The internet's inside jokes, decoded.

An internet meme is a piece of media — an image, video, phrase, GIF, or format — that spreads rapidly across the web through user imitation and remixing. The term was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to describe ideas that replicate and evolve the way genes do. The first widely recognized internet meme was the "Dancing Baby" of 1996, but the modern era of memes is generally dated to 2007, when LOLcats and rage comics entered the mainstream.

Internet memes in their modern form date to 2007, when sites like 4chan, Something Awful, and early Reddit popularized image macros like LOLcats, advice animals, and rage comics. Earlier proto-memes include the "Dancing Baby" (1996) and the Hampster Dance (1998). The cultural phenomenon grew steadily through the 2010s and exploded with the rise of TikTok in 2020.

The first widely recognized internet meme was the "Dancing Baby" (also called "Baby Cha-Cha"), a 3D-rendered animation of a diaper-clad infant that circulated via email in 1996. The first text-based image macro format to go mainstream was LOLcats in 2007, popularized by the blog I Can Has Cheezburger.

By most measures, the most popular meme of all time is the Doge meme — a Shiba Inu photo overlaid with Comic Sans words like "wow", "much", and "very." It originated on Tumblr in 2010, became mainstream in 2013, and by 2020 had generated billions of impressions. Other top contenders include Pepe the Frog, Distracted Boyfriend, and Rickroll.

Memes fall into roughly nine types: image macros (Doge, Distracted Boyfriend), reaction GIFs (used in chat to react), video formats (Harlem Shake, Coffin Dance), audio memes (Rickroll, sound bites), characters (Pepe, Grumpy Cat, Wojak), templates (Expanding Brain, Drake format), events (Harambe, left shark), copypasta (text-only), and slang (delulu, rizz, 6-7).

Doge is a meme based on a 2010 photograph of a Shiba Inu dog named Kabosu, captioned with Comic Sans words in broken English like "wow", "much amaze", and "very concern." The format went viral on Tumblr and Reddit in 2013. In 2013, the Dogecoin cryptocurrency was launched as a parody using the same dog, which itself became a phenomenon.

Millennial memes (2007–2017) typically relied on image macros with text overlays and clear punchlines, like Bad Luck Brian or First World Problems. Gen Z memes (2020–present) lean toward absurdist, self-referential, AI-generated, and audio-driven formats — Italian Brainrot, Skibidi Toilet, poly-formats, and slang like "6-7" and "delulu". Gen Z memes often work as in-group signals whose meaning is opaque to outsiders.

Brainrot is a term from the 2020s describing memes that are deliberately nonsensical, surreal, or absurd — like watching content that "rots your brain." The genre includes Italian Brainrot (Tralalero Tralala, Bombardino Crocodilo, Ballerina Cappuccina), Skibidi Toilet, and AI-generated characters like Lupa Zalupa. Brainrot is the dominant Gen Z meme aesthetic of 2024–2026.

Major Japanese internet memes include the Yakuza Group Photo (a posed "we just got out of a meeting" stock image used in 4chan edits), Vocaloid clips like Ievan Polkka and Bad Apple, the "nani sore" / Japanese "Why?" reaction, the kawaii metal aesthetic (Babymetal), the Nettaigyo / goldfish song, and the Iya sigh. Japan is also where 2ch (2channel) culture originated, which gave the world much of the early meme vocabulary.

The word "meme" was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He coined it as a shortening of the Greek word "mimeme" (meaning "imitated thing") to describe cultural ideas that replicate and evolve the way genes do. The word was later applied to internet phenomena in the 1990s by Mike Godwin, and entered mainstream usage after 2007.

2013 was a peak year for internet memes, marking the explosion of the Doge meme, the first viral use of Harlem Shake, the rise of Grumpy Cat, and the introduction of Vine. The "Peak" era (2012–2017) is generally considered the high-water mark of image-macro culture, before TikTok-era video and short-form audio memes took over.

6-7 (also written "six seven") is a 2025 Gen Z meme that originated from the song "Doot Doot (6 7)" by rapper Skrilla and was popularized by LaMelo Ball edits. The phrase has no literal meaning — it functions as a shibboleth or in-group signal, and was named by Cambridge Dictionary as one of 6,000 new words added in 2025.

All entries on Meme Codex cite Wikipedia as the primary source for image URLs, origin dates, and core facts. Coverage is curated for millennial audiences, with international memes (Japan, Korea, China, France, Germany, Russia, Latin America) added in addition to the standard US/UK canon. The site is open source on GitHub and accepts contributions.