If you are either a middle-school-aged boy or an adult who has ever referred to themselves as 'chronically online', you've likely encountered a meme using Papyrus font in the last year or so. Whether riddling you with complicated arithmetic such as 'What is 9+10' or beckoning you to answer a call from 'Evil Spokgbob', these image macros douse 2010s pop culture references in layers of (post)irony and oversaturated filters. Analyzed in aggregate, Papyrus memes reveal a desire among overstimulated young people to return to an ostensibly simpler time before perfectly-individualized maximally-engaging algorithmic feeds. The concealed accessibility of Papyrus font within Instagram Create Mode also points to the intentions of social media firms to keep unpaid meme-makers on their platforms for as long as possible in a feeble attempt to maintain their relevance as cultural institutions. Hark - we're Papyrus-Posting.
Papyrus-Past
Two millennia ago, papyrus was the most popular writing material in the world [1]. Before paper mills and waterwheels, ancient Egyptians were meticulously rolling strips of high-grade papyrus plants together to fashion thin sheets for writing. Given its durability and efficacy, the Greeks and Romans began importing papyrus in droves. Materially, papyrus turned into parchment and, finally, sprung about our modern-day conception of paper.
In more recent history, the Papyrus font was designed in 1983 by Chris Costello, who was searching for spiritual peace when he first put calligraphy pen to parchment paper [2]. According to him, during this period in his life, he was "thinking a lot about the Middle East" and "Biblical times" [2]. These vaguely religious undertones can be seen in the visual elements of his first sketches of Papyrus, featuring ligatures, imperfect edges, spiky hairline arrangements, irregular curves, and high horizontal strokes in the capitals. The resulting typeface reflects a crude understanding of how the Bible may have looked when it was first handwritten, just as Allah intended. Being Costello's first non-commissioned font, Papyrus was rejected by every type foundry except one, who compensated the 23-year-old with 750 pounds ($2,375 adjusted for inflation), a meager wage commonplace for typeface designers to this day.
For fifteen years, Papyrus was left largely untouched by graphic designers, until its inclusion as a pre-installed font on Microsoft Office '97 [2] [5]. Due to its newfound accessibility and appeal to New Age hippie types, Papyrus began to be used in advertisements for everything under the sun: yoga studios, organic food pantries, your local church's bake sale; and, in more unbefitting contexts: logos for heavy metal bands, brie cheese, and mortgage companies. To the dismay of indie sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, the highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar, was promoted using Papyrus. Along with its younger brother Comic Sans, the inappropriate ubiquity of Papyrus has made it very easy to love to hate [5]. As of the time of writing, googling images of 'papyrus' results in an equal mix of the physical writing material as well as the infamous character from Toby Fox's indie RPG Undertale, whose speech bubbles appear in his namesake font.
After the death of Jesus, the New Testament was inscribed in papyrus scrolls. Today, some of the funniest memes I encounter on my state-mandated scrolls through Instagram.com are written in Papyrus, too.
Papyrus-Present
A short look through my Instagram archive unveils the first Papyrus meme I ever liked: a 280p photo of Rhett and Link washed out by Rio de Janeiro filter, with a text overlay classifying them as 'The hood elders' and a location tag placing them in 'Yodieland'. Upon seeing this relic for the first time in January of 2024, my mind was in a haze: what are these two handsome men doing in Yodieland? Are they trapped? Can we get them out of there? More importantly, why is the old Edible Arrangements font shining so bright on my 128GB lilac purple iPhone 14?
In 2021, an Instagram user discovered an easter egg allowing users to 'unlock' Papyrus in Create Mode [3]. If one types the word 'Papyrus' using Comic Sans (dubbed the 'meme' font by Instagram), their text transforms into Papyrus right before their eyes, as though a necromantic spell had summoned it. Given the otherwise lack of customizability given to its users, Instagram's decision to code something as silly as a hidden font in Create Mode may seem nonsensical at first. However, upon considering the memetic spread and cult success of easter eggs in video games and computing software, it's clear why the world's most downloaded app would want to lure users into thinking they discovered a secret visual language, only understood by those with the same set of clandestine knowledge as themselves.
Unlocking a hidden font is a fun break from the frictionless social media environments we've grown accustomed to. Building off research from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, meme scholar Limor Shifman identifies fecundity-the ability to reproduce and propagate-as a primary quality of memetic objects [6]. The ability of visual characteristics (ie. fonts, colours, filters) to take off in internet communities thus depends on their ability to spread from mouth-to-mouth and screen-to-screen. By taking the time to tap seven extra buttons and reveal Papyrus, one signals solidarity with the phenomenon: "I understand this", "I like what you like", "I am like you". But also (perhaps unintentionally): "I am rejecting the forced frictionlessness of social media platforms and spreading the word to everyone who views my Instagram story."
Unsurprisingly, the esoteric intrigue of Papyrus was quickly embraced by the lore-building world of underground rap. In an article for NoBells, Owen Carry writes that underground rappers Tek lintowe and Joeyy were pioneers in using Papyrus to amplify their aura by creating memes straight from the "jailbroken phone of a dark entity" [4]. Carry chronicles how a small group of Instagram and TikTok pages created a visual language (id. est. unlocked Papyrus, choppy cropping, distorted display resolution, ironic filters) meant to be understood by a small group of people. Following in the footsteps of mythical figures like Lil B, these artists recognized the power of oral tradition passed down by those in-the-know. Ultimately, we need people to explain why xaviersobased has an affinity towards Dan and Phil. Thus, lore-building becomes an activity carried out by video game developers and underground rappers alike. Thank You Based God, indeed.
The prevalent use of Papyrus in memes comes at a time when vaguely medieval aesthetics are all-the-rage in broader online circles. Take the EP-1320 medieval synthesizer from audio firm Teenage Engineering, pre-installed with 96MB of hurdy gurdys, lutes, and farm animal foley. Take the rollout for A.G. Cook's 2024 record Britpop, complemented by a series of parody websites-Wheatport, Witchfork, and Wandcamp-all of which have since been "acquired by an Undisclosed Multi-dimensional Conglomerate Company", perhaps foreshadowing the fate of their adsense-dependent contemporaries. Take Elizabeth Goodspeed's proclamation on the rise of 'future medieval' aesthetics in typography and graphic design. Take the meticulously-crafted rave posters of Estonian superstar umru and his premodern take on the DJ remix, a 'liturgy' featured on Empress Of's deluxe album. Take the posters announcing vaporwave legend George Clanton's upcoming tour, fully written in Papyrus. Take the onslaught of academic conferences on digital folklore, books on neo-Luddism, and public interest in economic degrowth.
For a generation that spends more time online than IRL, there is no-doubt something resonant in the pseudo-material nature of Papyrus. Zooming in, its imperfections bear resemblance to handwritten calligraphy, a craft we practice less and less given the efficiency of the keyboard. Its rough edges rebel against the clean-cut sans-serifs we have grown so used to over the last several decades of corporate rebrands. We are drawn to Papyrus's perceived physicality.
Beyond this, Papyrus may resonate with those nostalgic for a time - any time - before the ills of secular post-Industrial society and late capitalism were felt so deeply. Every day, we are bombarded with news of the global polycrisis: a loneliness epidemic, impending climate doom, soaring debts, wealth inequality, greedflation, global warfare, an economy that is seemingly constantly on the brink of recession. In the absence of organized religion passed down through generations of ancestors, young people are seeking alternative sources of community to deal with their feelings of atomization and the loss of fulfilling social bonds (or, thanks to TikTok missionaries, turning back to structured religious practices). Without a broad metanarrative to structure one's beliefs and give meaning to one's experiences; philosopher Dylan Trigg argues that feelings of nostalgia grow [7]. The declaration that "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" (somehow attributed to each of Fisher, Zizek, and Jameson depending on what you read) remains more relevant than ever as we attempt to mix-and-match our personal mini metanarratives together, which involves looking to the past for influence. There is an acute sense that reverting to any time before the iPhone would do just fine. But, given pesky technological constraints, this is unfortunately impossible (although I hear Elon is working on it). Today, we have iPhone. We might as well put it to good use, right?
Post-Papyrus
Memes constitue one of the most important forms of content shared on Instagram. According to an in-house article titled "How Memes Were the Mood of 2020", over 1 million posts mentioning 'meme' were shared to the platform each day [8]. Given the increase in Instagram's user base since 2020, this number has likely doubled since.
Free work (ie. unwaged and voluntary labour such as meme-making) contributes to the creation of business value for platform economies, but is complicated to critically analyze since the work can be characterized as a labour of love [10]. It is true that, since the 'product' of social media is free, we are the product; our data has been mined to bits and our personal information has been extracted as behavioral insights for sales firms [9]. However, not only are we the products of social media - we are also the producers. Memes are a kind of intangible image commodity reliant on social labour rather than any material or capital investment on the platform's side. Borrowing from Lewis's analysis of women's flexible labour in postwar Japanese animation, the value of meme-making "emerges through the circulation of the commodity and its reception, rather than as part of the production process." [12] Many meme page admins may not even consider their work to be work [10]. This type of activity involves what Maurizio Lazzarato calls 'immaterial labor', or "activities that are not normally recognized as work - in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion." [11] The free labour of meme-makers is increasingly valuable for the social media firms reliant on meme-consumers.
Each meme posted on their prodigious platform indirectly translates to profit for Meta, who benefits from the affective labour of meme-makers. Outside of the occasional brand deal or merch drop, the meme page admin goes largely unpaid [4] [10]. As a fabled figure, the meme page admin often doubles as a community manager through performing the emotionally draining labour of moderating comments and deleting hate-speech left uncaught by the platform [10]. The platform rewards frequent posting, so the meme page admin must also wear the hat of content manager, constantly staying up-to-date on meme trends, creating original content (OC), and/or sourcing content from their followers to post daily like clockwork if they wish to continue seeing sustained levels of audience engagement.
To retain as many meme-makers on their platform as possible, Instagram is incentivized to make it as easy and alluring as possible to create, distribute, and share memes on their app. Executives likely understand that a significant portion of their audience primarily uses Instagram to share memes, so the inclusion of something as innocuous as a hidden font likely has hidden intentions. As a publicly-owned corporation with a fiduciary duty to maximize profit for its hoard of shareholders, Meta must make myopically profit-oriented decisions [9]. With a legal obligation to maximize ad revenue by keeping users engaged, this means maximizing the memetic logic behind Create Mode, which includes, among other activities, promoting Papyrus-Posting.
When the lines between media production and consumption are blurred, the value-producing capacity of intangible commodities such as memes is made invisible. It is fun to make memes. In the process of making them, we uncover parts of ourselves and share them with the world as a form of self-expression. At the same time, it is fun to consume memes. Sharing memes strengthens relational bonds and leads to greater social cohesion. Duh. As social platforms benefit from network effects (the idea that the value of a product increases as more people use it), being the primary platform where meme-sharing occurs is no small feat. FOMO is embedded in the digital fabric of Instagram's design. Don't log off - all your friends are laughing without you.
Consistent with Marshall McLuhan's analysis that the age of anxiety and electric media is also the age of the unconscious, Mark Fisher identifies capitalist cyberspace as an environment where the brain is constantly inundated with stimuli, left with little time to idle [13] [14]. If infinite doomscrolling is the defining action of capital cyberspace, then meme pages offer both intensification and relief for the never-ending oscillation between boredom and anxiety [14]. Anyone can create content, so everyone must be a content-creator and content-consumer. While there may be liberatory potential in using social media to fight Big Tech, the damages are, nonetheless, felt in doomscrolling [10] [15]. As McLuhan writes back in 1964, "we have leased our central nervous systems to various corporations." [13]
Initially, we're drawn to the anachrony of Papyrus memes - seeing an overused old-timey font next to slightly out-of-date pop culture phenomena is funny just for the sake of it. Digging deeper, we uncover a desire for the stability of a previous age, however imperfect it may have been; for omniscient oracles and wise elders to guide us through harsh times; for a consistent beliefs system we feel ethical adhering to; for some semblance of steadiness. Young people are yearning for the past, or at least some version of the past, even if it is a grotesque pastiche of ancient Egyptian, 15th century feudalist, and pre-Industrial Revolution values and aesthetics. Instagram's answer to this pining is Papyrus: a typographic simulacra representing the nostalgic desire to turn back, no matter how far. The only trouble is, upon realizing that this font, this meme, this platform, cannot bring us the stability we so desperately seek, we become frustrated. When the frustration becomes too overwhelming and all-engrossing, we turn to our feed to treat the pain, and the cycle continues ad infinitum.
Ultimately, we are jesters, working to entertain our technofeudal overlords and numb the pains felt by our fellow peasants. The only difference is, unlike the jesters of the past, we aren't getting paid.
Bibliographia
[1] Szymanski, Terrence. Papyrus Making 101. The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection,
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