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World’s First Meme?

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17 April 2018

By Alex Khalil

Memes are an oddity in our society. Anyone who uses Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram or Twitter will have some knowledge of certain images along with text to convey something funny. In our lifetime alone, we’ve seen the life and death of many a meme. From Pepe the Frog to the Trollface, there’s a long list.

You’d think the growing use of social media would be the main contributor to the popularity of memes, but you might be wrong. Memes could have dated back as far as the 1920s, with this two-panel cartoon, of a dapper looking chap, next to what he actually looks like.

For a 1920s issue of the magazine Judge, it’s incredibly meta.

The cartoon has been doing the rounds on Twitter and Tumblr and was featured in the July issue, in 1921, of the series called ‘With College Wits’. A ‘flashlight’ back then, would have been a nod to an ancient version of photography, by using a flash lamp to get the most out of a photo. They would use powder or magnesium ribbons.

It’s also really dangerous, given that it would produce noxious fumes and spit molten metal at the subjects.

Even if he’s been hit by molten metal, the second-panel guy just looks a bit miffed.

That’s pretty neat, right?

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