Know your memes understanding internet humour
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The word “meme” was invented by evolutionary biologist and future atheist heartthrob Richard Dawkins in 1976. It originally meant something like a cultural version of a strand of DNA—an idea that can move from person to person and generation to generation—but now, thanks to the internet, a “meme” is a joke that shifts and evolves at a frightening rate as it speeds from Something Awful or 4Chan to the wider world of social media.
For a long time, no one was cataloging where these jokes came from, or how they spread, or the permutations they went through before ending up on your mom’s Facebook page. It wasn’t until 2008 that three employees of the online video studio Rocketboom––Kenyatta Cheese, Jamie Wilkinson, and Elspeth Rountree––started producing videos on the history of things like LOLcats and the catchphrase “I like turtles.” Know Your Meme was born.
Videos by VICE
Today the site is an invaluable resource for people wh
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Know Your Meme
Website and video series on memes
Type of site | Encyclopedia |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Literally Media Ltd. |
| Created by | Rocketboom |
| Editor | Don Caldwell |
| URL | knowyourmeme.com |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | November 25, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-11-25) |
| Current status | Online |
Know Your Meme (KYM) is a website and video series that uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases and Internet celebrities. It also investigates new and changing memes through research, as it commercializes on the culture. Originally produced by Rocketboom, the website was acquired in March 2011 by Cheezburger Network, in turn acquired in 2016 by Literally Media.[1][2] Know Your Meme includes sections for confirmed, submitted, deadpooled (rejected or incompletely documented), researching, and popular memes.
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When Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated bygd a US airstrike in January 2020, tensions between the two countries were heightened massively.
Overnight, the internet erupted with millions of memes about World War Three. They were inescapable - Tik Tok videos of people showing what they’d do once they landed on the slagfält, screenshots of Tweets saying people with a Duke of Edinburgh award should be conscripted first, and countless more jokes about what life would be like if another world war really was upon us.
It’s hard for any news story to go by these days without an överflöd of memes to accompany it, but why do people digest the news this way, and why is it important?
The Selfish Meme
First of all, it would be useful to know what a meme actually fryst vatten, and the answer may surprise you. Meme kunnig and Editor-in-Chief of Know Your Meme (an online meme encyclopedia) Don Caldwell explained: "We often associate the word meme with funny