Meme Analysis

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The meme I made for class was an expanding brain meme that focuses on how the government is choosing to handle and identify the mass shooting problems the United States has been having. It goes from the smallest brain stating “Blame America’s mass shooting problem on the actual problem” to the second smallest brain stating “ Blame America’s mass shooting problem on something not related to the problem” to “Blame America’s mass shooting problem on something most of the older generation doesn’t like” to the biggest brain stating “Blame America’s mass shooting problem on video games”. This meme clearly targets both a younger audience, sixteen to mid twenties, and an older audience. This meme mainly uses pathos as its rhetorical appeal. It appeals to a younger audience by immediately addressing the fact that their precious video games are being targeted for being one of the prime problems of mass shootings in the United States. The meme uses pathos towards an older audience by stating that they are blaming video games for mass shootings due to the fact most of the older generations don’t like video games for their own reasons. Another way the meme is targeting a younger audience is the mere fact that it is a meme, the younger generation look for memes like how a fly looks for literally anything in the world as that it can eat. A meme is a rhetorical appeal for pathos in itself, it is a humorous, or a too real, escape from the dreary dregs of life that each member of the younger generation seems to think they are trapped in.