The meme history · Volume II
The Seven Eras
Memes have geological strata. Each era had its own platform, its own look, its own theory of what a joke even is — and each one died of the exact thing that made it successful. Here is the complete history, from the Dancing Baby to the Viking Row.
Memes have geological strata. Each era had its own platform, its own aesthetic, its own theory of what a joke is — and each one died of something specific. Here are the seven.
The seven eras, in order
Proto-Web
Platform. Email forwards, Flash, personal homepages.
Logic. A meme was something you sent to someone. Distribution was manual, person to person.
Memes. Dancing Baby · Hampster Dance · All Your Base · Numa Numa
Cause of death. Flash died, and the feed replaced the inbox.
Web 1.0 Forums
Platform. 4chan, YouTube, early Reddit. Impact font, white text, black outline.
Logic. The template was invented. A meme became a reusable format, not a single artefact.
Memes. LOLcats · Rickroll · Trollface · Chocolate Rain
Cause of death. It went mainstream. Once your mum saw a LOLcat, the format lost its charge.
The Rage Era
Platform. Reddit, Tumblr, 9GAG. MS Paint comics and advice animals.
Logic. The meme as relatable narrative — a small everyday frustration in five badly-drawn panels.
Memes. Rage comics · Bad Luck Brian · Doge · Grumpy Cat · Harlem Shake
Cause of death. Irony. The sincerity of “haha, relatable!” became unbearable. Still the most cringe-coded era in history.
The Twitter Era
Platform. Twitter, Vine, Instagram. Stock photos, screenshots, the two-panel.
Logic. The meme as argument. Formats became rhetorical devices — ways of making a point, not just laughing.
Memes. Distracted Boyfriend · This Is Fine · Galaxy Brain · Harambe
Cause of death. Vine's shutdown gutted short video, and the discourse got exhausting. Everything became a fight.
The Irony Era
Platform. TikTok, Discord. Deep-fried, surreal, deliberately incoherent.
Logic. Post-irony. The joke is that there is no joke. Meaning became a liability — anything sincere could be used against you.
Memes. Deep-fried · Big Chungus · Bing Chilling · Coffin Dance · Among Us
Cause of death. Irony exhaustion. You cannot live inside a joke that refuses to mean anything.
The Brainrot Era
Platform. TikTok, Shorts, Roblox. Maximum stimulation. Subway Surfers on the bottom half.
Logic. The meme as pure sound. The words barely mean anything — they are chants. Function: rhythm and belonging, not communication.
Memes. Skibidi Toilet · Ohio · sigma · Italian brainrot · 6-7
Cause of death. Ongoing — but the AI wave is already changing it.
The Authenticity Era
Platform. Everywhere. Plus, for the first time in a decade, the physical world.
Logic. Two moves: detecting the fake (“that's AI”, “larping”, “clock it”) and doing things with your body.
Memes. Viking Row · “that's AI” · crash out
Cause of death. Not yet. Ask us in a year.
The pattern underneath
Read those seven in order and one thing repeats: every era dies of the thing that made it successful. Image macros died of being copyable. Rage comics died of being relatable. Twitter memes died of being arguments. Irony died of being ironic.
Which suggests the current era will die of authenticity — of everyone performing realness so hard that realness becomes the new fake. We'll let you know.
The modern era, dated
How we got from “rizz” to “six seven” in five short, chaotic years. A chronology of the brainrot epoch, 2021 to 2026; each linked meme page carries its sources. Dates reflect widely reported origins and peaks from dictionaries and mainstream coverage; where accounts differ we note the most widely cited version.
Rizz enters the chat
Streamer Kai Cenat starts using “rizz” (charm / ‘game’) with his friends and on stream. It spreads to TikTok over the following year. rizz →
The gyatt gag begins
Streamer YourRAGE popularizes shouting “gyatt” — an AAVE-rooted take on “goddamn” — as a running bit. gyatt →
Sigma goes ironic
The “sigma male” archetype (coined ~2010 in manosphere writing) resurfaces as the ironic “Sigma Face” meme. sigma →
Skibidi Toilet debuts
Alexey Gerasimov (DaFuq!?Boom!) posts the first Skibidi Toilet video. “Skibidi” — nonsense syllables from the show’s song mashup — becomes Gen Alpha’s defining word. skibidi →
Tom Holland’s ‘limited rizz’
Actor Tom Holland says he has “limited rizz” in an interview. The clip spawns waves of memes and pushes rizz mainstream.
Rizz = Oxford Word of the Year
In October the parody song “Sticking Out Your Gyatt for the Rizzler” bundles the era’s slang — gyatt, skibidi, sigma, Fanum tax — into one anthem. In December, Oxford University Press names rizz its 2023 Word of the Year.
Aura points & delulu spread
The “aura points” meme (“−1000 aura”) trends on TikTok and X. “Delulu” (short for delusional, from K-pop fandom) goes mainstream.
The 6-7 origin track
Philadelphia rapper Skrilla’s “Doot Doot (6 7),” a nod to 67th Street, surfaces online (its official release follows in February 2025). The number begins its unlikely climb. meme 67 →
The 67 Kid goes planetary
A young fan’s ecstatic “SIX SEVEN” at an AAU game goes viral, fusing the number with basketball culture and the palms-up gesture.
Aura farming, worldwide
An 11-year-old Indonesian boat-race dancer, Rayyan Arkan Dikha, makes “aura farming” a global meme, recreated by athletes and celebrities. aura →
The dictionary catches up
Cambridge Dictionary adds “skibidi”, alongside “delulu” and “tradwife”, in its summer batch of new words.
67 = Word of the Year
Dictionary.com names “67” its 2025 Word of the Year — a number meaning nothing, officially crowned above every actual word.
Our read: the backlash
In our view, the internet begins mocking anyone still using the era’s slang — even as 6-7 keeps producing aftershocks and refuses to fully die.
Site updates
What changed on the site, newest first.
September 2026 — the plain-language rebuild
Every meme page rebuilt on the same eight parts, with a “who made it” line and linked sources. The lookup, the A–Z, the trend snapshot and the list of dead memes merged into one Ask page. The lab-story wording removed everywhere. Fonts now served from the site. Cookie consent added.
July 2026 — ten new memes and the mixer
Ten 2026 words added, including crash out, that’s AI and chopped. The meme mixer (since retired), the emoji guide and the reverse lookup (now part of Ask) went live.
June 2026 — the map and four guides
The interactive site map, the parents’ guide, the brainrot explainer, slang by generation and the quiz.
Spring 2026 — the site opens
The first 27 memes explained, the family tree, the connections map, the lookup, and the 6-7 page.
New words are added as they appear, and existing pages are corrected when a meaning or its status changes.
FAQ
What are the eras of internet memes?
Seven: the Proto-Web (1996–2006), Web 1.0 forums (2006–2010), the Rage era (2010–2014), the Twitter era (2014–2019), the Irony era (2019–2023), the Brainrot era (2023–2025) and the Authenticity era (2026–).
What was the first meme era?
The Proto-Web, roughly 1996–2006, when memes spread by email forward and Flash animation — Dancing Baby, Hampster Dance, All Your Base Are Belong To Us.
Why did rage comics die?
Irony killed them. Rage comics were sincerely relatable, and once internet humour turned ironic, that sincerity became unbearable — which is why the 2010–2014 era is now the most cringe-coded period in internet history.
What meme era are we in now?
The Authenticity era. Its two defining moves are detecting the fake — 'that's AI', 'larping', 'clock it' — and doing memes with your body, like the Viking Row.