An Amazing Assortment of Memes

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Jun 14, 2022 10:00 AM EDT

The trajectory of internet memes in society is something we could have never predicted 20 years ago. However, memes have been a way of communicating before we even called them "memes." For instance, Kilroy Was Here was a meme popularized by American soldiers during World War II. They would draw the image of a bald guy with a large nose looking over a wall with the caption "Kilroy Was Here" on walls and other surfaces.

It's incredible that re-sharing a combination of images and words amongst a community, something that was less common before the proliferation of mass media on the internet, was able to flourish before we could articulate them as memes. Although cartoons thrived in the 19th and 20th centuries, there's something special about memes being created and redistributed by everyone. You don't have to be a great drawer or image editor to share your own memes with the world. And now, we are absolutely swimming in memes. Lucky us!