Everyone is busy with their own lives, so it becomes really difficult to stay in touch daily. Memes come in handy that way. We can just share one and let people know that we are thinking of them. And their faces still pop up in our heads when we see something relatable, funny, or even weirdly random.
In fact, memes are so popular that stats show Instagram users share more than 1 million memes per day. And here’s the interesting part: as they are passed on, they often change too. It’s hardly surprising that in one example, researchers found 121,605 distinct variants of a particular meme across 1.14 million status updates.
This whole idea of a meme evolving and spreading is what gave it the name. Although today it is associated with anything funny, it surprisingly has academic origins. You heard it right. And we owe it all to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins for the term. In 1976, he coined the word “meme” in his book The Selfish Gene.
He wanted to explain how cultural ideas evolve and spread just like human genes that replicate within our bodies. Similarly, jokes, habits, and catchphrases also change as they pass from one person to another.
Well, Richard Dawkins borrowed from the root of the French word “même,” which means “same,” and combined it with the Greek word for “imitate” to coin the word “meme.” He wanted it to sound like “gene” but also wanted it to imply “memory.”
Little did he know that his coined word would also evolve and become known for something funny. After all, memes bring smiles to millions of faces every day.
The first digital memes emerged in internet culture in the early 1990s. It’s believed that the famous “Dancing Baby” was one of the very first ones. It was just a 3D animated kid dancing along to a catchy beat, but it went viral like never before, and everyone was laughing or vibing with it.
It stood out so much because it was so strange and set the scene for the memes that followed. It was also very shareable even before social media as we know it was a thing. People were instantly hooked and passed it on at a massive scale.
Researcher and educator Phil Edwards spoke about this Dancing Baby and explained, “More people have played with this newborn than any other infant in history. The thing that makes it the first meme is that it was a remix from conception to international glory.”
“In true meme fashion, this idea was flexible enough to go from blockbuster commercials to national TV, and it became the first meme. Great memes aren’t just the work of one person or a team. They’re the work of a bunch of people coming together to try to make it even bigger,” he noted.
Today, we have come a long way from the Dancing Baby meme. Sharing them has become easier, and when life gets too serious, humor is what keeps us going. Besides, laughter has plenty of perks.
Stress-related cortisol can damage our hippocampus, which supports memory and learning. A damaged hippocampus can’t function properly. However, studies highlight that laughter helps reduce cortisol levels within us. Of course, this improves the condition of our hippocampus, which enhances memory.
