Proto-meme. So old it spread by print and cats didn't rule the internet.
Published in the New Yorker in 1993, the same year the world wide web went live.
21 comments
I think of this one kinda often.
Reminder that memes predate the web as well as the Internet.
Anybody who recognizes the difference between the WWW and the Internet knows what they're talking wbout
ɯ-(ꞋʊꞋ)-ɯ
Kilroy disagrees with your post
A meme is a meme regardless of whether it started on the web, paper, or an ancient brick wall.
The term meme started in the 70s and just because that's become the commonly accepted term doesn't mean they didn't exist well before that (in fact there are examples that are thousands of years old preserved in ruins).
Being an alternate protocol nerd is a trip. Most people have no clue what a gopher/Gemini/spartan/finger is or how they differ from the web. The few handful on this planet that do are just other nerds who like to blogspam tech nerd things. It would be nice if the web enshittified so much even the average non techie was put into a position to look into these alternatives.
I think of this one kinda often.