Internet meme: History and Key Facts

An Internet meme, or meme (), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, now primarily through social media platforms. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, videos (e.g. GIFs), and other viral content. Key characteristics of memes include their tendency to be parodied, their use of intertextuality, their viral dissemination, and their continual evolution. The term meme was originally introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to describe a conceptual unit of cultural transmission, analogous to (and sounding like) the gene in biology.

The term Internet meme was coined by Mike Godwin in 1993 in reference to the way memes proliferated through early online communities, including message boards, Usenet groups, and email. The emergence of social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram further diversified memes and accelerated their spread. Dank and surrealist memes are some of the newer genres, with newer formats like short-form videos popularized by platforms like Vine and TikTok. Newer internet memes (specifically those of low quality) are often classified as brain rot, AI slop, or both.

Memes are now recognized as a significant aspect of Internet culture and are the subject of academic research. They appear across a broad spectrum of contexts, including marketing, economics, finance, politics, social movements, religion, and healthcare. While memes are often viewed as falling under fair use protection, their incorporation of material from pre-existing works can result in copyright disputes.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Internet meme by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.