Which brings us into the mid- to late ’00s, which is when I started getting into this
whole “meme” thing. I think my experience is relevant as we circle back to the central
question, “What are memes?”

I spent an entire summer as a 15-year-old starting every day by scrolling through
a collection of blogsites, all under the Cheezburger Network—and yes, cringing at the
name is an entirely natural response, as the joke was old even back then. The Cheezburger
Network hosts approximately 50 sites today according to Wikipedia. Back in the day, the
blogs were split into different types of popular meme categories: Demotivational Posters,
FAIL Blog, Picture is Unrelated, Photobombs, Rage Comics, and many more. All of this is
now stored under the Memebase site, which frankly looks as though it’s seen better days.

All these memes were recycled from chan boards, and the content wasn’t exactly
fresh or innovative. However, memes and viral videos had this sense of being part of an
insider culture; a meme would get recycled over and over again to a point of fascinating
abstraction, where you'd get a bit of a zing to recognize the in-joke even after it had
been reduced to its most basic form. The best example I can think of to showcase this
phenomenon is this:

“THIOL”

To some—I imagine most—teaders, that progression of symbols will make
absolutely no sense. But for some, I imagine you know exactly what I’m referring to: An
infamously terrible four-panel update of the gamer webcomic Ctl Alt Del, in which one
of the main characters discovers his wife has suffered a miscarriage, pictured below:

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Comic from ctrlaltdel-online.com

The tonal dissonance of the serious subject matter combined with the overall art style
and typically light tone of the comic made this four-panel sequence a target for mockery
since its release in 2008. The comic has been parodied again and again to such an extent
that if you’re an avid consumer of memes, the reference does not need to be any more
oblique than a few “I’’s in a row, followed by an underscore.

This is common in most meme circles. The music engraver meme I shared at the top
of this article has devolved to a point where people will post objects with music notes
plastered on them with the caption “ is an objectively good...” and nothing else. We
know what the poster is referencing, but Lord help anyone else diving into that space for
the first time.

And I think, really, that’s what memes are: Shorthand. As Dawkins observed in his
original conception, memes are meant to convey a large amount of cultural information in
a small package. Memes give us an “inside joke” feeling—in the 2012 geek anthem “I’m
the One That’s Cool,” Felicia Day proudly proclaims that she’s “Got my in-jokes you
won't get / like Honey Badger, Troll Face, and Nyan Cat” (a lyric that has aged about as
well as those memes have). The incredibly short half-life on memes is part of the appeal;
the moment the in-joke becomes too well-known, it loses that insider element. Memes
tend to die the moment they’re referenced on talk shows and by anyone over the age
of 25 Gf I’m being generous). In the age of the internet during which we are constantly
bombarded with information, the discovery, evolution, and degradation into obscurity of
ameme is a lightning-fast process. Unless you're constantly tuned in—which, in fairness,
many of us are—there’s really no keeping up.

I’ve always found memes fascinating as a broader reflection of our socio-cultural
experiences. We share these jokes into obscurity until all meaning completely disappears,
or we abandon them. I think it says something really interesting about how we
communicate with one another—not in a bad way at all, but rather as an indication of how
we like to share with and understand each other.

But honestly, it’s probably not even that deep. Memes are fun. We, as a species, enjoy
things that are fun. Maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything.

Which goes into another point I'd like to make about how millennial and Gen Z
humour is a modern reflection of the mid-20th century Dadaist movement, but that’s a
whole other topic altogether.

  

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All meme images from knowyourmeme.com