IDENTIFYING MEME PATTERN BETWEEN PARENTS (BABY BOOMER) AND CHILDREN (GEN Z) IN COMMUNICATION

Abstract

One of the communication modes that has been used in society is humor or joke or what people say nowadays as memes. Just like language, which is evolving over time, humor such as memes is also evolving and creating a generational gap between the decades of 2000 and 2020. By using qualitative methods, drawing from subjective experiences by perceiving memes for years before using it on collecting data, considering context, meaning, and interpretation objectively to understand the phenomenon in detail. As well as reviewing, through the social media platforms commonly used by each generation, to understand the pattern and study the transition and evolution in humor that often causes audiences from other generations to lose track of the humor style. The phenomena that brought here is that Gen Z could understand earlier humor styles or memes from the earlier generation, but not the other way around. The children are expected to interpret the parents’ (Baby Boomer) style of humor due to their time spent surfing on the internet and social media, adding their knowledge to understand it, makes them easier to understand many internet cultures, while parents are otherwise. This article also studies the context of some of the main patterns, symbolism, and culture in memes that are usually shared from children to parents. Analyzing and elaborating on meaning, interpretation, and context to be more easily understood and to prevent further misunderstanding that can cause miscommunication between children (Gen Z) and the parents (Baby Boomer).