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History of Internet Memes

An internet meme is defined as an activity, concept, catchphrase, or piece of media which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the internet. It can be a picture, video, website, phrase, joke, or parody. Internet memes have been around since the internet started to become widely used in the turn of the century. With today’s culture having such a strong social media presence, meme’s have become an important fad. Internet memes are often very short-lived, but during the peak of its fame they’re known and used by almost all social media users.

The internet is often seen as one of the greatest inventions to man. The strong impact and importance that the internet has on our everyday lives is something that could not have been foreshadowed 20 years ago. According to Oxford Dictionary, cyberculture is defined as, “The social conditions brought about by the widespread use of computer networks for communication, entertainment, and business.” The internet is giant platform for sharing information that has the capacity to rapidly spread across the world to be seen by all kinds of people from different countries and cultures.

The most popular form of an internet meme includes an image with a witty caption, usually describing an action that matches the mood the image portrays. Internet memes typically are at the height of their fame for about 1-2 months. However, they are continued to be used for the years following. According to Scientific Reports, the most popular memes grab your attention and thrive on social media networks if their characteristics make them unique. To be a successful meme, it needs to be easily distinguishable from other memes and it has to either create a new cultural niche, or occupy a new one (Scientific Reports).

Timeline

Dancing Baby (2004)	One of the first viral internet memes was Dancing Baby, otherwise known as “Baby Cha-Cha” or “Oogachaka,” which is a video of a 3D baby with a black background dancing to “Hooked on a Feeling” by the band Blue Swede. This meme was created by Michael Girard and Robert Luyre (Don, Know Your Meme, 2009). It was first seen on the sitcom Ally McBeal in 1996 where she hallucinates the Dancing Baby on her floor while she’s sitting in her bed. The popular Dancing Baby YouTube video was uploaded on January 15th, 2006 and currently has over 3.3 million views. This internet meme hit it’s all time high fame in July of 2004.
O RLY? (2005)	O RLY?, slang for Oh Really?, is of a Snowy Owl and is used as a blatant sarcastic response. The photo was taken by a nature photographer named John White and posted on February 17th, 2001. It wasn't until 2005 where the photo was posted on 4chan with the caption "O RLY?" for the first time (Know Your Meme, 2009). Many variations of the image were made with a similar internet slang phrase like “YES RLY”, “NO WAI”, and “QUITE RLY.”
LOLcats (2005)	LOLcats is a series of funny images all of cats. The captions are written in broken english and created based off of the type of face the cat is making or the action it’s doing. It originated from a weekly series called “Caturday” on 4chan in 2005, as well as a cat website called “Can I Has Cheezburger.” By June 2007, the google search for “lolcats” was over 3.3 million results (Jamie, Know Your Meme, 2009).
Nyan Cat (2011)	A few years later, another cat meme took over the internet. Nyan Cat, or Pop Tart Cat, is an animation of a grey cat with a pink pop tart for a body flying through space with a rainbow trailing behind it. The gif was created by Chris Torres, who posted the gif on a comic website called LOL-COMICS on April 2nd, 2011 (Know Your Meme, 2011). On April 5th, 2011, the YouTube user saraj00n posted a Nyan Cat video with the japanese song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya playing in the background. The YouTube video gained over a million views in the first two weeks and now has over 140 million views. Nyan Cat was turned into many different internet games like Nyan Cat Lost in Space, Snake Nyan Cat, Nyanicorn, and Nyan Cat Fly.
Bad Luck Brian (2012)	Bad Luck Brian is an image of a nerdy high school boy's school picture with two rows of text, one on the top and one on the bottom, which are always something embarrassing or tragic. On January 23rd, 2012 Ian Davies, who went to school with him, posted his school picture on Reddit with the caption "Takes driving test...Gets first DUI." (Don, Know Your Meme, 2012). As Bad Luck Brian began to catch on, other renditions of Ian's post began to surface on more media platforms. Some other captions include "Has a pet rock...It runs away" and ""First Kiss...Gets mono." Everyone loved Bad Luck Brian and his photo was printed on tshirts at stores like Walmart and Hot Topic and pretty much everything and anything else on miscellaneous websites. However, Bad Luck Brian's real name is Kyle Craven who was born in 1989 in Ohio. Ian Davies called Kyle on January 24th, 2012 at 4 a.m. to tell him that he made him an internet sensation (Jessica Contrera, Washington Post, 2015). Bad Luck Brian was at the peak of its fame for about three years, which is a long time in comparison to other internet memes.
Grumpy Cat (2012)	On September 2012, photos of an angry and annoyed looking cat named Tardar Sauce was posted on Reddit. Within 24 hours, Tardar Sauce became internet famous and was given the name “Grumpy Cat.” Grumpy Çat was born in Morristown, Arizona on April 4th, 2012 (Brad, Know Your Meme, 2012). The owner, Tabatha Bundesen, posted a video to YouTube titled “Do Not Disturb Grumpy Cat!” By September 30th, a Grumpy Cat t-shirt line through Clothes That Kill was released and in August of 2013 Grumpy Cat merchandise, such as onesies and stuffed animals, was sold at stores like Urban Outfitters and Hot Topic.
Ridiculously Photogenic Guy (2012)	At the annual Cooper River Bridge Run on March 31st, 2012 in Charleston, South Carolina, Will King took pictures of the runners and uploaded them to Flickr (Know Your Meme, 2012). Will’s friend posted one of the pictures on Reddit and named one of the runners “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy.” Within an hour the post reached 300,000 views. The man in the photo is Zeddie Little, a 25 year old New Yorker. Zeddie’s fame continued to grow and was invited to be on Good Morning America. On GMA, they asked him how he felt about him as a meme and he said: “I really dont know, but I kinda feel honored to be part of a joke that’s in good spirit because sometimes the Internet can be a little vicious or jokes can get bent the wrong way. But these are all kinda, for the most part, positive. It’s funny that everybody is kinda taking like to it. It’s, I guess, the most flattering way to get spread across the Internet.”
Doge (2013)	Doge, another word for dog, is a meme all about a Shiba Inus, which is a small, long haired breed of dog. On February 23rd, 2010, a Japanese Kindergarten teacher named Atsuko Sato posted pictures of her new dog, Kabosu, to her blog. One photo is of Kabosu sitting on the couch with a scared look on its face (Know Your Meme, 2013). A reddit user posted the picture with the caption "LMBO LOOK @ THIS FUKKIN DOGE." However, it wasn't until 2013 where Doge became famous. People took the original photo and added a new style of writing, which to this day is still associated with Doge. They use phrases like "much concern", "so scare", and "such unsure" in the comic sans font with different colors for each phrase.
Dat Boi (2016)	Dat Boi, slang for “that boy,” is a popular photoshopped image of a green frog riding a unicycle. On April 26th, 2016 posted on Tumblr a low quality, pixelated picture of Dat Boi with the caption “here comes dat boi!” (Know Your Meme, 2016). Popular twitter accounts began tweeting about this meme, however there was controversy whether it was funny or not because no one knew what it meant or where it came from. Those who understood continued to share the thousands of photoshopped pictures of Dat Boi. It wasn’t until May 4th, 2016 that twitter user David Magno tweeted a photo of a page from his AP Physics 1 textbook that contains the Dat Boi frog.
Harambe (2016)	On May 28th, 2016, a three-year-old boy fell, some sources say he climbed, inside a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo (CNN, 2016). Harambe, the gorilla, grabbed him and dragged him around until a Zoo worker shot and killed Harambe in order to protect the child. A video of the happenings was uploaded to YouTube where it reached 12.6 million views in 48 hours and then was taken down from the internet (Know Your Meme, 2016). The story quickly spread over news and social media channels. The hashtags “#RIPHarambe” and “#JusticeForHarambe” began to trend amongst those with dark internet humor and many photoshopped pictures of Harambe surfaced via Twitter. During the 2016 presidential election, many twitter users posted a picture of their ballot where they put Harambe as their write-in candidate. After all the votes were collected, twitter user David Leavitt tweeted saying that Harambe received 11,000 write-in votes. 11,000 americans voted for a dead gorilla rather than voting for the actual presidential candidates.