Parker Thelander

Professor Ristow
Digital Rhetoric
4/19/15
Kermit The Frog: But Thats None of My Business
The meme is a generally new concept to me. I personally have not had
much exposure to the meme culture. However, through exploring memes in
this class I now understand the significance of this new social media trend.
My previous understanding of what a meme is was limited to a funny picture
with a variety of sarcastic, funny jokes written on the image. I have found
that memes are much more than just a picture with words. Memes are ideas
and behaviors that vary from person to person in a culture and spread over
social media. Wikipedia explains that a meme acts as a unit for carrying
cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind
to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable
phenomena with a mimicked theme. The more we discussed and explored
memes in class the more fascinated I became with the concept. I discovered
that memes represent cultural trends, and have direct parallels to the
biological evolution of natural selection. What I mean is that memes go
through processes of mutation, variation, and competition. Much like the
Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest, only the funniest and most
creative memes survive, thrive, and spread across cyberspace. After some
thorough meme research, I have noticed some of my favorite characters,

actors, and images such as Keeanu Reeves, Tom from Myspace, and the most
interesting man in the world become widespread memes. One of my
personal favorites is Muppets legend Kermit the Frog.
Since being introduced, Kermit the Frog has become one of the most
recognizable characters in the world. Kermit the Frog was created by master
puppeteer Jim Henson in 1955 as part of the Muppets family. He is most
notable for his appearances on Sesame Street, and The Muppet Show, as
well as in various movies and advertisements through out the years. Being
one of the most iconic figures of popular culture, it is no surprise that Kermit
the Frog has transpired into digital culture. What started Kermit the Frogs
assimilation to being one of the most popular memes on the internet was a
Lipton Tea commercial which featured notorious Muppet characters Kermit
the Frog and Little Miss Piggy. Lipton tea had just teamed up with The
Muppets as part of a huge marketing campaign leading up to The Muppets
Most Wanted movie that was released in 2014. The commercial features
Kermit the Frog walking through New York City to meet Little Miss Piggy at a
caf. At the end of the commercial, Kermit is seen taking a refreshing sip of
Lipton tea. Being a puppet, the elongated motion of Kermit taking a sip of tea
made for a very arrogant looking gesture. Soon after, in January 2014
Instagram users began using images of Kermit the Frog drinking tea from the
Lipton commercial with sarcastic cheeky captions with the tag
#kermitmemes.

These images began to spread like wildfire and in response, a Kermit

the Frog @thatsnoneofmybusiness Instagram account was created. The
account highlights pictures of Kermit with mostly thats none of my
business captions and phrases. Just as only the fittest species survive, only
the funniest, wittiest Kermit the Frog memes make it to the official
Instragram account. Memes encapsulate some of the most fundamental
aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in
particular. Audience is the most crucial aspect to the circulation of memes. A
memes success, or of lack there of, is determined by the culture which
adopts and assumes the trajectory of the meme itself. A successful meme
requires a target audience that is willing to participate in the evolution of the
meme. It is clear after analyzing the language associated with a few of the
most popular Kermit memes that African Americans are the target audience.
Most of the phrases are derived from African American vernacular. It is also
evident that both males and females with in African American culture have
utilized the arrogant looking gesture of Kermit to taunt the opposite sex.
Some of the most popular Kermit memes feature playful mocking language
trolling fake niggas and delusional women referred to as ratchets, some
examples shown below.

Within African American culture, gender and class are often the focus
of cultural dialogue. The Kermit meme functions as a platform to satirize
common elements of African American culture. As you can see, along with
gender trolls, managing borderline poverty is also a social theme that is
commonly referred to in some Kermit memes. Overall, the Kermit memes
operate as a medium to mock cultural aspects with in African American
culture. The characteristics of vernacular most commonly distributed in
Kermit memes illustrate a strong influence from African American hip-hop
culture. Through this analysis, it is clear that African American hip-hop
culture has had the most success in creating and distributing the Kermit
meme.
It was popular memes such as these that catapulted Kermit the Frog to
being one of the most searched Internet memes on the website Know Your
Meme. These images are also the reason that the Kermit the Frog Instagram
account has acquired more than 100,00 followers. As the Kermit the Frog
meme was dominating Instagram, Twitter users began catching on tweeting

jokes and images alike with the tag #NoneOfMyBusiness and #Kermit, which
reached over 19,000 and 11,000 mentions respectively over the first four
days (knowyourmeme.com). Kermits digital takeover did not stop there. On
June 23, 2014 famed comical Youtuber Bugatti Beez posted of a Kermit the
Frog puppet reading some of the more popular But Thats None Of My
Business examples from digital space. The video features a most likely
homemade Kermit puppet bouncing around the frame of the video comically
bringing to life each meme. A hip-hop instrumental is played softly in the
background of the music which also represents the primary audience of the
video being mostly African Americans involved in hip-hop culture. The video
is the most popular video on the Bugatti Beez Youtube page with well over
two million hits worldwide.
Having a strong foothold on digital culture, the Kermit the Frog meme
is perhaps one of the most important Internet memes to date. Especially
since it has transcended beyond the stationary platforms such as Instagram
and Twitter, to evolve into a performance on Youtube. The Kermit memes
also matter because of its significance with in hip-hop culture. A wide variety
of Kermit memes represent cultural trends with in hip-hop culture. While
memes are a great medium to express comical cultural ideas, they also
serve the purpose of remediating ideas and trends, in hip-hops case, from
music to digital space. Kermit the Frog has offered hip-hop a vehicle to
spread cultural ideas and trends. There is no other meme that has had such
an evolutionary tract that the But Thats None Of My Business memes have

had. While the search interest on the website know your meme for Kermit
the Frog has dipped recently, there is no other meme on the internet that has
generated so much buzz, so quickly, and evolved into a performance on
Youtube.