Internet meme formats have evolved through distinct eras. The 1990s were dominated by email forwards and weird GIFs like Dancing Baby. The early 2000s brought Flash animations and caption-based humor. The mid-2000s saw image macros with top-bottom white text on bold photos (LOLcats, Advice Animals). The 2010s introduced reaction images, rage comics, and the great 4chan-to-Reddit migration. The late 2010s gave us surreal meme formats like Galaxy Brain.
The 2020s have been dominated by short-form video memes — TikTok sounds, 15-second formats, and AI-generated content. Each era’s tools shaped its humor: dial-up internet favored small files; broadband enabled video; smartphones demanded vertical formats. The next evolution is already here: AI-generated memes created by anyone with a prompt. Twenty years from now, we’ll look back at Doge the same way we look at Dancing Baby today.
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