Someone who is less clever and confident than you are, since last week, Tiktok users have been given the name ‘Shrekking’. The term quickly spread through the platform, where users shared their dating experiences. The concept is derived from the marsh monster Shrek, who is previously made to meme, who falls in love with a princess in the film of the same name, but is not allowed to marry her because of his appearance. SHREKKING therefore refers to dating with someone under your standard. This should ensure that your partner is more loyal and treat you better.
But the term did not just come on. Since the beginning of August, Tiktok-Dating Coach has been spreading @jaxitodwyer Almost daily videos in which he often uses the term. Already on August 8 he proclaimed ‘Shrekking’ as ‘the new trend in dating’, while the term was only picked up by the general public at the end of August, after articles of The New York Post and Cosmopolitan. Tiktok users therefore condemn the SHRAKKING trend as a ‘forced meme’. And @jaxitodwyer is not the first to try to force a meme to his followers in a very persistent and forced way.
Memes (internet jokes) are a fixed part of the timelines of social media users and can become very popular. Various memes have become commonplace on the internet. ‘Grumpy Cat’ and ‘Hide the Pain-Harold’ even received millions of followers and earned money with their fame. So it is not surprising that more and more companies and influencers are trying to use memes to advertise. But this often fails.
Take the owl of the popular language app Duolingo, a business mascot that is so familiar on the internet that he through NRC An aggressive marketing owl was already mentioned. But internet users are allergic to companies and influencers who try to use their memor culture for their own gain. If Memes do not end up in their timeline in an organic, spontaneous way, they are negotiating ‘forced memes’ by internet users.
And those forced memes can be counterproductive. Companies that use memes in their marketing are put away as ‘cringe’ (’embarrassing’). McDonalds tried to motivate users in 2012 to use the hashtag #mcdstories to share their favorite McDonalds reminders. But internet users turned the hashtag in a so -called bashtag (derived from Bashen: criticizing) and shared their bad experiences with the chain.
At the beginning of this year, Duolingo also went wrong when they tried to milk the popularity of their green owl too much. As a joke, the company put the death of the owl in scene, with which it generated a lot of attention online. The aim of the campaign was on blog platform, among other things Medium commented, especially since the re -ripening of the mascot did not entail innovations to the app.
Jet2Holiday
Nevertheless, commercial companies still seem to be part of the memor culture, especially if the company did not have this intention. For example, this summer, Jet2Holiday gained great name recognition through their commercial with the song ‘Hold My Hand’ by Jess Gynne, after Tiktokkers shared their holiday horror stories in videos in which the music from the advertising was used. As a result, more than a year after the actual launch, the commercial only went viral on social media, when the advertising promotion was no longer valid.
All in all, internet users seem to attach great importance to the spontaneity, originality and the altruistic nature of their memor culture. Whether it is a company that tries to advertise, or an influencer that craves for more fame: a forced meme will often not produce the intended result. This was also apparent with the creator of ‘Shrekking’. His latest videos are not nearly the number of views he obtained with his forced meme.