Now That We’ve Hit Peak Meme, Let’s Take A Deep Dive Into Meme Culture

The First Meme

Photo credit: @YoRHaw / Twitter

The first meme as we know it wasn’t in the 1990s, or even in 1976 when Dawkin’s coined the term. It was actually a 1921 cartoon that appeared in a satirical magazine called The Judge. The internet recently dug up the old comic strip and people were freaking out at the similar image format and captioning.

It’s validity was fact-checked and now everyone is convinced that it was the first ever meme. It’s been nearly a century, but this meme shows our sense of humor is still self-deprecating. It’s the 1921 version of how you look with the flower crown Snapchat filter vs. without it.