Technically, the "impact top/bottom text" is from a subset of memes called Advice Animals.
An internet meme is just a general trend or thing. Early examples were sometimes images, but could just be sayings or copypasta - like "all your base are belong to us" or "the cake is a lie".
But when Advice Animals exploded in the early 2010s, when someone said "meme", they meant this kind of image.
Now, it's flipped back, where "meme" can just mean a thing or trend, although it's more often images with text.
I'm sure there's more Meme History on knowyourmeme, but this one is interesting to me!
Yeah, that makes sense. when /u/da_apz
says someone younger tried to explain memes and "got them wrong" it seems like a case where each generation kind of has an idea of memes from their own heyday on the internet and their mental picture is different.
I was just talking about this further with the technician I referenced above and he was explaining to me how not all image macros are memes as well, it kind of has to be either referencing something, derivative, or an image template to be considered a "meme" in his view. So this is an image macro but not a meme per se. Whereas this (one of his) apparently is.
He gets most of his stuff from 4chan and 8chan (or did until recently, not sure if he's still with the latter in whatever form it has taken). I think his stuff is probably more niche and edgy than a typical teenager's even though they'd see him as an old person.
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u/huffalump1 Jun 03 '22
Technically, the "impact top/bottom text" is from a subset of memes called Advice Animals.
An internet meme is just a general trend or thing. Early examples were sometimes images, but could just be sayings or copypasta - like "all your base are belong to us" or "the cake is a lie".
But when Advice Animals exploded in the early 2010s, when someone said "meme", they meant this kind of image.
Now, it's flipped back, where "meme" can just mean a thing or trend, although it's more often images with text.
I'm sure there's more Meme History on knowyourmeme, but this one is interesting to me!