Meme genres and the art of the YouTube apology parody

Abstract

YouTube apology videos have been identified by some as a genre, and as such they have unique and recognizable features available for recontextualization and parody. The three parodies analyzed are of two videos: Logan Paul’s “So Sorry,” a response to his suicide forest controversy, and Travis Scott's video response to the Astroworld Tragedy. YouTube videos, as an audio-visual medium, are extremely multimodal, with many opportunities for linguistic and visual creativity. From a multimodal discourse analytic perspective, this paper examines some of the linguistic and non-linguistic strategies used by three YouTube apology parodies to mock and criticize both the original apology and the public figure issuing the apology. It further demonstrates how the genre of the YouTube apology parody has been codified by internet users.