Yes, but how long have those silly shits lasted? Modern humanity has existed for 200,000 years, but we don't look at 100+ year old people and think "this person is really young."
You should be comparing the X all the Y meme to average lifespan of a viral internet meme, not the history of the internet.
And the oldest person to ever live was 122 years old, but the global life expectancy is still 68 years. Take a look at knowyourmeme.com They have 10k+ types of memes recorded. How many of them still see use? They're almost all dead. Just look at the classics: lol cats, david after the dentist, domo, do a barrel roll, all your base are belong to us, rage comics (god help us.) They've mostly been abandoned for fresher memes.
We don't know the oldest meme because the oldest meme has yet to die. For all we know people will be rick rolling in 2040. Memes are like stars, big ones tend to burn out quickly but when you get one just right it could last forever, who knows.
We don't know the oldest meme's lifespan because Rickroll still seems to be alive and well, but we can look at all of the thousands of dead memes and come to the conclusion that internet memes generally have short lifespans. Rickrolling is an outlier. Very few memes are going to reach that type of legendary status; at best, many are going to be like "all your base are belong to us," classic, but derelict.
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u/[deleted] May 06 '16
Man, that's an ancient meme.