9GAG's Meme Museum

Submission 2,291

Part of a series on 9GAG. [View Related Entries]

Overview

The 9GAG Meme Museum is a temporary exhibit at Hong Kong’s K11 Art Mall created to showcase memes and their history through a partnership with 9GAG. It provides interactive experiences with memes, allows visitors to create their own memes and has NFTs available for viewing. The exhibit was opened in July and is available until September 2021.

Background

In early July 2021, 9GAG announced the meme museum through this promoted post and competition (seen below).^[2] The exhibit first opened to the public on July 16th, 2021, with a closing date of September 5th.

The museum offers a meme-themed temporary tattoo station, a meme photo booth, a meme and scent-pairing station, a "meme-go-round" of memes from different regions and many other exhibits and interactive components (shown below).^[1]

Developments

On July 20th, 2021, 9GAG uploaded this promotional "virtual tour" (seen below) of the meme museum to their official Twitter^[3] account. The video has been viewed over 72,400 times in just over two weeks.

🙌🏻 The World’s First Meme Museum by #9GAG brings your favorite memes to the real world! Here’s a VIP virtual tour for those who can’t make it this time!📍#K11ArtMall chi K11 art space, Hong Kong🗓Jul 16 – Sep 5, 2021🎫Free entry. Register now #RSVP 👉🏻 https://t.co/x83EMEqyGM pic.twitter.com/JBgCKlyHBu

— 9GAG (@9GAG) July 20, 2021

On July 31st, 2021, Muhammed Sahrim Akhtar^[4] announced an image of his meme Disappointed Cricket Fan was displayed in the meme museum. His tweet (seen below) about the event received over 514,000 likes and 61,300 retweets.

I got featured in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 museum of memes 🎉 yohooo 🤩😍 pic.twitter.com/uQ8GL0s7l7

— Sarim Akhtar (@msarimakhtar) July 31, 2021

Online Reactions

The meme contest quickly gained hundreds of submissions on 9GAG. Many of the memes submitted to the contest began to reference the contest itself. For example, this meme (seen below) was uploaded into the contest’s thread as a submission.^[5]

The meme museum became a subject of discussion online throughout summer 2021, with many viewing it favorably and some viewing it as cringeworthy. It soon became a subject of memes outside of 9GAG, such as a July 2nd upload (seen below) to /r/memes that was posted by u/Rough_Mango_3846,^[6] receiving 817 upvotes and 14 comments in two days.