For the meme of my choice, I found one that had been stuck in the log of an old group chat. This group chat is made up of 6 girls and I, and is typically used to talk about what we’re up to, send each other funny videos, and send “relatable” content we find online. Once I saw this assignment description I immediately knew to check this chat because of some of the things that were sent. This photo stuck out to me the most. It includes a drawing of a man in the corner of a party, which is a popular meme template online, but the quote says “They don’t know I used to be skinny.” This was sent by one of my friends in a joking way, with her text under it saying “for real though.” About three of my other friends sent things such as “SAME” or “stopppp”, pretending it was non-chalant and funny. The picture flew over my radar and I didn’t think anything of it since body image shaming is so popular on the internet nowadays. This photo can be extremely detrimental to someone’s mental health by giving them another reason to think down about themselves in a social setting.
The way that I fixed this post was by going into an app on my iPad titled “Procreate”, and changed the disinterested man to a content man who was smiling. I downloaded the image and went into Procreate to erase a majority of the man’s features. I erased his wrinkles, tear, frown and more, and gave him a smile, dimples, cheeks and raised eyebrows to accentuate the happy features.
Humor online is subjective, but it has been popular now to create “hope core” images that promote a different side of memes. Making this meme so optimistic and cheery in contrast to what you would typically see online almost makes it more funny, diverting the topic from something so drastically different. I don’t think that the remake of the original post would have as much reach as the first one, since I think the internet is so attracted to depressive humor. The remake isn’t funny, but neither is the original post. People cling to “relatable” posts, and even though the remake should technically be more relatable.
I think to expand a healthier digital environment is to start interacting with more positive posts that you want to see. There are buttons and tools on social media that you can use to say “not interested” or “interested” to encourage the app to show more content like that. If more people started to consciously interact with empowering content, then more accounts and people will follow along.
Original Post: 
Remade Post: 
– Note: Another source of good news is Some Good News on Instagram. This account started from a web series created in 2020 by John Krasinski during the COVID lockdown to share positive news. The web series is over but the instagram account still posts good news to this day. https://www.instagram.com/somegoodnews/?hl=en
