What is the History of Memes?

look at this baby dance why is this flying cat pooping rainbow if you are afraid of this bear? these are all questions we are going to ask as we take a journey through bad

history

looking at early

memes

travel through different eras other than silly meme and find our way back to modern meme times before we begin, write a comment below

what

is your favorite meme in all of

history

, the comment with the most likes wins this cookie, but

what

is a meme? Well, the first use of the word meme dates back to 1976, when Richard Dawkins referred to

memes

in his book The Selfish Gene while trying to conceptualize ideas that spread from generation to generation with central boundaries.

It is from this first concept that he brought us memes or at least helps us define what a meme consists of. modern history we start seeing meme-like concepts in print media in the 1920s like this or this begins a period i like to think of as the beginning spanning from 1921 to 1999. in this period one of the first memes to transcend the age the location and culture was that of kilroy kilroy was here was a meme that became popular during ww2 in graffiti forms or american service members around the world it was so common that hitler even theorized it was a code name for a high ranking allied spy but while this might be one of the first memes it wasn't really a meme as we know them today the digital age brought the baby cha-cha a dancing baby animation that swept across The Internet like wildfire in 1996.

This is widely considered the first digital meme, but what exactly was a meme? The concept was still escaping the internet at this time, near the end of the early period the culture was getting connected enough and digital media was becoming something that people realized they could share concepts and ideas that would be universally recognizable. online in the late 90s and the year 2000 brought the beginning of a brief flicker in memedom but the beginning of its modern founding now began the experimental period from 2000 to 2004. this is a period where memes as a concept had been materialized enough that they were part of the culture but the exact definition of what a meme was was still pretty vague, it could be anything from a funny video to a weird gif or a don't hate me gif or even a meme still image the culture was finding its way this period brought us peanut butter jelly time a dancing banana gif first published off topic in 2002 in 2003 we saw the flash animation badger badger badger and the growth of 4chan the subculture hub of Internet that would spawn many memes over the years this experimental period was supported by internet classics like the numa numa dance in 2004 in the first episode of harry potter puppet pals released in 2003 it was this period that the internet began to take notice of how the wide range of memes that could be the media of memes was explored, but 2005 2005 began the evolution period a period of six years that runs until 2011, where it was completely consolidated what was a modern meme, at least as we know them today, was the birth of many meme concepts that we still have today.

Memes found a broad cultural base in this. period was the birth of rage comics, the classic internet memes that still exist and the definition of traditional meme formats, it was also a period where there was mass adoption due to how easy it seemed to make a popular meme, any he could do it, so everyone wanted his Invented Internet Points In 2005 we saw the growth of YouTube and Reddit as internet meme hubs, but nothing was like 2006. This year was the big bang for classic internet memes. The meme format exploded in this year, originating a few years earlier on 4chan, but eventually jumping into the mainstream.

The memes of my finger, dog, the gummy bear song and the chocolate rain, now memes were everywhere, but they weren't universal, but memes were still very much indie content that required some talent to make, while top and bottom text content had started to take over in 2008. we saw it explode further along with the birth of rage comics. These trends were growing everywhere. We also saw cool stories, sibling memes, and popular internet board text memes in 2008. Anyone with enough internet savvy could make a viral meme and we saw this trend continue. for the rest of the era in 2010 we saw the birth of the controversial pedobear meme in 2011 the evolutionary period was winding down where memes morphed from uniquely unique to universally createable concepts the end of this period was nyan cat chuck head not bad and the Friday song in 2011.

Did Rebecca Black's song end the golden age of memes? Well, maybe, but it ushered in a period of meme dominance, but also a subtle transition. The Internet, but also began to become universal symbols for all ages, while this period built from the evolutionary years, it was a time when the idea of ​​meme culture began to dominate the Internet. and funny snapshots of people like overly attached girlfriend and bad luck brian 2012 also brought us grumpy cat but just like youtube and reddit fostered their own explosions of memes the birth of vine in 2013 created its own explosion of short form oriented memes videos it was during this Period that the idea of ​​spending hours staring at the screen looking at memes came up in the early years memes were sporadic but during this transition watching memes became an activity but 2014 finished the transition now in 2015 We are entering the modern era of memes. it was the cultural explosion this era the era we find ourselves in today is dominated by inside jokes subcultures and non-topic memes it takes years of knowledge of meme culture to fully appreciate at the beginning of this period memes divided into different sects was not already era a specific universally funny meme by definition, they often required a relationship or connection there were normal memes or memes that your mother or grandmother might share these memes can range from downright sad to the conventional meme templates used to talk about pop culture these are memes that companies could share as ads without too much effort, then there are the cool memes shared by the actual members who have their own cultures and a way of communicating. from early 2015 to now, which I would consider pretty mainstream today, we have another category for fringe memes, deep-fried memes, the kind of memes that, if shared, your friends and family might start to worry about your mental health. and, of course, there's probably something deep. fried memes, but we're going to exclude that from the overall presentation of this video, but now that we've defined the fractures we've seen grow in the meme subculture back to the memes we've seen in our modern age, 2015 brought us the blue . and gold dress netflix and chill this is bill and of course tai lopez acquaintance 2016 brought us that harambe boy and other subcultures inside jokes this year memes dived further into their own subculture 2017 brought us salt bay stonks hebrew tech he attacks pickle rick and the emergence of memes drawn from old snapshots of the 90s and early 2000s cartoons like spongebob memes 2018 saw the birth of tiktok the surprised pikachu meme and of course the big chungus, a meme that escaped the memedom subculture into fair normalcy at least as often as it raised its overweight giant bunny ears the last few years have been dominated by billions of memes that are likely to become a version of this video 10 years from now, when do you think the next era of meme history will begin?

Do you think about this high-level overview and breakdown of the history of modern memes? Be sure to leave a comment below and be sure to comment on your favorite meme of all time to see if it wins. Cookie memes are now part of the culture. please like share and subscribe if you liked it thanks for watching