The recent popularity of the Vadering and Hadouken photography memes is yet more evidence of the vibrant health of social mobile photography.
But what is the story behind these memes? And what does it tell us about the current state of mobile photography and social media?
It seems the Hadouken meme was of organic origin. Nested deep in the Japanese teenage manga culture of Dragon Ball, the meme re-creates Kamehameha style attacks. And is probably the most inventive photographic meme ever.
However, the Vadering meme has been accused of intentional viral marketing for the brand Chick-fil-A. Posted by Angry Baby on Reddit five days ago it was a ‘response’ to the Hadouken images. But it seems the Reddit community and other bloggers are suspicious and have claimed at worst it is staged and at the very least a poor attempt to ‘start a meme’.
Staged or engineered I love Vadering. Maybe its because I love Star Wars, but its genius is its simplicity and creative impact.
It uses a potent cultural signal and mixes it with some deft photography to create a fun and visually engaging idea.
For brands this again demonstrates that using photo sharing platforms and visual motifs born out of internet culture can be a powerful way to ‘visually entertain’ their followers.
This in the same week that celebrities are posting branded sponsored images of themselves on Instagram and bypassing Facebook means that ways to capture the visual social web is only going to get more interesting.
So I think there are five points we can take from these recent photography based memes:
1. Mobile photography is getting more inventive. The level of creativity and required skill of how some of these shots have been set up is impressive. It shows how the ‘average user’ is getting more skilled in techniques like composition and other techniques.
2. Ease of access means more involvement. Because of the growing ubiquity of quality smartphones and a ‘social mobile’ mindset people are into it. Getting involved in meme activation and origination is getting way more mainstream.
3. Meme police are fierce critics. It is getting harder to manufacture a meme that has agenda free authenticity. Do they even exist? Whatever the provenance of Vadering it has spun into a visually arresting cultural motif. And this makes the purist critics smoulder.
4. Increased meme competition. Vadering spilled out of Hadouken very quickly. Connecting meme waves is an orchestrated act, but also makes everything a bit more competitive and interesting.
5. A growing visual appetite. The rise of the visual social web means it needs lots of feeding. Expect way more Vadering and Hadouken to come.
Here are a few other recent photography memes:
