I was around before “meme culture” and saw the conception of it; with dancing babies and grooving hamsters.
This eventually evolved into a form of communication with shared references being used as a way for the loneliest of humans to connect.
Eventually… and here’s a word your chemical driven brains can feed from, the memes became “meta”…
The irony was lost and so were those who established it to begin with.
Only now, after it is too late… are the feeble minded masses able to ponder "
Memes started with those email chains people kept sharing around.
A meme is something funny you share, usually in a picture, but even images of texts are memes.
Okay, so we’re at the “torches & onions” part of the timeline.
Hilarious.
You’re not wrong, it’s more “sharing to the masses”, emails can be sent to anyone, pictures online can be seen by anyone, texts now. But I do think it has to be “online”, I don’t think paintings and town criers and jesters quite meet “meme”. But images of them sure would -.-
But masses can also just be your circle of friends, online or irl.
Memes are the cheap & easy to understand pamphlets demanding that the king has his head mounted on a plaque with a funny quote attached?
as opposed to the most popular form of “meme” on lemmy: twitter screenshots
Memes have always been low effort though. The cream will rise to the top.
Just gotta think everything is AI and work backwards.
