A Practical Guide to Making a Meme That Will Break The Internet

I remember the first time I unwittingly created a meme—that bizarre and beloved spawn of the free world. I was cleaning out my room, rummaging through drawers overflowing with junk accumulated over the years, when I chanced upon a random innovative visiting card, which I put up on my Insta stories.

A few days later, a friend send me an Instagram post uploaded by @bollywoodgandu aka Karan Talwar, a comedian and actor. It really pissed me off because it looked like this.

It felt a bit violating that not only had someone from my measly following taken a screenshot of my story but had also cropped it and in this case, stamped out the name on the top-right corner and slapped on his handle on the image. I sent a DM to @bollywoodgandu but in the meanwhile, my friends started forwarding me other meme accounts that had liberally used my image to create memes. My nail had gone viral.

And while I was awaiting a message from @bollywoodgandu (which never came), I realised that the shitload of memes that come our way probably had their origin in a similar manner. So, what’s the right way of doing this? Is this random sourcing of images out there and mutating them part of the formula that makes you a ‘meme lord’? Is there even a formula?

We asked the folks who had made it happen IRL (actually, on the internet, but it’s kinda the same thing): Shivansh Sharma, 22, who lives in Delhi and runs three meme accounts on Instagram — @imhigh.dude (2m followers), @bcbilliofficial (1.3m), @stonedclips (1.1m)—and Lola Tash and Nicole Argiris who run the hugely popular @mytherapistsays (3m followers) . Allow them to create a roadmap for you. There’s a fuckton of money to be made in this so take notes.

Step 1: Have a big idea
Yes, cats count as a big idea if they serve as your mouthpiece for the kind of stuff you want to put out there. So do emotions, Meryl Streep and a bunch of food, and Prince George as a sassy little snob with a resting bitch face. Content that is humorous and subversive works best but it should come with a fresh take on an old message. “For a meme page to be successful, it has to stay true to its own unique voice because there are so many pages out there now just recycling without any clear path or goal,” say the women behind @mytherapistsays, an account that features anxiety and fears that a 20-something deals with, told in a way that you will find yourself laughing, nodding and hashtagging #ItMe. “In terms of a successful meme or meme page, it really depends what audience you cater to. Animal memes almost universally do well because everyone loves to look at cute dogs and cats doing silly things. Our goal has always been to be a friend to our followers, and oftentimes, a person to be there when they feel most alone. Even virtually.”

All three of Sharma’s accounts lean on comedy too, with a lot of content that Indians would associate to. “I prefer and suggest creating a comedy niche account as they are usually easier to grow,” he says. “Something unique based on a character does well too (like a stick figure on my account @imhigh.dude and the grumpy cat on @bcbilliofficial)."

Step 2: Make it relatable
That’s really the cornerstone of this exercise. A meme is a cultural reference that takes hold of the collective Internet conscious and can spread like wildfire. The idea is to make it like a shared joke which million of people are in on. Ironic? Ya, that’s memeing for you.

One way to make it relatable would be to look at your own life and situations you find yourself in for inspiration. “A lot of our ideas come from our everyday experiences, particularly for the captions,” says @mytherapistsays. “Especially if we’ve had some tumultuous event, or problematic work situation, or a bad date… all those moments play prominently throughout our memes and our voice.”

There are two other ways to make it relatable—either dig into nostalgia and something that a generation might’ve grown up with (like Alok Nath for the ’90s kids, and hence the sanskari memes) or look at the current trends and jump onto the bandwagon (like the Johny Johny Yes Papa revival that happened recently). But people move very fast and staying on top of things can be manic although indispensable on your journey to the top.

Step 3: Become a dank meme sorcerer
What came first—the text or the image? It varies, really, depending on what smartass thing you can come up with when you have one at hand.
The text: Keep the language simple and unfussy, with as little processing power required for the reader. Technical language and jargon are a bad idea.
The images: This one’s quite a bone of contention. While @mytherapistsays sources images from all over, be it an awards show screen grab or something they saw on Twitter, Tumblr or Pinterest, they make sure that they tag and source the original creator as much as possible. But in Sharma’s vast experience, copyrights do not quite apply to memes. “You're free to use any image from the Internet for a meme,” he says. “Using an image for a meme doesn't really count as copyright infringement.” And yet, because this is a grey area, his accounts make it clear in their profiles itself that you can DM them for credits or post removal. Better to be safe than slapped with a lawsuit.

You can then use common apps like Meme Generator to put together the image and text. Some meme makers watermark their memes too, looking at them as their intellectual property, but you should know that the meme culture prides itself on anonymity—like I learned with my subconscious addition to meme making. While images are the most common and easiest way to start, you can try the same with videos or GIFs too.

Step 4: Get an audience to fall in love with you
You can’t just make a meme that you think is fabulous and wait for it to go viral, unless you are Tiger Shroff making a meme of yourself. Just go a bit crazy hashtagging, liking other people’s posts, liking other posts on meme accounts… basically, just put it out there. Use analytics to know what worked, and dig deeper to understand why something did better than the others.

“Start by sharing it on your social media profiles amongst your friends and try direct messaging your meme to the bigger meme pages hoping for them to post it,” suggests Sharma. “For audience development, you just need to spread the work about your meme page while posting unique/relatable memes. Once you have a few hundreds of followers on your account, figures slowly increase from hundreds to thousands to lakhs. It just needs a lot of patience.” Shitposting might be a way to go too, but tread carefully.

You might have noticed that many major meme accounts are closed ones. Weird for something that should spread quickly, right? “But this way, we usually gain more followers,” says Sharma. “If an account is public, people usually just scroll through the memes and close the account without following them but once you're private, people gotta follow you first to see your content, hence more followers.”

Step 5: Quit your job and make shitloads of money
Okay, just don’t do it yet. First, let your account cross 10k followers, suggests Sharma. “The bigger your account, the more the money you charge for an ad. You can start approaching brands for paid promotions once you’ve crossed the 10k threshold.”

But be careful. “Monetising your account is really circumstantial as it can hinder your audience engagement if not approached carefully,” says @mytherapistsays. “You have to make sure that everything you promote, you stand behind.” Many brands are using memes in their communication as well, working with credible meme makers to insert themselves in popular culture.

@youvegotnomale, who's also created the Gucci meme here, told VICE how his memes are more than covering his NYC rent, and how they once got him dinner reservations at a restaurant that was pre-booked for three months. Sharma, too, believes that a great meme page can ensure you earn “way more than a normal-paying job and enough to sustain a good lifestyle”. Meme Lord on the visiting card doesn't look shabby from where we stand.