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gather around beeflings. today we're going to get into the meaty history of memes. the term "meme" itself was defined by richard dawkins in 1976 as a medium for information to spread throughout culture (whereas a “gene” is a medium for information to spread biologically)
using this framework, we can actually find “memes” all throughout history and around the world, such as with certain cross-cultural art or trends that spread over time periods and geography. we can even find ancient art that wound up eerily similar to some modern meme trends
one example (left side) is this “reckless skeleton” mosaic from 3rd century BC with the engraving “be cheerful, live your life,” or in the modern tongue, YOLO. another (right side) is this art from a 1921 Judge Magazine edition that depicts the now widespread “you vs. (x)” style
perhaps the most infamous pre-internet meme is “kilroy was here.” it began popping up all over the world during WWII. “mr. chad” was another similar version of it at the time, among many others. over the next few decades, various depictions of this character continued to spread
these trends went “viral” similarly to how internet trends go viral to become memes today. for example: a phrase begins spreading like ROFL, which becomes a ROFLcopter image macro, which is then made into a ROFLcopter GIF, which is then transformed and spread over years as a meme
by 1993 mike godwin coined the term “internet meme,” thus creating the definition we primarily use for the word today. an internet meme can be a viral trend like “planking,” a moment in the news, phrase, image, video—really anything that is mass shared and altered over time
thinking back to the early days of the internet, the word “meme” wasn’t understood the way it is today. most of what we now call memes were then mostly called image macros. there weren’t massive curators spreading everything, rather there were small communities creating content
because the barrier to entry onto the internet was much higher, there was more emphasis on creativity and quality than there is today. programmers, gamers, etc., ruled the space for years building internet culture, then suddenly billions of people swept in to join the party
the smartphone and growing access to the internet had the most to do with this. every day people were now spending mass amounts of time online, slowly joining those small online communities, which then subsequently turned many of them into massive communities
once youtube took off between 2005-2007, everything changed. people began sharing videos with each other and new waves of creators were aggregating content in a way never as seen or accessible before. that content was then spread through new curating websites like wildfire
by 2008-2010, countless videos from youtube and image macros from something awful and jokes from tumblr (etc) had reached millions of people. culture irl was beginning to be influenced in strange ways by internet culture. the world would never be the same
memes like ancient aliens, this is sparta, success kid, or it’s a trap were among the first to spread into the mainstream. since this point meme culture has exploded into every which corner of possibility. no matter the topic, there’s a meme for it, and likely an entire community
curators like elliott tebele began taking advantage of these trends by stealing content to build massive brands for themselves around this time. they’re largely to blame for the new trend of people not caring about the origins or quality of memes, but more so the accessibility
numerous large platforms took advantageous of this trend of marketing toward bare-minimum “normie” audiences and began pumping out insane amounts of content to perpetuate the endless click currency black hole that we now currently exist in
this along with general mainstream growth drove meme culture deeper online and started more “dank,” “surreal,” and “deep fried” styled content that is intentionally created to be layers beyond what the average person understands. this is when the whole system started to implode
now memes are just a part of every day life for everyone in different capacities. some for surface laughs, some for sharing, some for inside jokes, some for propaganda, some for culture, and so on. we truly live in the strangest timeline
Steak-umm bless
Steak-umm bless
