internet meme
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AI overview
An internet meme is a concept, image, or joke that spreads from person to person online, often being modified or recreated along the way. It matters because it has become a major form of how people communicate, share humor, and express ideas in digital spaces.
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Article
An Internet meme, or meme (/miːm/), 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 or AI slop.