It seems like humanity has always had a bad habit of using often stale humor shortcuts, because lets face it, being funny can be hard at times for many of us.
I'm sure many of you remember the old "So a gay priest, a black man, and a lawyer walk into a bar and..." joke and it's millions of variations.
Or maybe you remember all those songs you used to sing as kids to have fun, annoy the bus driver, etc that were passed down to you from the last generation and changed a little.
Or maybe you remember throwing movie quotes at each other, or watching that old superbowl commercial where those guys greeted each other with "WAZUUUUP!". Maybe you found that funny and started greeting your friends with that same phrase.
Perhaps we humans didn't really think about how we've heard this kind of thing before, or how these jokes like "WAZUUUUP" were used as marketing campaigns by corrupt corporations.
It's pretty ironic that the commercial, featuring a bunch of stereotypical guys influenced and drawn to the television with nothing to talk about was remade 8 years later, featuring those same guys, slowly waking up to the world around them. But did they wake up fully? Unfortunately not, as they beleived that an politician from a mainstream party with no fire under their foot would make everything better.
But things sortof took a new turn when the internet came out. While those jokes still stayed around for a while, memes changed. Now people forwarded these kinds of things in chainmail.
"Internet Memes" as we know them started out. Maybe you remember the hampster dance, all your base, or that bizarre girl/man/monkey hybrid. But it wasn't really until Web 2.0 that these little bastards got super widespread and very obnoxious. Even if my memory is wrong here, I beleive we can all agree that they got worse right?
Something Awful helped lay the framework for what internet memes are today and when Web 2.0 rose to power, sites like 4chan, YTMND and Youtube joined along. Things were starting to get a bit out of hand, but internet memes weren't 100% stale just yet.
Not until 2010 when Reddit rose to prominence and completely turned memes into the copy and paste garbage they are today, making memes like Rage Comics and Trollface almost completely loose their meaning. 4chan's method of taking a picture and putting black text on it was pretty much factorialized with the rise of "meme generators". 4chan's "advice dog" got the absolute worst of it and got millions of bland spinoffs thanks to these generators. Memes were now embraced by millions, and became more stagnant than they ever were before. Tell me how many times you've seen a meme that involves a picture with the exact same style of text on it.
But if that wasn't bad enough, some genious thought it would be a great idea to mix memes and the concept of irony, and "shitposting" became a widespread thing. There are people out there who "memepost" ironically, even though they know what they're doing is not funny or worth anything of substance.
So unless I'm wrong, of your posting something that you know is not funny, for no good reason at all... don't you think it's time to stop? Maybe it's time to try something new?
I'm not saying "destroy all memes", im just suggesting that we all try to be a bit more original instead of using comedic shortcuts such as reused jokes, memes, trying to be ironic so much, and putting a hashtag at the end of what we say.
I'm saying we should remember memes of the past fondly, and let them die. Some of the greatest memes of all time got an early death instead of being passed down to future generations unlike Rick Rolling, Deal With It, Troll Face, Chuck Norris Jokes, and U MAD BRO?
Sure, it's okay to make a rare reference to times past. I still love Dio Smashing stuff with a steamroller. A smile comes to my face when I see Billy Mays, and I still like a certain dog who has edgy oppinions about anime. But the time has passed for those jokes. They have been archived for future generations, and if anyone wants inspiration, they are still there. The lifespan of a meme should be 3 years max, or take the path of Pepe J Frog, who evolved from a happy frog, to a sad frog, to a smug motherfucker, and then into a mouth peice for social rejects who fail at life. Even then, Pepe has really been waring out his welcome.
Mr. Ed was a good horse, but we should remember him, not beat his dead corpse.