[noduerme]

And not a minute too soon. Even though the concept of "memes" existed in the 90s, the internet hadn't hit the mainstream as a way for dumb kids to take their dumb little in-jokes online. The meme of the '00s and since is just the same as what teenagers used to do in the '90s, pre-internet: Take some stupid joke or play on words, repeat it forever and make it a wink-wink thing. Like, "got a wilson" for having a woody. Or "Orobljew" if you turn a marlboro pack upside down. The age of meme culture online brought this extremely infantile 7th grade humor from junior high locker rooms into the mainstream. That's literally all it still is. Anyone who'd had a healthy childhood before the internet would recognize it as such.

[pjc50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion... has a chapter "Popular Follies in Great Cities", on the memes of the first half of the nineteenth century. They are very old indeed.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/636/636-h/636-h.htm#link2H_4...