To understand what inspired the owner of the Instagram page, Bored Panda reached out to @lilcasper.exe for an interview. They started this page in 2018 with barely 50 followers.
“I did it because I used to run meme pages when I was 12/13 on Facebook. So I kind of missed that and ended up making this page. I also wanted a way to promote my music. The inspiration for the name Casper was a Facebook page inspired by Casper the Friendly Ghost. So I just took inspiration from my page and added “lil” to it,” they noted.
When we spoke to the owner about the page’s specific brand of humor, they stressed that it’s for people who are chronically online, like themselves. They said, “I think it could also sometimes hit a mainstream audience, but I love irony a lot, which is a subgenre of memes.”
There’s no denying that memes are as important for digital culture as soft toys are for kids. Today, we even associate the word itself with something funny, but surprisingly enough, it has academic origins. Long before animals or celebrities took over the internet, Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene.
He wanted a way to explain how cultural ideas spread, so he compared them to biological genes. He believed that just as genes replicate and evolve in our bodies, catchphrases, jingles, jokes, and habits also replicate as they are passed from one person to another.
Speaking about a post that went viral, the owner told us that it happened in 2018.
“I was getting other meme pages to promote this page, and I set a goal to reach 100,000 followers in 1 year, which my friends said was impossible. So I kept adapting, and at some point during the year, I created a song that went semi-viral to promote my page, which skyrocketed my followers to 100,000,” they explained.
From then on, they have created many viral meme trends and just memes, grown many other pages, and now have established their music career as well as their friends' music careers!
We also conversed with the owner about the biggest misconception people have about running a popular meme account. They think that it’s about how a lot of people say that meme accounts are either run by bots or by greedy people.
“It’s sad because I do see a lot of AI pages and greedy page owners that usually sell out very easily. But I’ve always stayed true to myself during all this time. Never took a gambling advertisement. Just promoted my music. And my friends’ music as well. I’ve also met a lot of cool page owners throughout the years that also stuck to their morals and didn’t cave in,” the owner concluded.
A surprising fact is that this word of the hour showed up in a 1953 New York Times crossword puzzle. It quizzed people about the French word for “same,” which is none other than “même.” Decades later, Richard Dawkins borrowed from that French root (along with the Greek word for “imitate”) to invent the word we use today.
The fellow was just looking for a catchy, one-syllable word that sounded like “gene” and hinted at “memory” to describe ideas that replicate and spread. Well, I think he did a pretty fabulous job, as most digitally active folks are not just familiar with it but also use it as a means of communication.
The very first digital memes started popping up during the wild, early days of the 1990s internet. Many people believe that the bizarre “Dancing Baby” is the pioneer in this hilarious field. This eerie, 3D-animated child cha-cha-ing to a catchy beat went insanely viral. From early email chains to pop culture TV spots, it was everywhere!
What makes the Dancing Baby so special is that it actually created the blueprint for modern internet culture. It was delightfully strange, weirdly funny, and extremely shareable long before social media as we know it today even existed. It proved that if you give people something hilariously memorable, they are more likely to pass it along.
Speaking about the Dancing Baby meme, researcher and educator Phil Edwards explains, “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 adds.
