About

Memes Then, Memes Now refers to exploitable charts comparing more straightforward memes of the late 2000s and early-2010s to the more surreal and shitpost memes of the late 2010s.

Origin

One of the earliest known memes to apply the idea of comparing the surreal evolution of online humor appeared on March 1st, 2016 on Facebook page Kitfisto-core^[1] and referenced The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise.

Spread

The format began to take a more definite shape by the end of 2016. On December 24th, 2016, Redditor lordtriad^[2] uploaded a comparison to /r/dankmemes comparing the Advice Animal Business Cat to Gordon Ramsay's Lamb Sauce, gaining over 19,000 notes (shown below).

Over the course of 2017, several variations on the format appeared, particularly with surreal memes that appeared over the course of the year. On Reddit's /r/MemeEconomy, a post from June 29th, 2017 comparing Matrix Morpheus and How to Talk to Short People gained over 550 upvotes (shown below, left). In February of 2018, a post comparing Success Kid and a Surreal Meme appeared on Imgur and Dopl3r (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References