RIP Meme Culture (1998 - 2024)

Memes are dead. Sometime around the new year I realized that there were almost no salient memes from 2024. The only real one I can think of is "Just a Chill Guy" and even that felt like it was aware of being halfhearted work in a dying format. The culture of sharing image macros has finally run its course. I feel oddly sentimental about it. So much of my experience of the web has been defined by trends in image sharing.

I place the start of meme culture with Demotivationals. They set the tone with a combination of image and text (Top and Bottom), and an easy to use template that is instantly recognizable. The next big wave was Lolcats which emerged from 4chan's Caturday circa 2006. Lolcats established the top text bottom text Impact font format that defined the next era of memes. Soon came rage comics and advice animals, then eventually absurd ones like dat boi.

There are plenty of chronicles of the eras in meme culture, but I am not seeing many others mourning their passing. It seems maybe reflective of the increasing atomization and isolation of the current web, where we don't even share a lowest common denominator visual language but are instead intimately aware of the recesses of whatever deep niche we have algorithmically tunneled into.

RIP Meme Culture (1998 - 2024)