China News Service, Beijing, September 28 (Reporter Shangguan Yun) “Love you, old friend” and “feeling alive” are “exploding”… Nowadays, when you open social media, it is not uncommon to see the use of hot memes or hot words on the Internet. They are vivid and vivid, convey emotions concisely and concisely, and have a wide range of circulation.
The cultural phenomenon of frequent Internet memes or Internet buzzwords is not a recent phenomenon. Earlier, “Jue Jue Zi” once detonated social media. Now when many people express their helplessness, they will also say “I really have no choice.”
However, recently, “Young people become wordless after playing too many Internet memes” has become a hot search topic. Many netizens started discussions in the comment area. Some people mentioned that they indeed feel that they are becoming less and less educated. Others feel that Internet hot memes are convenient for daily chat, but over-reliance on them can easily weaken the ability to express in depth.
In this regard, some experts said in an interview with reporters that Internet hot memes have a lively side, but they also have their own limitations. You can use Internet hot memes, but you must not only use Internet hot memes. You still need to read more and master a rich language vocabulary to make your language expression skills better.
Why are these memes so popular?
When communicating with others, do you use internet memes? To this question, the answer for quite a few people may be yes.
Ms. Wang, the “post-95s generation”, is one of them. She is familiar with the popular internet memes and occasionally uses them. When teasing her friends about their courage, she would say, “You are so brave.” When encountering something surprising, you might joke, “OMG, you scared me.”
As for the occasion, she said that she usually only uses these memes online to express her emotions in a general way, and rarely uses them when communicating with people face to face. Most of the time, she finds it interesting and relieves stress when she sees others using memes online.
“Usually, I feel that young people born after 2005 or younger use Internet memes more often, and sometimes I can’t understand what they say.” Ms. Wang lamented that some widely circulated Internet memes seem to have been deeply integrated into life.
The above-mentioned views can be seen from the “Top Ten Buzzwords” released by the editorial department of “Yiwenqiaozi” in recent years. For example, in the “Top Ten Buzzwords” for 2025 released earlier, “a sense of being alive” and “×× is basic, ×× is not basic” are all on the list.
“In the ‘Top Ten Buzzwords’ we have released in recent years, Internet hot words have been selected almost every year.” Shi Junnan, editor-in-chief of “Yi Wen Che Zi” said that Internet hot memes are part of social language life. According to observations, the more popular Internet memes this year include “from tamping to pulling”, “love you old friend”, “hand rub”, etc., which are used very frequently on some social platforms.
The reason is that she feels that the popularity of many hot memes does not follow certain rules. If there is a general reason, it may be related to the fact that they cater to the psychological needs of many netizens at the moment. They are suitable for many language expression scenarios and have strong communication power.
Will high-frequency “playing jokes” lead to “poor words”?
Relaxing, relieving stress, sometimes with a bit of humor, and enlivening the atmosphere… This may be the reason why many people choose to use Internet memes. However, if hot memes or popular Internet words are used more often, problems may arise.
Earlier, according to media reports, a survey showed that 53.3% of the young people surveyed felt that their language expression skills had declined in recent years. More than half of the young people surveyed believe that low reading and reliance on Internet language and emoticons are the main reasons for “poor words”.
Ms. Wang was deeply touched by this. After frequently using hot memes on the Internet for a long time, she felt that her language expression ability seemed to have declined: she would use these words and memes to express her mood if there were hot words and memes on the Internet.
“For example, to describe myself as unhappy, I used ‘blue thin mushroom’ at first, and then ’emo’ later. The language is very empty, and there is often no way to express emotions in more precise language.” In other words, she found that language expression is not as rich as before.
Miao Huaiming, a professor at the School of Liberal Arts of Nanjing University, noticed early on that some Internet memes are used very frequently on social platforms. Generally speaking, it is a kind of “buzzword”, but it often comes and goes quickly.
“Many hot memes have a lively and vivid side.” But he also reminded that you can use Internet hot memes, but you can’t just use Internet hot memes. If you rely on these Internet hot memes for a long time in communication, it is indeed easy to suffer from “language poverty”.
In fact, whether frequent use of Internet memes leads to “text aphasia” has been frequently discussed since the emergence of a large number of homophonic memes, acronyms, and emoticons. Shi Junnan believes that it is actually inaccurate to attribute the current generation’s “poor vocabulary” phenomenon entirely to the high frequency of Internet memes.
“Internet memes are just a relatively obvious appearance.” In her opinion, “Ci Qian” is more affected by the current ways of obtaining information, such as fragmented and visual reading, information cocoons caused by algorithms, flat social methods, etc.
How to keep a good balance?
It cannot be denied that some good Internet memes are concise and concise, and it is normal for them to be popular. So the question is, how should we grasp the right balance between “playing jokes” and pursuing richness and personalization of language expression?
The solution given by Miao Huaiming is to read more, master a rich language vocabulary, expand your language knowledge base, and pay attention to social phenomena in a timely manner. “Internet hot memes have their own limitations and cannot represent our normal and rich language expressions.”
This view is generally agreed upon by Shi Junnan. She suggested that if you want to improve your language expression skills, you can do more in-depth reading, train your in-depth understanding of text, and learn to build expression logic.
“The development of network technology allows people to obtain various information more conveniently and quickly for social interaction and entertainment.” However, in Shi Junnan’s view, virtual social circles cannot replace human fireworks, and real life is the best place to practice language skills.
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