Is there a fundamental internet meme that has had such a major impact that it would have notable repercussions if it had somehow disappeared?
Rickrolling, possibly.
Or yeet. I think modern culture might be noticeably different if we didn’t have yeet.
Would love a world without rickrolling tbh. One of the jokes I never really got
Man, I don’t know why a random Rick Astley song replaced goatse, but I am so glad it did.
I’ll agree to that for sure. A marked improvement
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AYBABTU. It was one of the first “real” memes that grew organically. If youtube had existed back then, the creators would probably have been set for life off the views from that one video alone.
But back then, they did it for the lulz…
Somehow this is the first time I’ve ever seen, “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” shortened that way and it left me thinking it was something even more arcane 😂
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I sometimes think back to when Loss was first posted. I was a teenager hanging out on Shacknews and Somethingawful. The memes started pouring out, people couldn’t stop mocking it. Seemed kinda cruel to me, obviously the author was trying to share something personal and painful with his audience. But the internet was a cruel place. People just didn’t give a fuck.
I remember thinking it’ll blow over before too long. Boy howdy did I underestimate the internet.
To be honest i discovered this meme no so long ago, but i feel like the message and resilience of it is kind of universal. Everyone understand whats’s its essence, everyone can relate. I never though i would be the one to bring it up anywhere, but here i am, posting it, years after the original. And its still relevant!
Doge, it would make crytobros slightly less cringe (VERY slightly)
They’d still find a way
The I Can Haz Cheeseburger? kickoff meme of the happy Russian Blue cat.
I wasted sooooo much time on ICHC and it was due to that memeified cat picture that started it all.
Probably the one we already removed. I’d tell you which I’ve but unfortunately I forgot.
Don’t blame yourself, last month’s Emergency Broadcast Test wiped it from everyone’s memory.
LOLCats?
I’m thinking you have to go way back, something like lolcats, advice duck, ceiling cat, something where if you remove it from the equation meme culture just straight up does not develop, or does not develop the same way or at the same time.
Before LOLcats was Demotivational posters, which were just the generic motivational posters, but with a humorous twist. Motivational posters had a black border with text on the bottom, which made it easy to swap out in MS Paint with funny text back in the early Internet days. It was the first caption memes, which became even more popular when people started doing it with cute cat pics too.
I still have a large folder of black boxes. One day they’ll be worth something!
Ah remember Nyan cat :-D
Lightsaber kid? Mostly just because iirc he got bullied for it quite a bit.
Goatse or two girls one cup. Or lemon party.
Does it have to be an internet meme? Also does God count as a meme?
Meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene in 1976, and defined as the equivalent of a gene but for more abstract ideas (because the gene is ultimately just a unit of information as well). I don’t remember for sure if religion is specifically an example he personally used, but if it’s not it’s very comfortably in the same vein.
Religion is a memeplex in Dawkins’s conception
Well if you’re a time traveler, you’d want to remove the very first meme for maximum ripple effect, so prevent people from questioning Bielefeld.
If Dat Boi had never appeared online, all those people might still be alive.
I can’t imagine the modern internet without Among Us
Fucking wojacks. Disappearance of this cancer will bring significant benefit to me specifically because I wouldn’t have to endure those ugly drawings. Fucking trollface was better than this hell.
Rage comics were better and were actually a modern form of Commedia dell’arte or Masked Theatre, in such that it used stock characters and so plot could be both meaningful but simple. Wojacks lack implied character and context, so story or character depth requires explanation which doesn’t usually work as well with that form
He-Man Fabulous Secret Powers
