Internet meme: Conspiracy Keanu

Adam N. Walko

Rhetoric of Criticism

The meme to which I have chosen for this class is the Keanu Reeves meme where he plays as Ted in "Bill and Ted's excellent Adventure". The reason being is that it is quite ambiguous and can be recognized in this generation as a very nostalgic source considering the time frame of the social media people involved. My primary source is the meme presented here. It incorporates the "tin foil hat" aspect of the consperacy theorists but simultaneously adds humor to it.

I believe that the origin of this meme which is simply a perplexed California looking individual, lays in the fact that since the beginning of his career and until The Matrix, Keanu has been tight casted as a West Coast stoner moron with the catch phrase even included in The Matrix "Woah". Considering the fact that he is stereotyped as consistently being fact blasted and "flabbergasted", without even engaging in reading the context of any of his memes he seems to set the agenda of "What's going on?" or "That just blew my mind".

There is a constant on all of the Keanu Reeves memes that is consistent in being "mind blown" or "Woah". However, he can appeal to every genre of viewer, and no matter how stupid the context it still appeals to a general audience. For instance this meme you already associate that he is either confused or perplexed in whatever you are about to observe it is still up to the verbiage to corner in on the receiver of that message. In the first example The correlation of Walter White in breaking bad is plausible, it is clearly not intended which makes the meme funny. However if one was to really sit down and think, it would indeed be a possibility. That would be the low-brow approach to this meme being as that it would apply to people that watch too much television. But on the other side, given the second meme there is a same conspiracy theme associated with the exact same prospective "idiot" which can be stapled to string theory in which is by far more complex and beyond provable. This is what brought my intention to the meme in the first place because I enjoy playful thought and felt it appropriate to our project.

How can one simple frame in time be able to send such a diverse message? It is fascinating how someone so mundane and irrelevant to all of these messages from over a decade ago can bring forth such dialogue in 2015. Perhaps it's the Matrix, perhaps it's the goofy face that he's making, most likely it's the new generation's parents making children watch "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in order to learn at least one thing about our media history. Regardless the application is absolutely ambiguous and has been embedded as "get ready to have your mind blown". Of all of the memes I would not necessarily put this in the category of the "tin foil hat" arena but it's quite close. It's attracted people's attention on the mere fact that once you see this you know you're going to question your current knowledge and will keep you asking for more.