A Unit of Culture That Copies Itself
The word meme was coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) to describe ideas that spread from mind to mind the way genes spread through populations: a tune, a catchphrase, a fashion. He did not have cats with captions in mind, but the internet adopted the word with enthusiasm.
Online, a meme is a format that invites remixing. The original matters less than the template: an image, a phrase or a structure that strangers can fill with their own meaning. That is why memes work as community glue. Getting the reference says "I have been here a while". Making a new version says "I belong enough to play".
Jokes travel through three steps. They are born in a small group, often as an accident. They are carried by people who belong to several communities at once. And they are remixed until the original context is forgotten, which researchers call context collapse and moderators call "why is everyone suddenly posting this?"
Four Decades of Running Jokes
- 1976
The word arrives
Richard Dawkins introduces "meme" in The Selfish Gene.
- 1982
The first smiley
On 19 September, Scott Fahlman suggests :-) for jokes on a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board.
- 1990
Godwin's Law
Lawyer Mike Godwin observes that long online arguments tend towards Nazi comparisons, and names the pattern to discourage it.
- 1996
The Dancing Baby
A 3D animation demo becomes one of the first viral clips, forwarded by email and later cameoing on television.
- 1998
The Hampster Dance
A single page of looping animated hamsters becomes a destination in its own right.
- 2000–01
"All your base are belong to us"
A mistranslated line from the game Zero Wing spreads across forums in endless remixes.
- 2007
Rickrolls and LOLcats
Disguised links to Rick Astley's 1987 hit become the friendly prank of choice, while I Can Has Cheezburger popularises captioned cats.
- 2008
Memes get an archive
Know Your Meme begins documenting the origins of internet jokes, settling many arguments and starting a few.
- 2011
Nyan Cat
A pixel-art cat with a toaster-pastry body flies across the web on a rainbow, set to an unforgettable loop.
- 2013
Doge
A Shiba Inu surrounded by multicoloured broken English. Such history. Very almanac.
- 2017
Distracted Boyfriend
A stock photograph becomes the template for every possible divided loyalty, proof that any image can become a format.
Slang for the Newly Arrived
The working vocabulary of threads, servers and boards, defined without the eye-rolling.
- Lurker
- Someone who reads without posting. Respectable, common and often the majority of any community.
- OP
- "Original poster", the person who started a thread, or the first post itself.
- TL;DR
- "Too long; didn't read". Used kindly as a summary at the end of a long post, less kindly as a dismissal.
- Copypasta
- A block of text copied and pasted so often it becomes a joke in itself.
- Bump
- Replying to your own thread to move it back to the top. Check the rules first; some forums limit it.
- Necro
- Reviving a very old thread. Fine with something new to add, frowned upon for "me too".
- FTFY
- "Fixed that for you", a playful edit of someone's statement. Use with care.
- IRL
- "In real life", as in an IRL meetup. Most old hands would argue online life is real too.
- Ship
- From "relationship": wanting two characters to be a couple. Fandom's favourite verb.
- Touch grass
- A nudge to step away from the screen. Sometimes cheeky, often good advice.
When a Joke Stops Being Funny
Running jokes are wonderful until they become a wall. If every reply to a newcomer is an in-joke they cannot possibly understand, the joke has turned into a gate. Good communities explain their references with a link or a wink.
Some memes also carry baggage: a format that started innocently may be adopted by people with ugly aims, or may mock a real, identifiable person who never asked to be famous. A quick check on an archive before reposting is a small kindness, and our etiquette entry explains how moderators handle the rest.