Whether or not you consider yourself to be an Extremely Online Person™, the chances are that there are memes and internet jokes that you enjoy that would be almost impossible for you to articulate to someone who doesn’t immediately get them. Meme literacy is complex. It’s self-referential, it’s built on layers. You need to understand the prior memes that lead to a new meme to grasp its — to use a word I don’t fully understand — semiotics.
[jwplayer gvkTjsCy]
This specific quality of memes (that wasn’t any more fun to type than it was for you to read) might be why Sweden‘s Advertising Ombudsman (Reklamombudsmannen, as the locals say) made a judgment that internet service provider Bahnhof‘s use of the distracted boyfriend meme in a recruitment ad was sexist, in that it objectified women.
The ad takes the standard form of the meme, as you can see below:
On the left, we have Bahnhof. On the right, we have your current job. In the middle, as you probably already ascertained is you. You, as an internet literate person, immediately understand this to mean that a job at Bahnhof is a more tempting option. The ombudsman did not interpret it this way.
According to the Swedish edition of The Local, the ombudsman unanimously ruled that there was no connection between the image and the service that Bahnhof was offering:
It portrays women as interchangeable objects, and that only their appearance is interesting. According to the committee, the objectification is reinforced by the fact that women are designated as workplace representatives while the man, as the recipient of the advertisement, is being produced as an individual.
Bahnhof challenged the ruling in a statement, saying that gender was irrelevant in the image:
Everyone who follows the internet and meme culture knows how the meme is used and interpreted. [Whether someone is a] man, woman or neutral gender is often irrelevant in this context. We are an internet company and are conversant in this, as are those who would look for a job with us, so we turned to that target group. If we should be punished for anything, it’s for using an old and tired meme.
According to The Local, the ombudsman “acknowledged the humorous intent of the picture and the fact it had been widely shared by other individuals and companies, but added that even well-known memes may not be mainstream“.
Despite the ruling, the ombudsman doesn’t actually have power to impose sanctions or penalties, simply make judgments.
