display of the meme titles. However, this function is initially disabled, as many users recognize memes more by the image than by the title. When a meme is clicked, users are taken to an article that discusses the history of the meme, well-known variants, and controversies.

Glossary

In the glossary, you can find terms that are often used in memes. You can either search by letter or enter the entire word in the search bar. If the word is found, it will be highlighted in yellow and clicking on the word will open a pop-up window that provides users with more information and examples of how to use the term.

About miiim

About miiim explains why we decided to create a meme site and how our brand name "miiim" came about.

Outlook

In the glossary, we defined about 50 terms as examples, just as we implemented four articles as examples. These include the Blinking White Guy, Pepe the Frog, the Lip Bite Meme, and My Brain Is Full Of Fuck – so there is still plenty of room for more. We hope to gradually fill our lexicon with more and more informative articles, reduce bugs, and improve the scripts. The website prototype can be visited → here. A small disclaimer upfront: It is a prototype, which is why it is not fully responsive and still contains some bugs. Nevertheless ... have fun!