While we do tend to think of memes as a direct product of the internet age, in reality, they are actually older. You may already know the factoid that it was Richard Dawkins who may have coined the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, a quite fighting detail, given the content of this list. It would be over twenty more years before this term was used for internet content.
Setting the name aside, some researchers believe that images and ideas that we would identify as memes have actually been used for centuries. “Memetic communication,” as some researchers call it, is, indeed, very very common for humans in general. If you think about it, an inside joke is basically a verbal meme.
Now that we have significantly better ways to make “content,” memes have moved from specific references we share with our friends and family and have become digital. Now, with just a little bit of effort, nearly anyone can make images, videos, gifs, and much more as long as they have a computer and internet connection.
Given the fact that many online memes follow certain templates, it’s no surprise to see that stock images show up in them all the time. In general, under US law at least, most memes fall under fair use laws, as long as you aren’t trying to sell them. However, there are cases where famous memes have been taken from copyrighted images and then used by a company or organization in a way that is very clearly not fair use.
