Internet Culture Memes

Internet memes — images, videos, phrases, or concepts that spread rapidly through online sharing — have become a primary form of cultural communication in the digital age. The word 'meme' was coined by Richard Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene' (1976) to describe cultural ideas that spread and evolve like genes. Internet memes emerged in the early internet era (Dancing Baby, 1996; All Your Base Are Belong to Us, 2001) and exploded with social media. Memes serve as cultural shorthand — encoding complex ideas, emotions, and references in easily shareable formats. They evolve rapidly (a meme's peak popularity rarely lasts more than weeks), spawn derivative forms, and cross language barriers. Political memes have been weaponized for propaganda (the Internet Research Agency used memes to influence the 2016 US election). Know Your Meme has documented 50,000+ individual memes since 2007.