![]() Usually, if it’s an image related meme, we'd want to have at least 20 pretty reasonably viral iterations of it.ĭon: It's a higher bar. Either remixes or, you know, meme iterations. So we focus on the highest impact ones! When we look for things to cover and either clean up from a user submission or to document ourselves from scratch, it's definitely things that have generated a fair amount of engagement. We have a limited number of things we can do per day. There is kind of a threshold that we’ll prioritize in our staff editing and staff documentation. With Know Your Meme, it's focused on internet memes, obviously. I also operate on a very broad definition of meme: any type of viral culturally transmitted information. There's not a number that you hit and then it's considered a meme. The memes that make the cut on the world’s biggest internet culture encyclopediaįadeke: At what point does something become a full fledged meme versus an idea or a popular tweet?ĭon: I don't have fully strict rules on this! I think it's kind of a spectrum and a continuum. Chief meme officers and corporations understanding internet meme cultureĪlso, subscribe to Cybernaut for long form essays about internet culture and more interviews with internet culture aficionados like Don.The most prolific meme generation and why Facebook is more than just boomer memes.Web3 memes and what some of y'all still don’t get about using multiple slurp juices on a single ape.Accepting that TikTok is a massive internet platform driving meme culture.How the evolution of technology happens in tandem with the evolution of memes.Hang out spots on the web and the addictive nature of social media.Distinct meme eras from 2012 and beyond.The convergent evolution of memes like Rickroll and wordcel vs shape rotator.The pain-staking process of uncovering the origins of a meme.What constitutes a meme and when content passes the meme threshold.Read on for a wide-ranging conversation about Know Your Meme and the evolution of internet memes: Don’s internet culture knowledge is as encyclopedic as the database he’s helped shape and his insights on the evolution of memes was a delight to dive into. ![]() ![]() I got to chat with the anthropology major turned internet documentarian behind the world’s greatest meme collection. His advice and expertise is often called on in the media to dissect the latest meme or internet culture craze, from memers taking over TikTok to the viral classic meme to NFT gold rush. He leads efforts for the site’s encyclopedia database for which they’re best known, but also their insights operation, Know Your Meme News, and Editorials section-as well as their video operations on Youtube, Snapchat, Facebook, and TikTok. He’s made nearly 100,000 contributions to the site, slowed only by moving into a managerial role at the company. For nearly 12 of those years-or what he describes as “an eternity in internet years”- Don Caldwell has been at the forefront at Know Your Meme, most recently as the Editor-in-Chief. Know Your Meme’s deep encyclopedic catalog of the memes that populate the web make it one of the most important sites on the internet.įor the past 15 years, Know Your Meme has documented internet culture from across the web-from 4chan and Reddit to Twitter and TikTok. The “ Surprised Pikachu” pulls its iconic image from Season 1, Episode 10, “Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village.” The Cake or Fake phenomenon was first jump started by an April Fool's Day joke by the website CakeWreck in 2011. The “ They Don’t Know” meme blew up in its current form in November 2020 on Twitter but actually originated in 2009 on the internet humor website Sad and Useless. It probably has a standalone page, tracing back the origins of the meme, archiving interesting iterations and spinoffs, and cataloging its significance to the internet and the wider world. If you’re seeing a meme again and again, populating your Twitter feed or recurring on your TikTok For You page, more likely than not, it’s been meticulously documented on Know Your Meme, an online encyclopedia cataloging internet memes. It could be the unsettling videos slicing into bags, plants, and animals that, inevitably, turn out to be cake. It could be the scribbled image of party goers and one man-off alone to the side, donning a party hat and holding a cup-with a caption that reads “They don’t know.” Maybe it’s the surprised Pikachu, accompanying a description of an entirely predictable outcome that nevertheless leaves someone stunned.
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