The 1921 cartoon that is often regarded as the first meme ever. The comic was published in an edition of satirical magazine The Judge, published by the University of Iowa.
The 1921 cartoon that is often regarded as the first meme ever. The comic was published in an edition of satirical magazine The Judge, published by the University of Iowa.
But it’s not a meme. It’s just a two panel comic that just happens to be similar to the way some memes are formatted. A meme is a piece of media that slowly changes as it is passed around by the people who do so. It’s not a specific format of comic.
wobbly-cheese on
publishing was hard before humour was invented. and who goes to hardware stores wearing a tuxedo?
yParticle on
“My torch!”
fourthords on
^[*citation* ^*needed*]
PlagueOfGripes on
To be a meme it would need to be memetic. That is, used by others as a format for other iterating ideas while still using the same format. Operating only on the information provided, this isn’t a meme at all, just a funny image vaguely resembling current internet humor.
Memignorance on
In the original definition, a meme is a unit of information copied from one brain to another. A tune, a procedure, a word, an idea, a gesture, a drawing, an origami swan or how to catch a fish. Those are all memes. Memes complete for mental resources, replicate through various media, and undergo selection and mutation and recombination.
In that sense, whatever the first meme was, whatever it was it was before this.
In the modern definition of meme being a funny internet image, I don’t think it counts before like 1990 or something. Otherwise if it was just a funny image, you’d have to count old comics and maybe even some Egyptian pots or raunchy Japanese scrolls.
6 Comments
But it’s not a meme. It’s just a two panel comic that just happens to be similar to the way some memes are formatted. A meme is a piece of media that slowly changes as it is passed around by the people who do so. It’s not a specific format of comic.
publishing was hard before humour was invented. and who goes to hardware stores wearing a tuxedo?
“My torch!”
^[*citation* ^*needed*]
To be a meme it would need to be memetic. That is, used by others as a format for other iterating ideas while still using the same format. Operating only on the information provided, this isn’t a meme at all, just a funny image vaguely resembling current internet humor.
In the original definition, a meme is a unit of information copied from one brain to another. A tune, a procedure, a word, an idea, a gesture, a drawing, an origami swan or how to catch a fish. Those are all memes. Memes complete for mental resources, replicate through various media, and undergo selection and mutation and recombination.
In that sense, whatever the first meme was, whatever it was it was before this.
In the modern definition of meme being a funny internet image, I don’t think it counts before like 1990 or something. Otherwise if it was just a funny image, you’d have to count old comics and maybe even some Egyptian pots or raunchy Japanese scrolls.