Iykyk: The Secret Language Of Memes

Dr. Erica Brozovsky is a sociolinguist, a public scholar and a lover of words. She is the host of Otherwords, a PBS series on language and linguistics, and a professor of writing and rhetoric at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. You can find her at @ericabrozovsky on most platforms. Photo: Kelly Zhu 

If you’ve been on the internet anytime in the past 25 years, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a meme, shared a meme, or perhaps even created a meme. From the LOLcats and Advice Animals of the mid 2000s to the many emotions of Moo Deng, the world’s favorite pygmy hippopotamus, internet memes allow us to share pieces of media that we find funny, ironic or relatable.

Brat summer, moo deng autumn pic.twitter.com/S3kw0Titft

— Evie Richards (@evelynrichards_) September 12, 2024

Author Mike Godwin coined the term “internet meme” in the June 1993 edition of Wired magazine. However, that wasn’t the advent of the word meme. In his 1976 book, “The Selfish Gene,” evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins conceived the term to represent “ideas, behaviors, or styles that spread from person to person.” If you think that sounds a bit contagious, you’re absolutely correct. Much as contagion spreads, so does the imitation of ideas in the form of memes, circulating humor across society.

But who claims the crown of first ever internet meme? Is it the 1998 Hamster Dance gif created by ​​Deidre LaCarte as a GeoCities page?

Or is it the 1996 Autodesk Dancing Baby that has now become an NFT? (Creator Michael Girard claims so.)

Those definitely went viral, but are they memes? Perhaps not. A funny image (or gif or video) is just a funny image… or gif, or video… unless it achieves the two keys to memehood: inspiring creative variations (that are then copied and spread) and being imbued with cultural context, like that Pepperidge Farm meme (iykyk).

The Cow Guide, for example, might be considered a precursor to the internet meme.

Full of ASCII character drawings of variations on cows, The Cow Guide spread on Usenet in the ‘80s and ‘90s (pre-World Wide Web), with people adding new cows with every repost. While memes do exist offline, internet memes really took off in the 2000s within anonymous web communities like 4chan — which required images with each post — and Reddit and Tumblr, which debuted in 2003, 2005, and 2007, respectively. In the late aughts, internet curators like BuzzFeed and social media sites made memes more mainstream. And now they’re everywhere.

Meme culture is so quick, with turnaround and multiple iterations within minutes of an event happening. Even if the source material is a real and consequential topic, a funny meme brings attention, as humor and levity travels further and faster than seriousness and sincerity. 

Global and national events (like the Olympics and the U.S. presidential election) are goldmines for meme-able opportunities that allow information to spread faster than the traditional news cycle. Take, for instance, Stephen Nedoroscik, Team USA’s horse powerhouse, who became the subject of countless memes for his incredible performance and comparisons to Clark Kent.

Obsessed with this guy on the US men's gymnastics team who's only job is pommel horse, so he just sits there until he's activated like a sleeper agent, whips off his glasses like Clark Kent and does a pommel horse routine that helps deliver the team its first medal in 16 years. pic.twitter.com/0D1ZqJjFa1

— Megan (@MegWritesBooks) July 29, 2024

But how is it that memes are significant enough to have given rise to an entire academic field — memetics — and a category in the Library of Congress? The U.K.’s National Science and Media Museum is even putting this absolute unit on display as their first “digitally-born object.”

look at this absolute unit. pic.twitter.com/LzcQ4x0q38

— The Museum of English Rural Life (@TheMERL) April 9, 2018

Are memes useful for more than just laughs or, more realistically, those small exhales through the nose of mild amusement?

Definitively, yes. Here’s a comparison: A minute is a unit of time, a meter is a unit of measure, and a meme is a unit of culture. Today internet memes (which we’ll just call memes) can be described as “units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by internet users, creating a shared cultural experience.” The key part of that definition is the creation of a shared cultural experience. That seems pretty deep for something so trivial as a reaction GIF or silly picture with text slapped on it, but it’s true. 

Think of it this way: Have you ever made a reference, maybe to a movie, a song lyric, a book or a funny TikTok you saw, only to be met with silence or questioning looks from the group you’re talking to? When even just one other person gets the reference, you feel a sense of kinship; you know the two of you have something in common. This is what happens with memes. The internet is so vast now that we’re not all part of the same communities online, so when you “get” a meme, there’s a shared sense of humor and a feeling of belonging. And laughing together strengthens relationships and fosters community, making you feel close

Nowadays, memes have grown into the mainstream, many making it outside of their original subculture to become widely culturally relevant. And the faces behind some popular memes have gained celebrity status even offline. Case in point: In early November 2024, the people beyond three iconic memes of the 2010s met up, causing an internet uproar. 

There’s a meme out there for every facet of your identity and every interest you hold, from a corporate job to a keen interest in birdwatching to crossovers between Pokémon and Thomas the Tank Engine. When multiple specific interests collide in a meme… well there’s a reason the phrase “I’ve never had an original thought or experience” became so popular online.

That’s not even touching the surface of the weird, wild and wonderful world of niche memes. And that is exactly where the hyper-specific meme shines in its ability to broker connections. If you can parse through the layers of meaning and referential humor, then you’re part of the exclusive club of people in the know. 

Today, we can be defined by the media we consume, so understanding a meme, especially if it’s highly intertextual and referential, gives insight into who a person is and what corners of the internet they inhabit. Memes serve as inside jokes for subcommunities online, and the more iterations and riffs on the joke, the higher barrier to entry for outsiders, further cementing the group’s identity. If you understand a niche meme, you come to realize you’re part of a very specific collective of internet users, for better or for worse.

A meme is a digital manifestation of a shared online experience and interaction. They have set structures and social dynamics, and by intertextually referencing various pop culture tokens, they show affiliation and affinity to specific internet subgroups. They subtly ask if you understand, and if you do (and iykyk), you’re initiated into the club as “one of us, one of us!” Memes are not random. They’re created to appeal to a specific chosen audience who will then hopefully pass on the meme like a contagion of amusement because they identify with it. 

We share memes because we assume our audience, upon wading through the subtext, will find them worthwhile, whether because of humor or in-group membership. Whether posting into the void that is Tumblr or 4chan or Reddit, or sending memes directly to your friends or family in a form of digital pebbling — like penguins presenting smooth stones to their prospective mates in courtship rituals — spreading these internet cultural tokens is a bid for social connection. And through that connection, we show affiliation with others who understand the digital inside joke that is a shared piece of popular culture. Memes are cultural artifacts and efficient forms of communication to those who understand the context. And oftentimes they’re funny, which is just an added bonus. Put simply, humans crave connection, and memes just do it for us. 

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