You’ve thought of a funny joke, wrapped it in precisely casual internet slang, and slapped it in block white font over a poignant image. You post it and sit back to watch the likes roll in, but they never do. At the same time, other memes are taking off. They are start careers in comedy and become it not so secret weapon of presidential campaigns. Billionaires are invest in meme farms and someone who calls herself “Roaring Kitty” has become a millionaire on the back of meme shares.

Internet memes are undeniably a cultural and political force to be reckoned with, and as their influence has grown, a burgeoning field of research has emerged to understand them. For this Giz Asks, we asked several experts: Why do certain memes go viral and is it possible to predict that virality?

Cici Ling

Indiana University professor who studies abusive online behavior and co-author of the paper “Dissecting the Meme Magic: Understanding Indicators of Virality in Image Memes.”

The short answer is: It’s complicated.

The first question we should ask is: how do you define a meme? A “cut-and-paste” slogan? A picture? Or a video clip? As a meme researcher, I take a closer look at what really goes into creating the perfect meme moment. Focusing on image memes, I examine everything from the images themselves to the emotions they evoke, giving us a road map to the mysterious art and science behind memes.

First of all, let’s talk visuals. Memes that zoom in on a subject — whether it’s a close-up of a face or an absurd object — tend to get more engagement. People scrolling through feeds are drawn in by the immediacy of a close-up. It’s like a visual shortcut to grab attention. That said, a meme that’s visually appealing and well-composed (yes, memes have aesthetics too) has the bonus of catching the eye and holding attention long enough to be shared.

Then there is the subject. Familiar faces, characters or situations attract more opinions. My study found that memes with people or characters expressing clear emotions—whether positive or negative—are much more likely to spread. The internet loves a good reaction, and memes capture those reactions in ways that are relatable, strangely intimate, and instantly shareable. It’s like the meme equivalent of a good punchline: everyone can laugh along because they get it.

Now this is where things get a little tricky. A meme’s relatability plays a big role in its viral potential. Some memes are basically internet insider jokes – if you don’t get the reference, it might just pass you by. But when a meme taps into something almost everyone can recognize, like a universal annoyance or simple truth, it’s much more likely to explode. The more relatable the meme, the wider the appeal and the greater the chance of going viral.

However, in my research on viral videos posted on TikTok, we found that in addition to the indicators above, timing also affects virality. It’s almost like memes have a “viral window,” and hitting it just right can make all the difference. Influencers also play a big role, often deciding the life or death of virality.

When it comes to predicting virality, it is possible but still challenging. I trained machine learning models to analyze meme indicators, and the model was able to predict which memes were more likely to go viral with relatively high accuracy. The models may not be perfect, but it almost feels like having a digital crystal ball to see what will trend online. These indicators can provide valuable clues for creators, marketers and even internet platforms looking to predict the next viral hit.

Ultimately, while we are far from fully dissecting the magic behind viral memes, I hope my studies provide a good starting point. The perfect meme recipe is still a mystery, but certain ingredients like composition, subject matter, and relatability are important. With short videos, however, timing and influencer presence play an even bigger role in virality. So the next time you see a meme blowing up your feed, remember that it’s more than luck—there’s some serious meme science at play.

Sulafa Zidani

Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and author of the forthcoming book All Your Memes Belong to Us: Internet Cultures in the Global South.

A successful meme has an element of surprise while being completely in line with the current moment. These may sound contradictory. But the humor of popular memes often relies on the unexpected, on combining cultural elements that feel incongruous. But somehow, a mixture of these elements communicates their comments or jokes in a very clear way. Additionally, memes tend to circulate more when they are relevant to current debates or events in the public sphere.

Research on popular memes has shown that they often contain content that is funny, simple, surprising and highly relatable. This is why content that includes ordinary people (or celebrities in ordinary situations) and/or universal situations (like “that moment when” memes) tends to circulate widely.

Meme makers I’ve interviewed for my own research have told me that when they create a meme, they’re usually trying to say something with it; to tell a joke, make a point, or express an opinion. To do this successfully, they always pay attention to current events (such as political, cultural, or other news-related events), popular cultural production (such as what music, TV shows, or movies are popular with which crowds), as well as their target audience (what they are interested in). . A key priority for meme creators is making sure their content is relevant to their target audience. With a larger audience, there is more potential for content to go viral. However, determining what is interesting and relevant to a wider audience can be more challenging. As such, meme makers must keep their finger on the pulse of their audience, meaning they must constantly be aware of the affective state of the people whose attention they are trying to attract. It helps them decide what to post and when to post it to achieve the desired level of engagement and potential viral circulation.

Can we predict memes to go viral? Yes. The meme makers I spoke to were often able to predict which pieces of their content were more likely to gain more visibility and circulation. Although, given that the element of surprise is so important in meme culture, we cannot predict their vitality perfectly. Meme creators and audiences can sometimes be unpredictable in their innovation and humor.

Above all, we must remember that going viral is not always the goal of the meme makers. I spoke to many meme makers who didn’t want their content to go viral. Their goal was to communicate with a very specific target group. Thus, their measure of a meme’s success was not dependent on the number of likes or shares. Rather, it was about who is liking and sharing their content.

Ryan Milner

Chair of the Department of Communication at the College of Charleston, whose internet culture research examines everything from funny GIFs to large-scale propaganda campaigns.

Most simply, memes go viral when they resonate with many people at once. So those many people end up sharing with lots of other people sharing with themselves until the meme crackles and crackles like a firework with sparklers. Eventually the interest fizzes; everyone has seen it, and they move on to the next thing; the viral spark fades to glow.

A few factors help a meme burn brighter faster. The first is some form of emotional valence. Humor inspires us to share because we want to give others a laugh or put something funny in our feed. Outrage works just as well, maybe better, because we want to scream at the injustice or fact-check the problem (be careful about quoting something just to scream at it—you’ll help it go viral). Emotions, sadness and even lust, depending on the platform, can all lead to clicks.

Timeliness also helps, connecting a meme to a moment people are already thinking about. Content can be timed to the calendar (hence all the pumpkin spice posts in October), a shared cultural moment (like an Olympic opening ceremony), or a current event (lots to say about the president’s cabinet appointments right now).

Finally, even in an age with a phone in every pocket, prominent figures with large audiences do a lot. Content can sit in obscurity until someone with millions of followers shares it. Highlighting something on a morning talk show can spread it to new people who are less chronically online. Thought leaders and influencers, for better or for worse, can light a fuse.

These factors may be a playbook, but they are not a blueprint. Even with all we know, we cannot easily predict what will take off. Unless I’m aware of some secret cabal seeding campaigns for sure, I see more mixed results than sure success from media professionals. I see more post hoc analysis from academics than clear foresight. Audiences are fickle, and the zeitgeist is nimble, so we can’t call a winner in advance.

Our current media environment makes predicting virality even more difficult than it was a decade ago. We are becoming increasingly distributed and our content is more dependent on algorithmic recommendations. My students might tell me that “everyone” is talking about something on TikTok. Even if that “everyone” is tens of millions of people, I’m served a completely different For You page than my students. If I ever see their video of the day, it will probably be noticeable later, on another platform like Reddit. Then I’ll watch glow instead of a viral fountain of sparks.

Nirvana Tanoukhi

Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Dartmouth University and creator of the first college course on the rise of meme culture.

If you take an unbiased look at memes as aesthetic objects, by which I mean artifacts assembled to produce a response in those who consume them and share them with other consumers, then the virality of a meme is no more predictable than the virality of a song, poem or novel. Because we are more prepared to think of the latter as “artwork” (than we think of memes), we think of their success (in the event that they succeed) in terms of popularity (as opposed to virality) and think of that success as something that cannot really be predicted with certainty but as something that is discovered after the work of art has been put to the test for consumer taste.

The question is why we *don’t* think of memes in the same way, as artifacts whose success we can speculate about, and have fun doing so, but can’t really predict. The difference has, I think, to do with a number of things, including: the fact that the response to memes is clearly affective and not just interpretive; that the consumption and transmission of memes is rapid; and that in the social media that houses memes there are taste brokers who can influence the popularity of a meme or meme format. But all this would apply to one song. In other words, the more interesting question is why the question of the predictability of a meme’s success is considered so different. I think it’s because, again because we don’t think of memes as “aesthetic objects,” we never ask: What is a good meme?