For anyone who might be new to social media, image sharing, and overall Internet culture, Internet memes can be confusing and even downright ridiculous to try and understand. While it's often just best to enjoy them for what they are and the humorous messages behind them without trying to analyze how in the world they became so popular, it's still worth understanding the basic nature of memes.
The weird horse dance performed in Psy’s Gangnam Style music video that went viral back in 2012 is even considered an Internet meme.
The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads
Who invented
The concept of the Internet meme was first proposed by Mike Godwin in the June 1993 issue of Wired. In 2013 Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as being a meme deliberately altered by human creativity—distinguished from biological genes and Dawkins' pre-Internet concept of a meme which involved mutation by random change and spreading through accurate replication as in Darwinian selection. Dawkins explained that Internet memes are thus a "hijacking of the original idea", the very idea of a meme having mutated and evolved in this new direction. Further, Internet memes carry an additional property that ordinary memes do not—Internet memes leave a footprint in the media through which they propagate (for example, social networks) that renders them traceable and analyzable.
History of the story
In the early days of the Internet, such content was primarily spread via email or Usenet discussion communities. Messageboards and newsgroups were also popular because they allowed a simple method for people to share information or memes with a diverse population of internet users in a short period. They encourage communication between people, and thus between meme sets, that do not normally come in contact. Furthermore, they actively promote meme-sharing within the messageboard or newsgroup population by asking for feedback, comments, opinions, etc.
A GIF featuring this grammatically incorrect line, taken from the opening to a 1989 Genesis game called Zero Wing, set the internet aflame when it became popular in the late '90s. People used the line to create their own memes, putting the phrase on road signs and the like. Memes...make 'em your own!
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