The Great Library · 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.
Proto-Web
Platform. Email forwards, Flash, personal homepages.
Logic. A meme was something you sent to someone. Distribution was manual, person to person.
Specimens. 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.
Specimens. 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.
Specimens. 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.
Specimens. 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.
Specimens. 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.
Specimens. 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.
Specimens. 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.
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.