Within only 2 years of being on Reddit, meme creator Elch3w has accomplished more than he could've ever imagined. With upwards of 3.1 million karma, Elch3w has become the 4th top contributor on the subreddits r/memes as well as the 2nd top contributor on r/BikiniBottomTwitter.

We recently spoke with Elch3w on the start of his career and his perspective on the power of memes. Read on to explore his journey to becoming a successful meme creator on Reddit and the impact that memes have on the world in the future:

How did you get started as a meme creator on Reddit?

I made my Reddit account nearly 2 years ago after a long period of lurking. I always liked making memes and thought that it was time to share my humour with the internet - with Reddit being my chosen platform. My first meme that reached a small level of success (around 300 upvotes which I thought was amazing at that time!) was a Pokemon Go related meme - and from there I started having the motivation to try to post more memes to different meme subreddits!

What was the community and industry like when you first started?

I didn’t really know the meme community when I started. However, I was soon invited to a discord server called MayMay Aid - which consisted of most of the top meme makers on Reddit and a good proportion of Reddit’s active memers, who would provide meme advice and share popular meme templates on the server. It was from their support and comradery that I was able to learn about the meme industry and have the knowledge about meme creation that I have today! I have since got to know other great meme communities through various discord servers - and overall I’ve found the meme community to be full of friendly, supportive and humorous people.

How do you see meme creation as an aspect of marketing and branding? Should companies take meme creation more seriously?

Memes definitely have great potential in the marketing and branding world. The beauty of memes is that they appeal to people of different generations, to people with different interests, and can be used in almost any context. And memes can start trends and have the potential to “go viral” which can result in massive popularity for the said meme - take Dogecoin for example. Hence, with the wide reach that memes have with the ever advancing world of technology and their ability to make things go viral, means that memes can play a huge role in marketing.

Companies should certainly take meme creation seriously as memes about a product on the internet can be more effective than an ad on a billboard due to the reasons I’ve just outlined. And I’ve worked with numerous companies where myself and others have made memes for marketing, and I have seen how successful this is!

How did you build your personal brand with memes?

My personal brand with memes generally follows the trend of creating something relatable with a creative and funny joke, paired with a funny gif or image. I’ve found that basing memes off my real life experiences is a good way to express my comedic voice.

How does being an anonymous Reddit meme creator allow you the flexibility to be creative?

The anonymity of Reddit is something I have always enjoyed because it allows me to have my own persona in the online world where I can freely express my creativity and humour. Reddit is the perfect platform for this - because unlike other social media sites, you don’t need to have a big following or be a well known identity - as anyone can post to any sub and have success if others enjoy your content!

What do you think meme creation and the community will be like five years from now?

I would like to think that the meme community will be thriving 5 years from now! I can’t see memes disappearing, in fact I can only imagine that memes will keep evolving, and will continue to spread and have a large influence on the world.

In terms of creation - people will only become more creative with jokes and more advanced with editing. For example, if you compare the memes from a decade ago, where the trends were simple images with bottom text + top text and rage comics, to now where memes are widespread on every type of social media from Facebook to TikTok to Twitter to Reddit, ranging from pictures to videos to high quality edits - it would be fair to say that memes have evolved and now have a bigger reach.

Hence, I expect the popularity of memes to keep increasing as people will no doubt continue to use memes as a way of sharing and expressing humour - thus, its exciting to think what the meme community will be like 5 years from now!

Learn more about Elch3w and check out his content by finding him on Reddit here.