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Memes
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What Makes a Meme Go Viral?
A viral meme spreads because it is easy to copy, fun to remix and meaningful to a community. Here is…
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Popular Memes Right Now
A sourced look at popular memes, from Doge and Rickrolling to the traits that make formats spread and last.
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Meme Templates: Classic Images and Their Backstories
A meme template is a reusable image that people recaption. Here are the backstories of Distracted Boyfriend and Success Kid,…
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The Meme Lifecycle: From Niche Joke to Mainstream to Cringe
How memes move from niche in-jokes to mainstream saturation to cringe, with sourced examples from lolcats to meme stocks.
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Meme Formats Explained: How Recognizable Structures Work
What a meme format is, how formats spread, and how the distracted boyfriend and lolcats show the pattern.
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What Is a Meme? Origins, Meaning and Modern Use
A sourced guide to the meme: Dawkins’s 1976 coinage, Godwin’s 1993 internet usage, landmark examples from the Dancing Baby to…
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Image Macros: The Caption-on-Photo Format Explained
What an image macro is, where the name came from, and how lolcats and advice animals shaped meme formats.
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How to Make a Meme: Understanding Structure and Timing
A sourced guide to meme structure, the Top Text Bottom Text layout, Impact type and the timing of a format’s…
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Exploitable Memes: Why Some Images Get Remixed Endlessly
An exploitable meme is a single image built to be edited and recaptioned again and again. Here is where the…