Bored Panda got in touch with the person behind “Brainy Memes” and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions. We were curious to hear if there was any story behind the page's creation. “I want to manage a meme group where the posts are approved based on what I find funny and relatable and also what I think would be funny and relatable for most people. I wanted a meme group where the posts don’t feel forced, or like spam, that’s why I created Brainy Memes.”

Naturally, we were curious to hear their insight into the content's popularity. “It doesn’t contain posts that are approved just for engagement and reach. The content in Brainy Memes is approved because it genuinely made me laugh as the Admin. It’s not generic and isn’t intended to ride the bandwagon or mainstream topic just for the attention.”

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, memes are now a mainstay of internet communication. While you might have expected the very first meme to at least have some text (many early memes are almost entirely text-based), in fact, some researchers believe that it was a lot simpler. In fact, you could probably recreate it with your keyboard right now. 

If you haven't guessed yet, the first internet meme is thought to be the immortal “:-)” which used to be ubiquitous, until we replaced it with emojis. Scott Elliott Fahlman, a computer scientist and professor at Carnegie Mellon University is credited with creating the first smiley emoticon, which now also doubles as the first internet meme. 

As it often happens with memes, the smiley emoticon took on a life of its own, despite Scott Fahlman’s intentions that it be used as a marker of sarcasm. Indecently, the “sad face” emoticon, which you can easily recreate with your own keyboard, was supposed to designate “serious talks.” Good intentions, but the internet simply does what it wants. 

While these memes are certainly brainy and do their best to amuse, the average meme out there is political in nature. Whether this is good or not is certainly debatable, but savvy pundits and just concerned voters have all realized the usefulness of memes in communicating ideas very rapidly. The result is that up to 60% of all memes found out there might be mostly about politics. 

Given its importance to many people, it makes sense that folks would turn to memes as a method of political communication. Even setting aside politics, young people report making and sharing memes, often when they don’t know how to express a concept or feeling in words. Since memes use shared knowledge and references, it makes communication desperately simple. 

As a result, the vast majority (75%) of people between the ages of 13 and 36 share and even make memes. Older generations are also avid meme-users, but not to the extent that millennials and Gen-Z engage with it. While the concept of a meme has broadened to such an extent that it can be hard to pin down exactly what it means, the average 20-year-old is sending at least one meme a week. 

Incidentally, why people send memes can vary just as much. The previously linked survey found that most people (74%) send a meme to elicit a chuckle from a loved one. At the same time, nearly half send a meme as a follow-up or reaction to something someone else has sent them. In other words, play your cards right and you might get a nearly endless chain of meme-sending. 

Even if this hasn't happened to you, the sheer demand for memes can be traced in Google searches. The word meme alone is searched for twice as often as “Jesus,” although he does somewhat regain his popularity during Christmas or Easter. But regardless, memes are a mainstay of what we tend to see on the internet.  

In 2019, on Instagram alone, over one million memes were shared every single day. Doubtless, that number has only grown since then. Obviously, the entire world isn’t sending the same two or three memes back and forth, even though it can feel like that at times. Instead, every interest and fan group now makes its own memes, so there is a little something for everyone. 

At this stage in internet history, nearly everything can be a meme. Stock images, random scenes from movies and television shows, literal images of animals, and infographics, the limits are simply the human imagination. At this point, some people can probably turn any random image into a meme template, if given some time.