Memes are commonly seen as odd jokes on the internet that make little to no sense. However, they have a more interesting history than many would assume.

The word meme was first coined by Richard Dawkins, in order to explain how cultural information is shared through writing, speech,gestures and music.. In his book, “The Selfish Gene” Dawkins stated “I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’”. The word is also short for the Greek word “m?m?ma” which means “imitated thing”.

“Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically,” Dawkins wrote in “The Selfish Gene”.“Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent ‘mutation’.”

An online publication, “Journal of Memetics” was founded in 1997 and ran until 2005. “The Journal of Memetics” devoted itself to studying the “memetic perspective…evolutionary issues…and…discuss issues concerning memetics.”

Freelance writer Susan Blackmore coined a separate term for internet memes, “temes”. Temes is short for “techno-memes” . Temes have effectively “hijacked” the word’s original meaning, as they are deliberately altered by users on the internet.

One of the most widespread temes is rickrolling. Rickrolling is when a link is shared online, claiming to link viewers to news articles or other websites. Instead, the link redirects viewers to Rick Astley’s music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The first known use of the meme was in 2007 on the anonymous forum 4chan.

A 2008 poll by SurveyUSA reported that “at least 18 million Americans have now been ‘rickrolled’.”

In 2010 and 2011, members of the House of Representatives conspired to include lyrics in their speeches. After the event, the lines were put into proper order and uploaded online.

More recently, the teme “Pepe the Frog” and it’s variation “Rare Pepe” have taken the internet by storm. Regular Pepe features the frog at a three fourths angle, usually frowning or crying, occasionally angry and holding a gun.

Rare Pepe can be found resembling various celebrities such as Beyonce, Lana Del Ray, and Guy Fieri. Other versions of Rare Pepe include Barbie Pepe, Donald Trump, Jesus, Plankton from “Spongebob Squarpants”, Spongebob himself, and Ponies from the “My Little Pony” franchise.

Temes have become so successful that websites such as memebase, knowyourmeme, and memecenter have sprung up , dedicated to documenting and spreading temes.

However, not everyone loves internet memes. “Pepe is scary,” Neshaminy junior Kyle Schwenke said. “He doesn’t look like a frog.”

“Personally there are some funny memes out there on the internet, but there are definitelysome that are not so funny. Whatever the case, they are a sure sign of modern pop culture,” Neshaminy alumni Monica Dinh said.