Rage comics. La viralità del fumetto nell'era del remix infinito = Rage comics. Comics virality in the era of endless remixes

Abstract

In the last twenty years, technological change has been characterized by radical processes of social transformation. In this unprecedented mediascape, digital communication generates new and specific forms of expression such as, among others, the meme. Is it possible to look at the meme as the cultural artifact that best represents, synecdochically, today's participatory culture, since it is intrinsically based on an endless cycle of appropriation and mixability? Over the years, the meme has proved to be a form of "vernacular" creativity somewhere between innovation and familiarity, individual and collective. The rage comics (very short stories that are usually characterized by a final explosion of anger on the part of their protagonists) show a simplified linguistic structure, being presented as a single image, or - in their most complex form - being arranged in a grid of a few drawings. These memes produce snapshots of everyday stressful situations in which readers can easily identify themselves, contributing to a reformulation of the processes of the social construction of reality that - following the founding vision of Berger and Luckmann, while pushing it towards the paradigmatic leap of the net - assumes more and more participatory and dynamic traits.