How to make a meme: pick a reusable image, add short text in a setup-and-punchline order, and post it while the format is still rising. Image macros dominated the 2000s, and lolcats spread widely from 2007.
Every example below builds on the idea of a meme as a unit of culture that people copy and change.
What a meme needs before anyone makes one
The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, as Wikipedia’s internet meme entry records, and the internet sense of the term was coined by Mike Godwin in 1993. Those two dates matter because they explain what a maker is actually building: something designed to be copied. Limor Shifman’s 2013 work tied the idea firmly to online culture and gave later writers a vocabulary for it.
Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear examined Dawkins’s three traits of successful memes: fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Fidelity, they found, is better described online as replicability, because people remix a meme while keeping its core message. A good draft therefore passes three tests:
- Replicable: a stranger can swap in new text or a new subject without breaking the joke.
- Spreadable: it carries humor, a pop-culture reference, or two incongruous elements side by side. The cited examples are “All your base are belong to us” (humor), Star Wars Kid renditions (intertextuality) and Bert is Evil (juxtaposition).
- Durable enough: it makes sense a week later, not only in the hour it was posted.
The shared template is what makes copying cheap. The meme format is the part that stays fixed while the caption changes, and picking a format with a clear fixed part is the first real decision.
The top-text, bottom-text structure
An image macro, also called a “Top Text, Bottom Text” meme, is a picture with text superimposed, usually at the top and bottom edges. Image macros were one of the most common forms of internet meme in the 2000s, and the layout carries a built-in joke structure: the top line sets up, the bottom line delivers.
Per Wikipedia’s image macro entry, the text at the top is typically only an introduction and the text at the bottom is the main message. Writing for that rhythm means keeping the top line neutral and saving the surprise for the bottom line. A caption that gives away the punchline at the top leaves the bottom line with nothing to do.
Stock-character macros show the same logic. In the “advice animal” family, Bad Luck Brian captions describe unfortunate situations, Success Kid captions depict everyday good luck, and Scumbag Steve captions describe an unfriendly action. The character fixes the emotional tone, so the writer only supplies the situation. That constraint is why a three-second read is enough.
Newer styles grew from the same base. Image macros served as the foundation for object labelling, blank filling, text changing and deconstruction memes that emerged in the mid to late 2010s, according to the same entry. Demotivators and rage comics were earlier relatives of the format.
Choosing the image and the typeface
Geoffrey Lee designed Impact in the 1960s for a British foundry, Stephenson Blake, and it was released in 1968. Lee recalled that the typeface was part of a craze for condensed sans-serifs in Europe, and he explained its goal in 2004, shortly before his death, as getting as much ink on paper as possible in a given size.
That density is why the typeface suits memes. Impact is frequently used in image macros with a white fill and a black stroke, because its consistency, readability and accessibility hold up on any background image. Monotype held the design rights and licensed the font to Microsoft for Windows in the 1980s and 1990s, which put it on most desktop computers. Lee also released Impact Wide himself in 2002.
Image choice follows the same readability rule. The strongest lolcat photos were expressive animals with clear faces, and the first notable image macros were exactly that: lolcats, which pair a cat photograph with text. Practical checks for any source image:
- One clear subject or face, so the reader knows where to look in under a second.
- Empty space near the top and bottom edges where the caption can sit without covering the subject.
- A picture the maker has the right to reuse, or a self-taken photo; the site neither promotes nor links to image-editing products.
Timing: when a meme peaks and fades
Timing is the least visible part of how to make a meme. The lolcat format has a documented timeline: caturday.com was registered on April 30, 2005, lolcats.com on June 14, 2006, and the first image on “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?” was posted on January 11, 2007. A maker posting in 2005 reached a small in-group; a maker posting after 2007 reached a mass audience that already knew the joke.
Internet memes propagate in a pattern similar to infectious disease, as shown by the Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model. Applied to a template (see Wikipedia’s meme entry for the original concept), people are first unaware of it, then actively sharing it, then tired of it. A meme that experiences an exceptionally high peak is unlikely to endure unless it is uniquely distinct, while a meme without such a peak that coexists with others tends to have greater longevity.
The practical rule: early in a format’s rise, originality is rewarded; at the peak, polish matters less than speed; after the peak, only a clearly new angle works. The meme lifecycle breaks these phases down in more detail.
Miltner’s study of lolcats traced a path from an in-joke among computer and gaming communities on an anonymous imageboard to a broader source of humor and emotional support. As content moves between communities, it is reinterpreted to suit each one, often away from the creator’s original intent. A maker should expect the work to be changed and plan for it.
A repeatable workflow
The 2000s lolcat era gives a concrete model of a workflow in four steps, each tied to a documented practice.
- Pick the format. Choose a template with a fixed part, such as a stock-character macro, rather than inventing one.
- Write the caption in two beats. Setup on top, payoff at the bottom, as in the Top Text, Bottom Text layout.
- Set the type for legibility. White Impact with a black stroke is the standard answer.
- Check the joke for replicability. If another person can reuse the template in a fresh context, it has the fidelity-as-replicability quality described above.
Lolcat captions even developed their own syntax, which was later used as the basis for LOLCODE, an esoteric programming language. The 2016 “Ceiling Cat” taxidermy installation by Eva and Franco Mattes entered the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a sign of how far a simple captioned photo can travel. Dominic Basulto argued in The Washington Post in 2013 that heavy use of memes by marketing and advertising had eroded their original cultural value, so a maker aiming for lasting work should favor honest jokes over promotion.
Frequently asked questions
What is the simplest way to make a meme?
Use an image macro: a picture with a short setup line on top and a payoff line at the bottom, which Wikipedia’s image macro entry describes as the “Top Text, Bottom Text” layout.
Which font do most memes use?
Impact, designed by Geoffrey Lee and released in 1968, usually in white with a black stroke for readability on any background image.
How long does a meme last?
There is no fixed span. Per the SIR model cited on Wikipedia’s internet meme page, a meme with an exceptionally high peak is unlikely to endure unless it is uniquely distinct, while one without such a peak that coexists with others tends to last longer.
Who invented the word meme?
Richard Dawkins coined it in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, and Mike Godwin coined the term Internet meme in 1993.
