this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
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The first? Idk about that, im 27. And am well aware of memes prior to my existance. The oldest i can think of is the dancing baby meme.
https://youtu.be/eyR6O0eHz-o
Or more relavent to this would be the hamster dance
https://youtu.be/6WpMlwVwydo
Dancing Baby was the first normie meme. Its popularity spread through TV and print.
All Your Base is more of an actual “first” internet meme.
A/S/L?
19/F/Hawaii any hot guys here?
I should download an IRC client. Is mIRC still around?
Yup
hunter2
Bash.org is still available - https://bash-org-archive.com/
/slap
Are you challenging me to a bass off?
That's not a meme. That's a chat room.
14/f/france
🎶 Can't touch this
🛑🔨⌚
Damn totally forgot about "all your base are belong to us" what a trip. But i was going for viral normie memes since i mainly remember these memes taking popularity outside of the internet. People were singing the hamster song at parties when i was little so i think its influence as a meme was way more than even dancing baby. And then later 2003 or 4 the badger song. And after a while that duck song took off and my little sister wouldnt stop asking "got any grapes"?
You normie. You forgot the 2002 classic, Peanut butter Jelly time.
Anything that showed up on Family Guy is a certified normie meme.
damn... you got me. Heres my degen card.
You can have it back, but im putting a hole punch in it first.
Memes are also not inherently digital. Going back to the definition set by Richard Dawkins (trans-hating bigot he is), a meme is anything that "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation." Perhaps that's a bit broad of a definition compared to what we conventionally think of as memes, but it's how we got to where we are.
People in ancient Egypt building pyramids and obelisks because someone before them built pyramids and obelisks is a meme. Cathedrals being built in much the same way throughout Renaissance Europe is a meme.
But those examples aside, there are still a few pre-internet examples that would still resonate more with the idea of memes as we know them today. Kilroy was Here is considered a meme and goes back to World War II. Or a bit before that, this "How you think you look" cartoon which I am not entirely sure was overly meme-like in its day but certainly feels relatable today.
But even slogans or popular sayings could be considered memes; if we consider internet terms/phrases like "pog" or "Are ya winning, son?" or (dating myself) "I can haz cheezburger?" to be memes, what about pre-internet sayings like "Luke, I am your father," "It's just a flesh wound," or "Where's the beef?" Or going way, way back, what about saying "Break a leg" before a performance, or "All the world's a stage," or even "Carpe diem"? I think one could make a case for just about any repeated and widely understood concept, really.
Knights fighting snails goes back even further.
Even further back, cave paintings of spirals and stenciled hands.
Memes don't need to be digital
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here