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This made me wonder what the oldest internet meme still in common usage is.
I still see the penguin on occasion, but probably not enough to be common.
Maybe the rick roll? I don't think that'll ever die.
Sadly, rick-rolls are ruined by forced ads for many.
Even goats.ex has ads on it now.
Truly a dark age for the internet.
Rick Roll was one that came to mind for me, too. Looks like it dates back to around 2007.
Definitely not pre youtube (2005)
I was def getting Rick rolled before that.
If you remember anything specific, submit it here, because you'd be predating the earliest known usage.
It was over ICQ, IRC or msn messenger back when all I had was dialup. A lot of modern internet culture seems to be appropriated from the kind of old web ne’er-do-wells I hung out with on IRC back in the day. Didn’t think to keep records tbh. The original ‘rickroll’ was goatse or lemon party (nsfw, tbh I would not google those if you don’t know what they are).
I do remember getting Rick rolled with Never gonna give you up by a counter strike clan team member over ventrilo back in 2005. It must be 2004-05 because the clan I was in disbanded after Oct. 2005.
Rickrolling itself doesn't count, it has to be with that specific song. So your clan member was ahead of his time!
I mean, it’s still just a bait and switch. I never really got why doing it with Rick Astley was groundbreaking.
I'm interested in the oldest still-used internet memes, regardless of their quality. Bait and switching itself has existed forever.
Is linking a Rick roll a meme? I thought memes were reused images with text, guessing the definition is shifting. I saw someone calling numa numa a meme the other day.
Goatse launched in 1999 and was just widely referenced this month with the eclipse.
I'm not saying we should be proud of goatse's legacy and staying power, I'm just observing the reality we've all built.
Not the evergreen meme we need, but the one we deserve
ALL YOUR BASE?
People still refer to it from time to time, but generally only in the context that it's old.
The smiley emoji - :-) - is from 1982
That's an emoticon. Emojis are these: 😜
There's an entry for emoticons, though I'm not sure I'd qualify all of them as memes. Not the kind I was thinking about, at least.
Well, they are memes in that they went viral and are now spread with slight variations. And I must note that a lot of contemporary post-irony, meta-irony, or even something further memes probably wouldn't qualify as memes either
Probably Caramel Dansen. I remember it from when I was a kid, and I still see it every once in a while.
Edit: There's this video from 2008, but it's probably not the original. And there's this video which is a re-upload from 2008, which I think was originally a flash animation.
According to Know Your Meme, the song originates from 2001, the animations started around 2008, and there was a semi-revival during 2020. So it depends on when you choose to start counting, but the arguments are there.
Never heard of that one.
I suddenly feel very old.
I'm pretty old myself, so I think it's more on me than time.
RIP Mr T ate my balls
Exploitables where you change or add text in a picture is quite old and now one of the most common memes. It's a huge category, so maybe not what you meant, but it looks like it started in 2006 according to https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/exploitables
That's more of a type of meme than a meme itself.
:) I was thinking kilroy, but then I read the word internet.
Eternal September is one that dates back to irc and Usenet. I'm guessing there was some jokester sending ASCII dicks on Arpanet.
I'm talking about memes that are still commonly seen today.
Lemon party?
maybe trollface? it's at least as common as rare-but-recognizable wojaks
I don't see trollface much any more, but I might just not be looking in the right places.
SPAM?
I think of spam as a term that originated from that skit more than a meme.
I'll bow to their judgement that it's a meme, but I was thinking of visual memes. This one probably wins as far as internet memes in general goes.
You made me look up the origin of the word meme
"When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976
That guy who shot himself on TV?
Lemon party?