In our daily lives, we witness a deluge of Internet memes commenting on news, political events, scandals, and social issues, so much so that the so-called “meme-ification of politics” is now a commonly accepted phenomenon. In fact, over the past two decades, memes have become a prominent source of information for a growing part of the population, typically the younger generations, who use these humorous images circulating online as a shortcut to keep abreast of daily news and politics. Yet, our understanding of how political memes impact their consumers remains limited. Can memes enhance political knowledge on social media platforms? Do they stimulate curiosity and encourage further information-seeking, or are they merely consumed superficially? What role do memes play in shaping users' opinions? Do traditional media effects, such as priming and framing, apply to memes? This study seeks to empirically explore whether consuming memes can be as instructive as engaging with traditional journalistic content and its implications for shaping individuals' political knowledge and viewpoints. Specifically, this research introduces and tests a novel theoretical hypothesis – memes as "informative appetizers" – comparing it with the existing theory of memes as "fast-food media" to see which one best encapsulates the phenomenon of political Internet memes. The study will conduct an online factorial experiment involving approximately 2000 followers of a prominent Italian meme page dedicated to politics and current affairs. It will assess how exposure to memes versus traditional journalism influences participants' political knowledge extraction, short/medium-term recall, information-seeking tendencies (priming), and opinion formation (framing). This early experimental evidence into the realm of political Internet memes sheds light on emerging media habits and formats within our contemporary hybrid media system and their impact on present and future voters.