Meme Templates

About

Meme Templates are the commonly used patterns and elements composing the ideas and behaviors in memes. All memes such as in phrases, images, videos, and other mediums, mimic some aspect of a preexisting meme template.

Origin

The first Internet meme template, and by extension the first Internet meme, was arguably spam. The first example of "spamming" on a form of the Internet can be traced back to a mass email sent out by a Digital Equipment Corporation employee dated May 1st, 1978.^[10] Spam as a term is based on a Monty Python sketch in which the 'spam' appears on every item in a menu, complete with a Spam Song (shown below).^[20] The template for the spam/spamming meme is the act sending the same message repeatedly, often indiscriminately to multiple users which causes annoyance. Spam became popularized as a meme in the early 90s.

Spread

Micspam

Mic spam, first mentioned April 30th, 2006 (shown below), is an evolution of spam's meme template of sending a repeated, often indiscriminately annoying message to multiple people.^[13] Mic spam (often condensed to “Micspam”) refers to the act of continuously making noises, playing music or talking into a microphone via voice chat system in a multiplayer online game. Because it can pose distraction to others players, this practice is generally viewed as obnoxious trolling or spamming by other players and often performed solely for the entertainment of the spammer.

Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law is the second major Internet meme to come into popular usage. Godwin's Law as an idea was first recognized by Mike Godwin in 1990 as a natural law of Usenet. The template for Godwin's Law is the act of pointing out "if you mention Adolf Hitler or Nazis within a discussion thread, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in" (shown below).

Rules of the Internet

Rules of the Internet (shown below) are a reappearance of Godwin's Law's template of stating an observation of a common online social behavior. The Rules of the Internet is a list of protocols and conventions, originally written to serve as a guide for those who identified themselves with the Internet group Anonymous. The list serves as a summation of popular catchphrases and axioms commonly associated with 4chan. The idea of making a set of rules, similar to Netiquette^[11] for 4chan users, was initially talked about on Anonymous-related IRC channels before an entry was submitted to Encyclopedia Dramatica sometime in late 2006 and archived^[12] on January 10th, 2007.

1) Do not talk about rules 2-33
34) There is porn of it. No exceptions.
35) The exception to rule #34 is the citation of rule #34.
36) Anonymous does not forgive.
37) There are no girls on the internet.
38) A cat is fine too
39) One cat leads to another.
40) Another cat leads to zippocat.
41) Everything is someone’s sexual fetish.
42) It is delicious cake. You must eat it.
43) It is a delicious trap. You must hit it.
44) /b/ sucks today.
45) Cock goes in here.
46) They will not bring back Snacks.
47) You will never have sex.
48) ???
49) Profit.
50. You can not divide by zero.

Memes

Memes on the Internet appeared first as spam in 1978, then as Godwin's Law in 1990, before evolving into a broad range of thousands of memes over the next decades documented on sites such as KnowYourMeme, TV Tropes, and Encyclopedia Dramatica. The definition of memes as any behavior, idea, or belief spreadable through non-genetic means serves as the meme template all other memes are both built upon and defined by.^[18] A key component to the meme concept is that the information is able to self-replicate, and in turn undergoes a type of natural selection, much like genes. With the commercialization of the internet in 1995,^[19] modern memes gradually became more strongly associated with internet memes. Internet memes are associated with media, catchphrases, and more general trends that spread throughout various outlets on the World Wide Web like chat clients, blogs, social networking sites, email, forums and image boards.

Meme Generation Sites

Meme generation sites catalog meme templates for usage in spreading and altering internet memes. The site Memes appeared around January of 1997 and is one of the longest running meme generation sites still being used.^[14] Img Flip appeared around July of 2008 and is notable for its extra memeing features which include a video-to-gif maker, image-to-gif maker, pie chart maker, and demotivational poster maker.^[15] Meme Generator appeared around April of 2009 and allows people to make and join meme groups devoted to specific memes and memetic cultures.^[16] Make A Meme appeared around March of 2013 and offers a straightforward interface displaying massive scrollable grids and lists of meme templates.^[17]

Various Examples

Images

Related Memes

Image Macros

Image Macros are captioned images that typically consist of a picture and a witty message or a catchphrase. On discussion forums and imageboards, image macros can be also used to convey feelings or reactions towards another member of the community, similar to it predecessor emoticons. It is one of the most prevalent forms of internet memes. The earliest captioned images were made by American photographer Harry Whitter Frees^[1] in 1905. The picture consisted of a photograph of a cat dressed in a robe sitting on a chair and a caption that says: “What’s Delaying My Dinner?” It is also considered the prototype of LOLcats that became immensely popular a century later.

Internet Slang

Internet Slang consists of a number of different ways of speaking, sub-languages, expressions, spelling techniques and idioms that have obtained most of their meaning on the Internet. These different kinds of language can be either known as chatspeak^[2], SMS speak^[3] or IM language.^[4] Intentional misspellings may have stemmed from space restriction on instant messaging and SMS services, including Twitter. However, some of these mispellings have come from accidental typographical errors that have been embraced by the community. One example of this is “Teh,” an error when typing “The.” Deliberate usage of Teh dates back to the late 1990s in real-time gaming chats and IRC channels and was later popularized as a term in LOLspeak.

Copypasta

Copypasta is internet slang for any block of text that gets copied and pasted over and over again, typically disseminated by individuals through online discussion forums and social networking sites. Although it shares some characteristics with spam in the sense they’re both unsolicited (and often considered a nuisance), copypastas are mainly spread through human operators whereas the latter is automatically generated by electronic messaging systems. This simple concept of “manually copying text from one place and pasting it elsewhere” has been in practice since the innovation of basic text-editing commands (copy/cut/paste) in the early 1980s and subsequent rise of spamming in the early 1990s. American computer scientist Larry Tesler^[6] is widely cited as the pioneer of “cut and paste” commands, who first transferred the function into a computer text-editing software in 1974.

Exploitables

Exploitables are image templates that are missing a defining characteristic and easy to edit. They are used very frequently on imageboards like 4chan. Characterized most of the time by a template (either a blank space or a slight draft), exploitables are recognizable by their easy-to-replicate look, mainly due to the fact that they don’t need extensive editing knowledge and can be modified by basic programs such as MS Paint or GIMP.

When X / X When

When X / X When is a common meme template used in a myriad of other meme templates to convey or imply how strongly or in what way someone, a group, or something(s) would or did react under a specified circumstance, such as "when the guac is extra" or "when the impostor is sus". This meme appears as a snowclone in titles of image macros/videos, and in images as text before or after a reaction image inside the image. The first documented example of the 'when x / x when' meme template being used on the Internet as a meme was on January 10th, 2008 by the user Stolz (shown below).

Search Interest

External References