A common misconception is that the word is pronounced "mimi' or "meh-meh".
However, this is not the case.
It's actually pronounced meme (mem).
The word "meme" was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ,The Selfish Gene
The word is used as a unit to describe how ideas behaviors and cultural phenomenon spread throughout the culture.
Similar to our gene can replicate itself inside our bodies
And since the rise of the Internet, the subset of memes are internet memes which are basically the same
Except they revolve around the culture and environment of the Internet
And if you're watching this, you probably already know what an internet meme is.
Well, there's no way to really tell what internet meme came first
The meme is often considered to be one of the earliest, as well as being quite well documented for its time
It's the ever-popular emoticon
The first of the documented use of an emoticon online was in a post on an online bulletin board
back in 1982 by a guy named Scott E. Fahlman
Scott explains that he created the smiley face, which is the most common of the emoticons
because he wanted a way to easily portray sarcasm and other types of humorous post on the bulletin boards
Internet memes are often divided into various categories
For example, popular image macros such as
"Bad Luck Brian",
"Philosoraptor",
"Social Awkward Penguin",
and "Success Kid"
are all part of a set of memes called advice animals.
Advice animals, as the name suggests, usually features some type of animal, including humans
along with a caption associated with that specific meme.
Another world use categories rage comics, which usually feature poorly drawn comic strips
where the creator often tells a humorous and relatable story
using distinctive characters such as "Rage Guy",
"Forever Alone",
and "Troll Face"
Almost, quite ironically, one of the most popular image-based memes ever is the "Forever Alone Guy".
It's listed in the top of several of the bigger meme based websites, such as Know Your Meme and memebase.com
Also, by doing a quick Google search for "Forever Alone" gives you a result of over 29 Million hits
I guess it's just a lot of lonely people out there.
The character known as "Pedobear" is today often seen as a symbol for pedophilia
However, "Pedobear" actually started out as a symbol to work against such content
The character first appeared on the Japanese textboard called 2channel in early 2003
Later on, "Pedobear" started appearing on 4chan
where members often used the character to signal moderators and other users
that illegal pornographic content such as child pornography had been posted
Despite this initial use, the "Pedobear" became a much more widespread meme
and especially of the mainstream media got a hold of it
The character was more and more turn into what we know it as today
Unless you have been living under the rock for the past 9000 years or so,
you've probably heard, or even used the phrase
"It's over 9000!!!!!"
which comes from an episode of the popular anime show, Dragon Ball Z
Heck, it even got so far that some troll managed to trick Oprah
into using part of the phrase in an episode of her TV show
by posting it on the show's message boards.
"It said that he doesn't forgive...
he does not forget his group has over 9000 penises,
and they're all raping children."
But what you most likely don't know is that in regional Japanese and English translated manga,
as well as a Japanese version of the anime,
the phrase actually reads: "It's over 8000"
"Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his power level?"
"It's over 8000!!!!!"
Why is this 9000 in the English dub, no one really knows
It's most likely just a mistake, or maybe they felt it sounded better that way
The identity of people featuring popular memes have often been revealed after the meme's popularization
Some good examples are "Bad Luck Brian",
"Sudden Clarity Clarence",
"Scumbag Steve",
"Ermahgerd"
"Good Guy Greg", and many more
However, most of which should be taken with a grain of salt
that it can be very hard to prove such a thing
because of aging, hairstyle, or just simply looking similar
Nevertheless, it's always quite interesting to find these people
as many times, they might not even know that they have become a meme
Believe it or not,
there's actually a movie being made right now based on internet culture
which has a cast of several viral video related people in it.
It's titled "The Chronicles of Rick Roll"
and include people such as Double Rainbow Guy
"Double Rainbow all the way across the sky!"
Chuck Testa,
"Nope, Chuck Testa"
Boxxy,
"So, my name is Boxxy, and..."
and many more
Not much is known about the movie so far,
but it's planned to be released sometime in 2014
Most people seem to think a meme is limited to just a few things,
such as an image or a video
However, it is going to be further from the truth as a meme can be more or less anything
It's not about what it is, rather
it's all about how popular it is
So, basically a famous person,
a quote
a website
a movie or TV show can all be memes.
So, there's no real limitation to what a meme can be
Thanks for watching my video
I hope you found it interesting
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if I get mostly positive feedback on this video
I will keep making these
and maybe make it into a series
And if you want to see more Top 10 Facts,
please let me know what subject you want me to cover in the next video
It can be anything, really anything
and when I say anything, I really mean it
Any subject you want, no limitations.
So let me know in the comments below
[In a deep tone] Oh my God, let me know in the comments below