How badly did the popularization of the word "meme" fuck up the internet on a scale of 1 (anal domination) to 10 (consequences have never be the same)?
>>522660
Meme was memed before you first memed the Intermeme. Newmemer.
>>522665
>1 off
>>522660
Time to listen to that song.
>>522665
>what's the difference between a word and the thing itself?
>>522696
They were always called memes, little one.
>>522660
Remember when pictures with caption were called "image macros"?
Good times.
>>523028
>what does popularization mean?
>>523338
The word "meme" was always popular on the Internet, young padawan.
>>523339
No, it wasn't.
>>523344
Are you from the Berenstein timeline or something? I've seen a few of you with this delusion, and I honestly wonder where it came from. Did you exclusively browse super serious sites before coming to 4chan?
>>523339
It's been popular but never as popular as this I think. Before it was just the word - you said meme to refer to a meme. Now it's an actual meme word. I will use it as an adjective, "it's a meme hero" (for a game), or "stop being a meme"
Basically it hit the point where the word meme itself became a meme, in a sort of meta-memery that continues to define our post-ironic memeing.
>>523339
Did you start browsing the Internet in like 2006?
>>523356
"Meme" was in common use in the 90's.
>>523356
Metal Gear Solid 2 came out in like 2002 and popularized the word meme.
>>523550
Fuck off kojima cocksucker.
>>523358
I remember people using words like "fads" rather than memes back then.
>>523573
You mad, bro?
>>523850
Literally only GameFAQs referred to memes as "fads." You know what everyone else called them? Jokes. GameFAQs has always had to be that special snowflake site.
>>524124
This. I miss the time were people weren't so much aware of memes.
At least it isn't as bad as 'going viral' circa 10 years ago.
>>523850
YtMND much?
>>522660
1
Memes would exist anyway, people would just call them something else like internet jokes
And the name is accurate, they are literally memes i.e. ideas which are copied and spread.
>>524163
But "memes" is an uncommon word for anything other than internet humor, so that's pretty much all it's associated with. Hence why we just call them "memes" and not "internet memes".
It gives it an extra layer of artificial self importance to jokes.
Just imagine for a moment that someone on say the news for example reported on a study about similarities between comedians acts and called these similarities "memes" and brought a bunch of examples into the public light of how all these famous comedians derive material from one another or something.
How much more self concious do you think the comedians, and even the audience, would become about it? You'd have a whole new layer of criticism that nobody cared about before: "Oh yeah that whole bit was basically just an overused comedic meme". I could already hear the hecklers sarcastically shouting "Nice meme".
It's just not healthy for any community that wants to take it easy and share some laughs.
