The History of Memes
A meme is a piece of media that spreads through the internet and is typically humorous and only relevant for a short time.
The term “meme” became a common phrase throughout the past decade. Over time, memes have changed a lot, but their concept remains the same. This article is everything you’ve been waiting for: a timeline of the history of memes.
In the beginning, memes were most often found on websites like iFunny and Reddit. They were mostly just random photos or videos with funny captions. Charlie Bit My Finger is one of the most memorable.
Shortly after, memes changed to be more structured. They developed formats. These types of memes are a photo with a caption and part of that caption is the same in every meme of it’s kind. This is the point in meme history where all successful memes are adopted by the internet and given a name. Bad Luck Brian, One Does Not Simply, Overly-Attached Girlfriend, and others were born in this period.
Also around this time, a structure similar to a comic strip format was created. These memes always have characters with names like You Don’t Say, Derp, and Sad Okay. These memes typically tell a short story. This was the darkest period of meme history, as it is the most cringy.
Next in meme history is the period where celebrities are widely used as a source of our entertainment (as if they didn’t already have our attention). “So You Think…? Let Me…” with Gene Wilder and the “Leonardo DiCaprio Never Winning An Oscar” (which eventually became irrelevant once he finally did win) were two of the more popular ones, but strangely the majority of these memes are of historical figures such as Adolf Hitler and Abraham Lincoln. These memes also typically compare the then-current events to history or are comedically scrutinizing what the historical figure did. By this point in time, memes have spread to more social media platforms including Facebook (mom memes).
After this stage, memes of popular TV shows, books, movies, and so on came to light. This is pretty similar to the original meme stage where it’s a popular photo with a funny caption, but they’re related to the TV show/book/movie/etcetera. They’re not the most memorable, but they still can be found. Spongebob screencap memes are among these, as well as the “I’m glad John Green didn’t write this because he’d just kill off the love interest” meme.
The memes of today cover about every topic, every type of meme, every form of media, and are found on every social media platform. This is the “melting-pot” period in meme history. They don’t even have to be comedic anymore, they just have to be interesting enough for a repost, retweet, reblog, or share. We have integrated memes into our lives so deeply that we now take them into the real world and reference them in actual conversations. Similarly to current fashion trends, memes are a mixture of everything in the past. Memes catch our attention and lose our interest so quickly. The population has never put so much emphasis on the saying “15 minutes of fame” until this period. Some of the most famous memes of the present are “The Blue and Black Dress”, “Pepe”, “Shia LaBeouf”, and the beloved “Harambe”.
Also in this period, there is a sub-section where a ton of really stupidly funny and pathetic memes exist like “Doge” and “Arthur’s Fist”. Honestly, all memes are trash, but they are entertaining so we generally accept it.
Who knows what we’ll find entertaining in the future? Knowing our generation, I rest assured that the future of memes is unyielding. That may or may not be a good thing. But we’re never gonna give memes up. We’re never gonna let memes down.
????? • Oct 3, 2016 at 11:33 am
I love memes