{"id":6575,"date":"2023-04-14T16:28:22","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T20:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/?p=6575"},"modified":"2023-04-14T16:28:22","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T20:28:22","slug":"the-facepalm-archives-april-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/?p=6575","title":{"rendered":"The Facepalm Archives (April 2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ermahgerd! Time for a memeified Facepalm to make even Grumpy Cat smile \u2013 that is, if Grumpy Cat wasn\u2019t dead for the last 4 years. (Too soon?). Let\u2019s talk about the surprising amount of litigation surrounding internet memes, litigation that almost always stems from a question hardly anyone things about \u2013 where do these things come from?<\/p>\n<p>Memes have become one of the most popular ways to communicate online. Millennials\u00a0view on average\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ypulse.com\/article\/2019\/03\/05\/3-stats-that-show-what-memes-mean-to-gen-z-millennials\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">20-30 memes per day,\u00a0<\/a>and over 1 million memes are shared daily on Instagram alone. That\u2019s a lot of tea-sipping Kermits! And more than just a cultural phenom, memes are big business. In 2020, the global meme industry was valued at roughly $2.3 billion, and is projected to grow to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amraandelma.com\/meme-statistics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$6.1 billion by 2025<\/a>. Just one example of memenomics \u2013 the classic Doge meme sold as an NFT for $4 million and is now valued at $220 million (I\u2019m feeling an NFT Facepalm is in the near future, because those numbers are just plain stupid).<\/p>\n<p>So needless to say, with that much money on the line, litigation is abundant. In 2020, the mother and copyright owner of the omnipresent<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/news\/crime-and-courts\/2022\/08\/23\/success-kid-meme-lawsuit-former-iowa-rep-steve-king-set-trial\/7843443001\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0\u201cSuccess Kid\u201d\u00a0<\/a>meme sued former-Iowa Rep. Steve King for using her son\u2019s image in a fundraising campaign. After three years of litigation, and despite a demand for $750 thousand, King was ordered to pay a measly $750 in damages. Not quite a meme-worthy success.<\/p>\n<p>But other dank meme suits have put up some dank numbers. Take\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/chinese-actor-went-viral-meme-082312640.html?guccounter=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Chinese actor Ge You<\/a>. An image of him slouching on a couch from a 1993 sitcom was memeified, and in fact came to epitomize China\u2019s growing \u201clying flat\u201d movement. Jaded youth have taken to rejecting the modern rat race in favor of doing the bare minimum to get by. Well, leave it to big business to manipulate the sincerely held social values of youth for a profit, as they appropriated Ge\u2019s image for their various marketing campaigns. Ge has used the courts to fight back, suing over 540 businesses, from banks to airlines, for using his image without consent, and racking up $1.1 million in the process. Keep on lying flat and raking in money, Ge!<\/p>\n<p>Facepalm achieved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ermahgerd! Time for a memeified Facepalm to make even Grumpy Cat smile \u2013 that is, if Grumpy Cat wasn\u2019t dead for the last 4 years. (Too soon?). Let\u2019s talk about the surprising amount of litigation surrounding internet memes, litigation that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5238,"featured_media":6576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36947,36494],"tags":[208633],"class_list":["post-6575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-and-fun","category-library-news","tag-facepalm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6577,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions\/6577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/lawlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}