Internet Meme in the System of Social Mythology of the Digital Age

The paper discusses the place of Internet memes in the structure of the social mythology of the digital world. The authors understand the Internet meme as a communication phenomenon. They characterize it as an online miniformat genre. An Internet meme integrates an image with an ironic text caption for a concise assessment of a situation, state or phenom-enon and visualization of reality. The myth is em-bedded in the semantic structure of the meme, which spreads it to large audiences. In the post-truth era, Internet memes are not only retransmitters of myths, but also actively create a new social my-thology, allowing network users to interpret reality in accordance with their worldview, laid down by mass culture. As a result, the myth becomes a fake, and the Internet meme becomes an effective way of spreading it. Analyzed memes “Karl!” and “The Wrong Guy” as examples of modifying archaic myths and constructing a new social mythology, as well as memes “Ivan the Terrible kills”, “Peter I and Shrek”, “Lenin is a mushroom” as confirmation of the thesis about the transformation of political and historical myths into a fake form.