ABSTRACT
In 1735, French artist Joseph Ducreux was born. Known for his portraits, Ducreux was made a baron and appointed first painter to Queen Marie Antoinette. Fast forward nearly 300 years to find Ducreux’s painting on Reddit and Facebook pages as an image macro with one major alteration. The portrait included popular rap lyrics – lyrics which were altered to fit a more archaic form of speech. In what follows, a genre development of internet memes reveals a process underscored by transformation and dissemination. The chapter describes that the transformation of a singular iteration of an artifact can emerge as a full-fledged genre. Structuration theory seeks to understand interactions between individuals and the social structures in which they are active. For A. Giddens, structures are rules, resources, tasks, and norms. Rules and resources embed memory traces into systemic forms. J. G. Webster modifies the definition of structures as “macrolevel constructs such as language, routines of work and leisure, technologies, and institutions”.
