this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

This one is also nice and true until today

https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/3428/103-Year-Old-Comic-Describes-What-Would-Happen-If-Pocket-Telephones-Are-Invented

Same with Musk's "revolutionary" Hyperloop, nothing new with the same people

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

truly amazing meme

thanks!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Pocket phone prediction is more spot on than the cartoonist themselves realized, Amish men got shunned because of the emergency alert test going off

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Their hyper loop drawing is missing the Costco tube communication sound, a nice "thoonk!" Noise.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

The thing he didn't foresee was the ability to turn the phone on silent mode.

We can put it on silent,, but that doesn't mean everybody does when they should!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

The atmospheric railway! Patent US 21,652, system for turning rats into viscera.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's not a political cartoon.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think that OP's sentiment is more against gatekeeping what a meme is. Like if this is a meme, than political cartoons are too

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Defining words properly isn't gatekeeping, it's categorization.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Well, defining words narrowly is pretty much the definition of gatekeeping. I hope you're not gatekeeping what gatekeeping means?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You aren't a real gatekeeper if you haven't gatekept gatekeeping before

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Ah yes, no true gatekeeper.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Defining things properly isn't gatekeeping. You said narrow. I didn't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

But who decides what the proper definition is? Your proper definition is for me a narrow if it doesn't take into account the common usage. The definition of meme is widening. Cope with it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Literally all the things here including comments are memes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Correct

So basically what I'm saying is that there's a lot of people gatekeeping what a meme is without understanding what a meme is

Or if they're referring to the first of the definitions in the screenshot I shared, not understanding that different people can find things humorous

The biggest meme of all is our spoken languages

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

People no longer understand what meme means. Memes are old as time. Stories, jokes, funny images. Pretty much every form of information can be a meme.

So, yes, this is a slightly older meme.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Eh, what "meme" actually means and what it currently means in popular culture are two different things. People never understood what it really means, but the most commonly used meaning of it is constantly changing.

The word itself was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976. But it wasn't a commonly used term until around 2005, even then it was used exclusively for specific things and few people knew its actual meaning. But memes in their literal sense have almost always been a thing, and they're common among many species.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Your post is an "uh, actually" version of what I said. You are not disagreeing with me but still somehow making it sound like you do.

I meant the term meme never applied to only sharing "image macros" but to inside jokes, coming shared references, common cultural knowledge. It is an absolutely fascinating term and concept if used like that, and I wish more people would understand it and use it in the same way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What species aside from Homo Sapiens use memes?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

In Dawkins' sense of the word, memes are 'units of cultural inheritance'. So melodic movements in bird song, that birds teach each other, could be considered memes. Any other place you might find cultural inheritance, you could describe it in terms of memes. Memes were simply meant to be a cultural analogy to genes.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The chad vs. virgin meme was originally the reverse. Virgin did things the way you would expect them to be done, and Chad did things in a reckless or incorrect way.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

There's a much longer use case now for "chad good" and that must make the originally intended users seethe. gigachad

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The sheer gall required to condemn "yellow press" while pulling this naked manipulative baloney. "Oh yeah well your customers are like this, 'Durrr! Duhhh!' That's what you sound like! Yes-huh!"

The smarm was less thick when Colbert opened a show with "Hey America, have you lost weight?"

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Were photos really called flashlights in 1920?

[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes. Or rather, it was flashlight photography, as opposed to "old fashioned" photography where you had to hold perfectly still for several seconds. Of course, flash powder existed before, but it was messy, dangerous, flammable and left a layer of white ash everywhere. Most people today would only recognise the pan full of magnesium flash powder from cartoons, but you can probably guess it wasn't popular at parties or with hobbyists.

In the 1920s, flash bulbs were the awesome new thing, meaning you could take split second photos, and those could be action shots, and not staged and posed portraits. Taking a flashlight was doable quickly and easily, and of course as we all know, most random photos by random people aren't great.

The name photograph was already used for the old thing, so "flashlight" became the obvious abbreviation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Memes are truly as old as the human race.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Hell one could argue that memes are as old as social constructs

So they could in all likelihood predate moden humans

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Language is an in-joke that got wildly out of hand.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are animal paintings in caves memes too?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Literally yes

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Meme has come to mean cartoon. Your usage is no different.

Meme doesn't NOT originally mean cartoon, it just means a viral idea.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Richard Dawkins, is it you?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

The gods are memes. Ideas that have reproduced and evolved to secure their own existence, so much so that they can accurately be said to have their own agency, as forces directing the will of society. This proves the existence of gods.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I'd argue that the "modern meme" of photo with caption are just a modification of demotivational posters

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Meme actually means something and isn't just "funny image." We no longer have a word for what a meme actually is. I didn't care about the meaning of ironic changing because there's still words for that but this is different.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Meme from the American Civil War

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

oh ya I forgot about this one, total classic political cartoon meme too

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Going to be hard to beat fire and pointy sticks for old memes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Always dipping on the chinless...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Define meme, does the Sator Square count?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

So, uh, yes.

Yes (IMO) it does count.

It was passed down for centuries in a non-gene based way among people

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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