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Meme Origins and Meanings

Quick answer: what is a meme? It is an image, video or piece of text, typically humorous, that internet users copy and spread. Your first decision is whether you want the definition, the history or the viral mechanics. The definition takes a minute. The history takes longer, because a meme’s date can mean three different…

Nadine Ellsworth

14 min read

what is a meme

Quick answer: what is a meme? It is an image, video or piece of text, typically humorous, that internet users copy and spread. Your first decision is whether you want the definition, the history or the viral mechanics.

The definition takes a minute. The history takes longer, because a meme’s date can mean three different things: when its source material was made, when it first became a meme, and when it went viral. The choices below route you to the right section, and each one links to a deeper guide where a topic has its own page.

Choosing where to start

Pick your starting point by the question in front of you. The sections that follow stand alone, so you can jump in anywhere.

  • You need a clean definition. Start with the section on what a meme is. It compares a dictionary definition with the broader original idea, so you can pick the one that suits your purpose.
  • You need an origin date. Go to the sections on where memes come from and on early internet formats. They separate the first appearance from the viral moment, which is where most recycled summaries go wrong.
  • You want to know why something spread. Read the section on how memes go viral. It draws on a 2024 study and on the way specific memes travelled between platforms.
  • You met an unfamiliar abbreviation in a caption or comment. Jump to the slang section, which points to single-term guides.
  • You want something to send to a friend. The sharing section lists occasion-based collections, from seasonal memes to good morning memes.

One habit helps throughout. When you see a date attached to a meme, ask which event it describes. The creation of the source material, the first use as a meme and the viral peak are separate events, and the examples below show how far apart they can sit.

What a meme is

A meme is a unit of copied and shared culture, and the online meaning is a narrower version of a broader idea. The two definitions below both hold, and each suits a different job.

The dictionary definition

The BBC cites the Oxford English Dictionary, which describes a meme as an image, video or piece of text, typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread by internet users. That is the definition most people mean when they search for the term. It has three parts you can check any example against: a format (image, video or text), a tone (typically humorous) and a behaviour (copying and spreading).

The Webster’s New World College Dictionary, quoted by the New York Times, is wider. It defines a meme as a concept, belief or practice conceived as a unit of cultural information that may be passed on from person to person. Nothing in that wording mentions the internet. The same article quotes a linguist who calls a meme a self-replicating chunk of information.

For practical use, the narrower Oxford wording works when you are talking about a screenshot, a reaction image or a video clip someone has sent you. The broader Webster’s wording works when you are asking how a habit, phrase or joke travels through a community. Choose the narrower one for everyday conversation and the broader one when you are tracing history.

Dawkins and the idea of replication

The term itself has a known author. The New York Times says the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is credited with introducing the term in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. The BBC’s explainer adds Dawkins’s own short description of memes as ideas that spread from brain to brain.

The credit is for the word, not for the phenomenon. The same New York Times piece says the term was coined for something that has existed literally forever, and notes that some linguists argue humans have used memes to communicate for centuries. Treat 1976 as the date the label arrived. Do not treat it as the date the behaviour began.

Where the word comes from

The word is a deliberate coinage built on two roots. The New York Times explains that the French word “même” translates to “same” and the Greek word “mimoúmai” means “to imitate.” Together they point at the core of the idea: something that is imitated and stays recognisably the same.

The newspaper also records a small curiosity. The word “meme” first appeared in its crossword in 1953, with the clue “Same: French.” That entry predates Dawkins’s book, so the spelling existed in print before the cultural meaning did. It is a good example of why a first appearance of a word and the first appearance of an idea are different questions.

Where memes come from before the internet

Memes did not start with social media, but the internet changed how fast and how visibly they travel. If your question is about the earliest examples, you have to separate three claims: the earliest copied cultural unit, the earliest picture people call a meme, and the earliest meme that spread online.

On the first claim, the linguists quoted by the New York Times point to centuries of communication by memes. That is an argument about human behaviour rather than a dated artefact, so it gives you no specific first example to cite.

On the second claim, the BBC mentions a cartoon from the magazine The Judge. It says some people have wondered whether this 1921 image could be one of the first memes. The phrasing matters. It is a question people have raised, not a settled verdict, so use it as an intriguing early candidate rather than a record.

Everyday phone viewing is where most people meet memes, one at a time and often alone, before deciding whether to pass them on.

On the third claim, the earliest online examples are covered in the full timeline guide: what was the first internet meme. Read that page if you need a list of early viral memes in order. The rest of this guide shows how to read any one of those dates.

Early internet formats and why dates mislead

Two well-documented examples show how the same meme can carry several dates, and why a single year in a summary rarely tells the full story.

The Dancing Baby

The BBC reports that creators Michael Girard, Robert Lurye and John Chadwick made the animation of the baby dancing in 1996. That fits a pattern: an animation made for one purpose later circulates as a shared cultural object. If you need a creation date for the Dancing Baby, 1996 is the verified one.

Rickroll

Rickroll is the clearest case of a gap between source material and meme. Know Your Meme describes it as the viral RickRoll video meme that exploded in the mid-2000s. The song behind it is a 1987 hit by Rick Astley, a point also made in The Complete History of the Rick Roll.

So the song belongs to 1987 and the meme to the mid-2000s. If someone asks when Rickroll started, ask whether they mean the recording or the prank. Know Your Meme’s own entry was created by VICE on October 11, 2022 and updated on March 23, 2023, which is a useful reminder that encyclopedia pages have their own dates. Those are the dates of the write-up, not of the meme. For the mechanics and spread of the meme, see the dedicated guide on what is rickrolling.

Famous memes and what each one teaches

There is no single authoritative list of the most famous memes of all time, so the sensible approach is to judge by reach and longevity and to learn the verified history of each. The four below show different routes to fame: a stock photo, an animal, a decades-old cartoon frame and a recent character.

Distracted Boyfriend

Distracted Boyfriend started as a stock photograph, not a joke. The BBC says it became a viral sensation in 2017 and names the photographer who captured the image as Antonio Guillem (spelled Gulliem in the BBC text). This is the cleanest illustration of the gap between creation and virality: the photograph existed as a commercial image first, and the viral year describes when people started using it as a template.

A sensible reading rule follows. For a stock-photo meme, credit the photographer for the image and the audience for the meme. They are different contributions.

A phone camera framing an everyday street scene. Photographs like this are the raw material of image memes, though this one is generic stock imagery and not the Distracted Boyfriend picture.

Doge and the animal memes

Doge sits in a group the BBC identifies as famous animal memes, including Woman Yelling at a Cat, Doge and Kermit the Frog. The grouping is a useful lens: animals and puppets make easy stand-ins for human reactions, which is why they recur in meme formats. Treat Doge as a staple of the genre, and use the dedicated origin guides when you need a specific creation date for an individual animal meme.

If your interest is in another famous animal-adjacent character, the guide on pepe the frog origin covers that meme’s history on its own page.

The Spider-Man screenshot

The BBC describes another widely used meme as a screenshot of a Spider-Man cartoon from a 1967 TV episode, titled Double Identity. It also notes that in 2022, the classic meme was recreated by actors Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.

The lesson is longevity. A frame from a 1967 episode became a template, and then a new generation of performers remade it. If you are choosing a meme to explain a format to someone, a template like this is a strong example because the original and the remake can be compared directly.

Chill Guy

Chill Guy is the most recent origin the BBC documents. It says the first image was posted by a user called Phillip Banks in October 2023, and that the meme was later the subject of countless posts on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, with that spread dated to late 2024. The BBC article is here: its explainer on memes.

Chill Guy is the case to use when someone claims a meme is “new.” The first post and the platform-wide spread are separated by a period the BBC dates from October 2023 to late 2024, so the meme is newer in popularity than in existence. For another meme built on a look rather than a picture, see Side Eye Meme Meaning: How That Look Became the Internet’s Favorite Shade In 2026.

How memes go viral

Memes go viral because people enjoy sharing and repeating things, and because humour gives them a reason to do it. That explanation is supported by both a linguistic account and a recent study, and neither claims a guaranteed formula.

The sharing instinct

The New York Times piece explains replication in plain terms: we humans like to share and repeat stuff. In that account, memes are self-replicating only because people replicate them. The meme does not spread by itself; each copy is somebody’s decision. That is a useful correction when a headline suggests content “goes viral on its own.”

What the 2024 study found

The BBC reports on a 2024 study from the University of Oslo and IMT Lucca, in which researchers collected data from over 1,150 participants. Its central finding, in the BBC’s words, is that humour and amusement played a huge role in our response to much-loved memes.

Read that finding with its limits in mind. It supports humour as a major factor in how people respond to memes they love. It does not turn humour into a recipe that makes any joke spread. For anyone making memes, the practical takeaway is to start from something that genuinely amuses an audience, rather than starting from a format that looks popular.

How platforms carry a meme

The Chill Guy example shows the usual route in a modern case. A single image was posted, then it became the subject of posts on Instagram, X and TikTok. The Spider-Man example shows a different route: an old image gets a second life when new people remake it. In both cases, spread depends on people adopting and altering the original rather than only viewing it.

When you want to judge whether a meme is likely to last, ask whether it invites imitation. Templates such as the Spider-Man frame and the Distracted Boyfriend photo have empty slots that people fill in. A one-off joke has no such slot, so there is nothing for the next person to do except look at it. That is a judgement drawn from the examples above rather than a measured rule, so use it as a prompt for thinking, not a prediction.

Internet slang that travels with memes

Meme captions and comments are full of shorthand, and decoding it quickly makes memes easier to follow. A single abbreviation can mean different things depending on the conversation, so it pays to check context and read a term-specific guide instead of guessing. Each guide below handles one term.

If a term is not listed, the safest route is to read how it is used in the surrounding thread before replying, because slang shifts between communities.

Sharing memes for specific occasions

Once you understand what a meme is, the next question is usually which one to send. The best choice depends on the audience and the moment, and the occasion-based collections below narrow the field quickly.

A phone lock screen with a slide-to-unlock prompt. Sharing a meme usually starts here, with a message waiting on the phone of someone you know.

A useful test before sending: could the recipient follow the joke without knowing the original template? A reaction meme that depends on a template history lands better with someone who already knows the template. For anyone else, a self-explanatory image is the safer choice.

Timeline of meme dates

This table gathers the dates discussed above in one place. Use it to check what each date actually describes before quoting it.

Meme or format Date What the date describes Planning use
Cartoon in The Judge 1921 An image some people have wondered about as one of the first memes Cite as an early candidate, not a confirmed first
The Selfish Gene 1976 The book in which Dawkins described memes as ideas spreading from brain to brain Use for the origin of the word
Spider-Man episode screenshot 1967 (episode); 2022 (recreation) The TV source and a recreation by Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire Shows a template outliving its source
Dancing Baby 1996 Creation of the animation Use as a creation date
Rickroll 1987 (song); mid-2000s (meme) The recording and the viral video meme Always say which one you mean
Distracted Boyfriend 2017 The year the stock photo became a viral sensation Treat as the viral date, not the photo date
Chill Guy October 2023 (first image); late 2024 (wide spread) The first post and the spread across Instagram, X and TikTok Shows how recent a meme’s fame can be

Most dates come from the BBC’s explainer on memes and from Know Your Meme’s Rickroll entry.

One caution applies to all of these. Where a source says “mid-2000s” or “late 2024,” keep that wording rather than narrowing it to a single year.

Frequently asked questions

What is a meme in one sentence?

A meme is a piece of culture, online usually an image, video or text with a humorous tone, that people copy and pass on to each other.

Who introduced the word meme?

Richard Dawkins is credited with introducing the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, according to the New York Times. The crossword appearance of the word in 1953 is a separate, earlier use.

Did memes exist before the internet?

Some linguists argue that humans have used memes to communicate for centuries, and the BBC mentions a 1921 cartoon that some people have wondered about as an early example. Neither is a settled record of the first meme.

Which meme here has the most recent documented origin?

Chill Guy. The BBC says its first image was posted in October 2023, and that it spread widely across Instagram, X and TikTok in late 2024.

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