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Glite Dictionary
forced meme

forced meme

8.6
An online joke or image pushed to be popular that feels fake
  • noun
  • Slang
translation icon : meme forzado
  • People criticized the ad campaign for trying to create a forced meme instead of letting trends develop naturally.

Examples

  • That joke quickly became a forced meme when everyone started repeating it online.

  • This is just another forced meme that nobody finds funny.

  • After a week, the phrase felt like a forced meme rather than something genuinely funny.

  • I can't believe they created a forced meme about that.

  • People criticized the ad campaign for trying to create a forced meme instead of letting trends develop naturally.

  • After a week, the phrase felt like a forced meme rather than something genuinely funny.

  • This is just another forced meme that nobody finds funny.

Surface Forms

forced meme singular
forced memes plural

Morphology

forced + meme

The meaning 'an artificially promoted or contrived meme' is directly and compositionally derived from 'forced' (contrived/unnatural) + 'meme' (online content). This adjective+noun combination follows a regular, cross-linguistically common compositional pattern and would be predictable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.

Etymology

Forced meme comes from the image of someone pushing a joke everywhere online. The word forced shows it is made to happen and meme is a joke shared on the internet, so a 'forced meme' feels 'artificial' and does not become popular on its own.