How Old Is The First Meme Ever?

Memes,
in the sense of highly relatable funny pictures, videos, GIFs, etc.
oftentimes with a caption, are everywhere these days. From your
computer screens to smartphones, TVs, magazines, and all the way down
to graffiti and even tattoos. Yes, there are crazy people who tattoo
memes on their skin. Like, come on, you’re gonna be stuck with that
image of the Overly Attached Girlfriend (or something way worse) on
your, umm, let’s say, rear. You should never ink passing fads on
your body.

Either
way, the memes are at an all-time high right now, with some people
even calling themselves meme experts or meme lords. Must be the best
job ever. With so many of these funny memes around it’s very easy
to forget how it all started. Have you ever asked yourself what was
the first meme that saw the light of day? Even though every other
relatable funny picture nowadays is taken from the Spongebob cartoon,
the very first meme was posted in a magazine, but it was just as
hilarious! Here it is:

funny picture | How Old Is The First Meme Ever? | Brain Berries

As
you can tell, it’s a classic “expectations vs reality”
template. And it’s pretty good, considering its age. So when was
the first meme made? Almost 100 years ago! This picture was found in
a satirical magazine called “The Judge”, which was published in
1921, making it the first meme in history. In my opinion, it still
holds up. From what you can see, it’s still alive and kicking.

the first meme in history | How Old Is The First Meme Ever? | Brain Berries

Since
we’re discussing old funnies, here are a few more ancient memes, some
of which are still pure gold!

It’s
a trap!

For
those of you like to call Star Wars “Star Trek” this is Admiral
Akbar, from the world’s greatest sci-fi franchise. Star Wars: The
Return of the Jedi was a great movie, but this meme is even better.
And it’s because it’s so relatable, and can be used in almost any
situation, where you smell something fishy.

All
your base are belong to us!

If
you think this phrase sounds weird grammatically, you’d be correct.
It was mistranslated from Japanese in a 1989 Mega Drive game “Zero
Wing”. For some unknown reason this phrase became a real hit in
early 2000s, especially with the gamer community. Blizzard even
included it as a cheat code in StarCraft, which gave you 100,000 of
each resource.

ROFLCOPTER

ASCII art has always been the upper echelon of memes. Most of them were annoying as hell but very memorable, which was the point. It’s basically a depiction of a helicopter but instead of the blades it has LOL and ROFL. It’s dumb but it works! Also it’s fun to say out loud – ROFLCOPTER. Heheh.