by Lyndsey Dyson

Created on: August 05, 2010   Last Updated: August 06, 2010

Although the word 'meme' (it rhymes with cream) was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, it has largely become recognized with Generation Z. Memes are spread through YouTube and other video sites, imageboards such as 4chan, social networking sites like Facebook, and instant messaging services.

Most people born on or after 1980 would recognize pictures of cats captioned with terribly misspelled words, or Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video instantly. Before internet popularity or creation, many of our pop culture icons would not be easily recognizable. The internet has such a large influence over what we see and what is popular that it basically dictates the pop culture icons for our decade.

The Cheezburger Network

The Cheezburger Network, owned by Ben Huh, has capitalized on memes, owing its success to its many weblogs, all featuring memes.

ICanHasCheezburger.com was the original weblog. ICanHasCheezburger (ICHC), features humorous pictures of cats with ill-written captions. It spawned many memes and coined the term 'lolcat'. It was instrumental in the popularity of animal-based macros and 'lolspeak', another meme in itself.

Many sister sites have been developed as well, some of the most popular among them are GraphJam and FAIL Blog. GraphJam features comical graphs that generally commentate on current events and other popular pop culture phenomena. FAIL Blog features viral videos and photos of blatant stupidity and incompetence with captions such as 'Fail' or the terribly popular, "Epic Fail".

4chan

Largely recognizable by their userbase who identify themselves only as 'Anonymous', a meme in itself. 4chan put itself on the map by creating many different internet memes and received national attention for several stunts. In 2008, anonymous hacked the private Yahoo! Mail account of Sarah Palin. On January 15, 2008, 4chan launched an attack against the Church of Scientology, which led to multiple protests. Most recently, 4chan has rigged the voting for Justin Bieber's World Tour, winning the vote to send him to Korea.

4chan has produced several largely recognizable memes. They can be credited with the invention of 'RickRolling' (ambushing somebody by playing the video or song, "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley), Chocolate Rain, and the popularity of the Guy Fawkes mask for purposes other than celebrating Guy Fawkes day or a V for Vendetta costume.
    
Internet memes are now a large part of our generation, creating easily recognizable pop culture symbols. They are created every day, many of them lost amongst a sea of unfunny pop culture criticisms and photoshops. Every once in a while though, an internet meme catches on and is recorded as a part of the history of Generation Z..

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