What is a meme?

Dictionary.com defines a meme as “a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes”.

Urbandictionary.com defines a meme as “an image, video, or set of text that becomes popular and spreads rapidly via the internet.”

Examples of traditional memes would be…

Pepe the Frog

Dat Boi

Bad Luck Brian

These memes stemmed from websites such as ifunny.com, reddit.com, and imgur.com, creating a fun pastime for millennials spouting from dark humor and pure creativity. They’ve become something many millennials can recognize right away, and understand completely based on a shared humor we all possess.

When Vine came into existence in 2013, the nature of memes changed completely. Millennials now had this app to create content based on their own odd, original humor. Things we could all relate to were now in short video form, and were absolutely hilarious to no one but us. Explaining a vine to your parents was like trying to herd a cat; they didn’t get why you were doing it or why it was funny.

But we all thought it was funny.

From vines, memes began to evolve into quotes from the vines and snapshots of the funniest moments. Fueled by Twitter, vines became a phenomenon where you could say a single word (or noise) from the vine and immediately everyone would know what you were talking about. People began making their own versions of the vines and they became reactions to things, screenshots of the funniest content we’d ever seen shared over and over again.

With vine gone (RIP), the meme culture has accelerated even more. There are certain types of memes, like the ones that stem from vine, or there are memes that are just pictures of people doing weird stuff that would only be funny to a millennial. While it sounds stupid and trivial, like something that is going to pass at some point, I truly believe meme culture is a permanent part of this generation. It is so interwoven into many of our lives that it’s a big part of our happiness and laughter.

For example,

The image below means absolutely nothing to anyone who isn’t a millennial. Furthermore, if you are on twitter and reddit, it makes complete sense to you.

That kind of intricate piling on of common cultural interests just isn’t like the generation before us.

What is important about meme culture is it’s kind of amazing. Again, it sounds stupid, but the fact that thousands and thousands of different images and phrases can become common knowledge to a certain group of people simply because of the internet is amazing. People relate over them, laugh over them, and use them to describe their mood. It contributes to the way young celebrities relate to common people their age and has even changed the way pop art is looked at in some ways.

I’m not sure when meme culture will go away, but at this moment it looks like it’s going to last a long time. From the most traditional memes to the constant snapshot of everyday life that turns into a meme, the cycle could go on forever.

Will it be something we’re showing our kids? Will it be something our kids know about? I guess only the future can tell.