this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
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The demotivational poster meme came before the advice animals meme.
And there was a whole kerfuffle about the advice dog/animal format not being a meme, but an image macro!
All image macros are memes but not all memes are image macros.
That means you are old to other old people
I remember the blogs that's icanhascheeseburger ran that had feeds with posts of various meme formats. Demotivational was my favorite style
Shoulda been Abe's head in the middle. Go the extra 15 miles!
I miss Demotivators. Especially the RPG Demotivators from RPG.Net
It's strange how no matter when someone was born, the best period in world history is the one when they happened to be kids.
My place of work in the early '90s used to have those original motivational posters all over the place, so I hung some of this original demotivational series in my cubicle. I believe they are the ones that started it all, and I still personally think they are the best.
Is this a Chris Nolan reference? 🤯
I don't think Christopher Nolan was around when this was made
Duhhhhh, he went back in time, just like in Christopher Nolan's hit film Tenet.
W E L C O
M E T O T
H E N E X
T L E V E LSo I badgerbadgerbadgerbadger which was the mushroom mushroom at the time.
snaaake!
I remember these were called Demotivational Posters before they were called memes.
Yeah I remember folks used to actually print and hang these.
YES! My graphic design class in highschool printed out a bunch of em for the art show.
Dude, I shit brix
We used to be a proper fucking society, with class!
Pepperidge Farms remembers?
You can't just tickle my nostalgia organ like that.
Needs more belt onions.
Oh wow I remember these, even made a couple myself
That font was definitely not the style at the time.
The two fonts I remember were Comic Sans, used for putting words in the mouths of pets, or Impact for most other things.
This is more-or-less the format used for the motivational posters that were popular in offices in the 90s or so. People made fun of those with demotivational posters. But, those weren't really "memes", IMO.
But, the earliest thing that I think deserve the name "memes" (normally called Image Macros) were on the Something Awful forums (and soon after that on 4chan). In the early days they were mostly animal based: "lolcat", "doge", the "O RLY?" owl, etc.
Can someone point to "memes" that had the text underneath the picture, rather than using the impact font and written directly on top of the picture?
Most of the people on the entirety of lemmy and mastodon won't get this one
I beg to differ. I'm an elder millennial and as far as I can tell, most people here are my age or older.
Same + agree
Get off my lawn
Even more proof of being old now that younger folks can't afford houses!
Same, I keep seeing people acting like Lemmy is full of young people, but I see a ton of people referencing stuff in our age range and older.
I saw a poll for age a while back on Mastodon and most respondents were in their 30s or 40s
Kills me inside when I see youtuber/celebrity communities
I've felt like an odd one out here for a while. Took a bit to realize I'm probably thrice as old as any average user here.
I feel like maybe I should be nicer to the literal children who try to debate with me their asinine, juvenile takes, but also... I think getting slapped around a little in your safe-space is healthy at times.
the literal children who try to debate with me their asinine, juvenile takes
This explains so much, as someone in the upper age brackets; youngsters baying for a learning opportunity while cutting themselves on their edge.
Maybe I should be more forgiving.
Meh, fuck that. Welcome them to the internet and smack them down. They gotta learn. Embrace your inner Aslan.
Maybe I should be more forgiving.
Sure, you can be more forgiving. But slap them around anyway!
one of my cats has a safe space he retreats to, sometimes I try to pet him when he's in there and he hisses at me
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I like to drop in "as was the style at the time" in casual conversation to see who picks up on it.
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