Interestingly, the term "meme" itself was introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins long before the advent of the internet in its classical sense - back in 1976. In his book called The Selfish Gene, the scientist drew a witty parallel between biological and cultural information. And if the first one consists of basic units - genes, then the second one can be structured into similar units - "memes." Moreover, Dawkins believed that memes are also subject to mutations, artificial selection and, of course, natural selection, but this, you see, is overly rocket science for just a simple list of funny images.
In general, a sense of humor can be regarded as a kind of defensive reaction to difficult life situations. And indeed, if problems are perceived from a comical angle, they usually become less serious, less threatening. Or at least they look like they have. In the end, as the great French playwright Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais once said, "I hasten to laugh at everything - otherwise I would have to cry."
Or let's take a more recent literary example - just remember the boggarts from the wizarding world of Harry Potter. To cope with this creature, which took on the image of a person's deep fear, it was necessary to present your fear in a comical way. True, it still required a spell - but to ridicule our own fears, magic wands, believe me, are not that mandatory.
Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett and Reginald B. Adams, the authors of the book Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, published in 2011 by The MIT Press, tried to give another reason why we love jokes so much. "Humor is related to some kind of mistake. Every pun, joke and comic incident seemed to contain a fool of some sort - the 'butt' of the joke," Scientific American quotes Hurley. "And the typical response is enjoyment of the idiocy - which 'makes sense when it is your enemy or your competition that is somehow failing but not when it is yourself or your loved ones'". By the way, this fully explains why self-deprecation is so valued by people - and why it is not so common among them...
Be that as it may, each of us has our own sense of humor - for example, I sincerely laughed at some of the memes and pictures presented in this collection, so you may also crack up at them. In any case, please feel free to scroll this list to the very end, and share your own opinions on it in the comments below. And please don't forget to laugh a bit - after all, as the great comedian Charlie Chaplin said, 'a day without laughter is a day wasted.'
