The evolution of the meme
How the meme evolved and graced our internet presence
Before we take a deep dive into the evolution of the "meme," let's take a quick refresher into what classifies as a meme on the Internet. Best described by Urban Dictionary, a "Meme is a lifestyle and art used by teens and adults who are willing to live a life that doesn't include depression." But if you're looking for a more straightforward answer: it's just an internet joke. However, I feel that the first description provides a WAY better indication of the lifestyle that memes have cultivated for use on the Internet.
But that begs the question, when did the first joke drop? And who kept the ball rolling? This question is wholly subjective, depending on who you ask. Like technically speaking, you can trace so many internet jokes to the very early ages of the Internet. I'm talking about Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede circulating through chain emails in '96 to that creepy baby dancing on Ally McBeal circa 1997. Yeah, remember that!?! Cursed!!! To make a long story short, memes have been around since the very beginning of the Internet. Although the term is relatively new, it has been gaining in popularity since the late 2010s, which oddly seems like such a long time ago, especially regarding the Internet. Now being such a large part of our online personas, I think it's best we look at where it all began and pay homage to the memes that came before us.
Chain Emails - 90s
Back when the Internet was used for its intended purpose of communication, there was a fair share of jokes sent to coworkers in offices and family members via chain or spam emails. It seemed harmless fun and something to do in their cubicles for bored office workers. Sometimes the email would be hopeful, like, "There are five weekends this month. This only happens every 823 years. Forward this to 15 friends for good luck," which sometimes was the pinnacle of office humour. But then there would be other more severe requests like a Nigerian Prince asking if I wanted to invite my friends to participate in a "foreign money exchange." The chain mail jokes carried on a bit into the early 00s but slowly died down when other means of communication were on the rise.
Chain mail walked so memes could run/Via St. Edwards University
The First Social Platforms - The 00s
The absolute rush was to get home from an extended school day and go online to see if your friends were also active. The concept of sending memes over some of the first social media platforms (hello, ICQ, and AOL Messenger!) was not as commonly done as one would think. But that's not to say it didn't happen; when you think about the definition of memes as a whole. Come on, who here didn't have a nudge war with their bestie on MSN?! That was the funniest thing in the world at the time, and if you disagree, you clearly have much more elevated humour than I. This extends to platforms like MySpace, where you could customize your profile to fit your personality using glitter graphics and other Blingees. It quickly became a "thing" to include either favourite quotes or funny photos for others to get a feel for who you were, and it was such a power move to be in someone's top eight. There was A LOT of pressure to choose the right meme to describe who you were as a person, and honestly, if you didn't choose wisely, you would hear about it. LOL
Kim Kardashian’s Myspace circa 2006
MSN
AOL messenger
The shift from Facebook to Instagram - the 10s
There was a point when Facebook had a chokehold on every young teen across the world. This was also the peak of meme sharing in the 2010s. Posting photos on your timeline was super easy, and hundreds of memes were shared daily. Some are more popular than others - but peak internet humour if this era was the troll face and minion-based content. Which, at the time, made everyone smile. Within the same few years, Instagram slowly started gaining traction, which I think booted Facebook slightly down in sharing internet humour. Instagram being a platform that's exclusively for photo sharing, Facebook became a life-sharing platform. Instagram stole millennials and Gen Z users, while Facebook took custody of the Baby Boomers and Gen Xs. This is why the memes of Instagram evolved, and those on Facebook did not. Sorry xo.
The minion memes began to over take everyones timeline/Via Facebook
The troll faces that slowly began surfacing circa 2008/Via Facebook
The most common format of instagram memes was text on top, a correlating photo right below/ Via Instagram
GIFs - the 10s
It would be a sin not to discuss the rise of GIFs in the world of meme culture. This, in my opinion, bridges the gap between photo and video. Memes had only ever been (until this point) a picture with a funny caption slapped on, and the acronym can only convey so much to the person sitting opposite on their screen. It was as if someone said, "there's a better way to send my reaction towards this funny joke" - thus, the reaction GIF was born. Tumblr was abundant with GIFs and soon became one of the most popular forms of meme sharing. Also, it's pronounced GIF, with a hard "G," not JIFF like the peanut butter. I will take no further questions on this.
The Reaction Photo - the 20s
The reaction photo is my favourite meme form! It is the one and only meme form that has stuck around the longest. Sure, memes have always been funny with words. But the reaction photo? It can be whatever you want it to be! Because the reaction can be taken in many different ways and applied to many different scenarios. Kinda genius if you ask me! Feeling weird and awkward to a friend? Don't know how to react? Send a photo of Kris Jenner tossing up a peace sign! Don't get me wrong, you'll probably confuse them, but that is what makes reaction memes so great! It doesn't have to make sense for it to be funny necessarily! Also, if the people in your life don't get the memes you are sending to them, maybe it's time to get people who understand your meme humour! No shade, just sayin'.
Via Twitter
Via Twitter
Via Twitter
Via Twitter
Via Twitter
RIP Vine, Hello TikTok - NOW
I still find myself quoting vines from 2014 on the daily. Is it because I'm in denial or because they're so damn good? I'm gonna say because they're classics. A joke consisting of 7 seconds was so short and sweet that it not only held on to my brief attention span, but they were so quotable that it made them as iconic as they were. This was even translated to TikTok years later. Vine walked so TikTok could run. TikTok is the hotter cousin of the vine, has trumped every other social media platform, and officially holds the title of the most downloaded app globally. So like yeah… it's pretty popular. This indeed reinforced the idea that memes don't have to be just a still images or just a gif. And before someone says I've left out YouTube for meme/video sharing, I know that is where Charlie bit my finger lives, and all the Rick Rolling videos are, but influencers have been the rulers of that domain. And sharing 30-second videos became a more popular game than watching a staged 10-minute prank.
A compilation of the most iconic vines to date/ Via Youtube
