memedocumentation - TumblrViewer

LIVE

Dear fellow memers,

As the lyrical masterpiece “All Star” by Smash Mouth states, “The years start coming and they don’t stop coming.” Indeed they don’t. It has already been yet another year of documenting memes.

I started Meme Documentation back in January 2015 because I felt a wistful sense of loss whenever a meme came and went. Folks who were on Tumblr before 2015 may remember some of the great memes of that time. The PSAT fandom started becoming a thing. (Gee whiz!) We wondered, when was the last time the girl kissed the boy in a teen romance? And people were submerging things in water just for the æsthetic.

One may dismiss these memes as just the fleeting obsessions of Internet culture, but for me, they were more than just that. Needless to say, the Internet has become a large part of our lives, and as such, memes aren’t just Internet culture—they’re culture culture. And it was a sad feeling to know that some of the memes I enjoyed so much, the memes that connected me with so many people around the world, may go unrecorded and perhaps even unremembered.

People talk about memes being dead, but I never thought that was truly accurate because memes live on in the hearts and minds of those they touch. True, memes may go out of style, but memes are a part of our history. They’re threads in the rich tapestry of what it means to be human in the 21st century. And as such, it’s important to be able to accessibly look back at that history, which so many of us share.

And so I was inspired to start Meme Documentation. Admittedly, it wasn’t a wholly original idea as the great website Know Your Meme had been documenting memes years prior. But as someone who is dear to me said, Know Your Meme is like the Library of Congress. Tumblr needed a local library to keep records of some of the memes that were being overlooked.

In the two years I’ve documented memes, I’ve learned to never doubt the capabilities and creativity of human beings. We discovered that a dress could be both blue/black and white/gold. We somehow found a way to make a meme about Meme Documentation itself. And we even imagined what Amish memes might look like.

But I have also learned that documenting memes is a big commitment, at least if one wants to do it well. Meme Documentation has always been something we’ve done in our free time, and with that, we have our limitations. We’re going to miss running this blog, but it will still be available and stand as an archive of all the various memetic happenings on Tumblr in 2015and2017.

With every ending, though, comes new beginnings. We hope that this blog inspires others to try out documenting memes themselves. Documenting memes can take many forms, but what’s important is that our shared online cultural heritage is preserved. The Internet, at times, gives us a false sense of security. Things on the Internet aren’t as forever as we’d like them to be. To get to some of the technical aspects, we’d recommend the Internet Archive as a great resource to find and archive webpages, and the site archive.is is also good for saving links.

So goodbye, fellow memers!

Goodbye to the cow that liks the bread!

Goodbye to the brains that expand to the cosmos!

Goodbye to the sounds of music playing from another room!

Goodbye to our beloved horse friend!

Goodbye to the Russian cats!

Goodbye to the Woody Collective!

Goodbye to the frog in Tom Holland’s mouth!

Goodbye to the man who is in a constant state of checking out another woman!

Goodbye to the cowboy who sings passionately above in the sky!

Goodbye to the eyes of Obama!

Goodbye to the girl reading this!

Goodbye to elf practice!

Farewell,

Meme Documentation

#memedocumentation #goodbye oh goodbye

@memedocumentation

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 15:59:34

(N.B. The months below offer only a loose means to put the memes in rough chronological order. Some memes may have started earlier, but Meme Documentation just aims to give a rough outline as to when the memes became popular.)

January

February