Here is a link to the video

For those who do not want to watch, here is the breakdown:

2005-2013, The Classical Era

The classical meme era constituted mostly of jokes that already existed and just put them into meme format. Technological development enhanced our ability to communicate with each other visually brought more relatable and widely available content, resulting in an increase in productive forces.

2013-2017, The MLG Era

The MLG era came about as a result of internet culture’s interest in online gaming, while also growing away from the separate “non-internet” based culture of humor. This was the most substantial shift in production, as content only became catered towards those who were increasingly online. Improvements in technology and access made the content available even more readily than before, allowing for further meme niches to evolve as needs were met.

2017-2019, The Surrealist Era

A production shift brought about by the first generation raised online finally entering the general population of meme production (the new meme proletarians). These memes often have little basis in real life, but represent the small evolutions meme production has gone through over time to become something different entirely. Through small but measurable quantitative differences, memes have become qualitatively different and are unrecognizable from the initial product.

2019-2021, The Post-Irony Era

Consumption and production of memes has grown so far from its original purpose, yet intertwined itself so thoroughly in everyday life that we see a return to the tradition of the classical era’s basis of humor. On the surface the change between this era and the previous seems small, but this is in fact the largest change to yet occur in demographic terms. With rapidly changing online demographics due to technological innovation alongside new memes, we see a corresponding change in culture and its subsequent production. The newest demographic has grown up only on internet culture but no longer had access to memes relatable to everyday life and jokes that already exist to them. Among Us, troll face, are you winning son, damn shawty ok, and always has been are responses to real life and no longer concepts in the abstract; A truly massive shift in consciousness to meet the needs of the class at large.

Each step of the way we can apply this study of memes and their relationship to online culture and production.