By: Isabella Wong
About 4.62 billion, or more than half of the world, uses social media for various purposes. Social media is made up of a variety of content and creations such as makeup tutorials, vlogs, memes and more! Social media is flooded with memes commonly used to express an idea by adding a joke to it.
The word “meme” was acquired from the Greek word “mimema,” defined as an imitated form of something. In 1976, the modern version of the word in English was created by Richard Dawkins, a developmental biologist, and the official author of The God Delusion. Dawkins explained how memes can consist of perspectives of certain events, ideas, catchwords, and more. In addition, he does not approve of the memes made and spread across social media today.
Looking at the memes that exist all over these digital platforms, people may wonder what the earliest memes were like. According to Paessler, the first meme ever created was a simple image of a smiley face, created in an earlier version of the internet, Usenet. This form of the internet was mainly used to deliver information in pure, plain text. This would occasionally lead to conflict and misunderstandings between users and other individuals because of how people were unsure of whether certain statements were just jokes or written seriously. Today, memes can be made easily and quickly just by simply importing an image and adding a caption of your choice.
Memes come in different forms, like cartoons and gifs, for instance. An example of a meme that recently went viral is the ‘Little Miss [Blank]’ meme. The popular characters, Mr. Men and Little Miss, from the book series “Little Miss” have been turned into viral memes all over the internet. For example, the “Mx. ‘What’s the wifi?’” meme is a popular one posted all over social media.
Everyone grows up. And as many young children grow older, they begin to like different things and grow out of their previous interests, so changing children book characters from their childhoods into something that reflects their adult emotions might make children feel more satisfied when growing up with the world.
Sources:
https://blog.paessler.com/4-facts-about-memes-you-probably-did-not-know