Old School Memes That Are a Blast From The Past

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Apr 19, 2023 8:00 PM EDT

Memes do not age like fine wine. They age like a comedy from the mid-90s. If you've got a good enough eye, you can tell exactly when a meme was made and when it was popular online. When we consume memes, we've got the hivemind mentality where some memes are in style, and some memes are oh-so out. Let's take image macros, for example. For several years in the early 2010s, that was the only way a meme could be. Memes had to have bold white top text and bottom text, or else they were nothing more than funny images. As time has gone on, image macros have gotten so out of style that they're basically only used ironically. Now that we're living in the early 2020s, the definition of "meme" expanded so widely. A tweet can be a meme, an AI image can be a meme, and yes, even a TikTok can be a meme! The following memes are a fun combo of the memes of yesterday and the memes of today. See if you can spot the difference.