Online communities are creating and dropping slang faster than ever, and it's losing relevance too quickly to be marketable. With communications becoming more fractured, brands are facing a divide between playing into new phrasings and seeking language with long-term resonance.

Memes are becoming an increasingly popular form of cultural communication in China. As the country moves away from an accepting, collectivist culture and towards a more critical and individualistic one, memes are helping to disseminate new modes of thought.

Memes are part of the fabric of internet culture. But at a time when there’s such a disparity between reality and social media perfection, the subversion of the classic meme format reflects a shift in how people express themselves digitally. How do nihilist memes show the silver lining of sadness?

Internet memes were once relegated to the depths of 4chan and Reddit. As memetic content surfaces in the mainstream, brands are looking to incorporate memes into their own ads. But can the spontaneous, bottom-up spirit that makes them so potent really be bottled and sold?