A Psychologist Explains 'Meme Reflexes'
What would somebody from 1925 think of today's memes? Here's a psychologist's take on the matter.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | May 08, 2025
Ironically, the word meme predates the internet. It was coined in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who used it to describe how ideas spread from mind to mind, much like genes pass traits from body to body. He pointed to things like melodies, catchphrases and architectural techniques as early examples of "memes" — carriers of culture that replicate, mutate and survive through imitation.
The earliest memes may have been gestures, patterns carved into stone or phrases passed down orally that carried more than just its literal meaning. What is new about today's internet meme culture is the speed, format and absurd specificity with which they now travel.
Today, a meme can reference a global event, an existential mood and a pop culture trope — all at once, in under two seconds. Just saying the word "doge" reliably triggers an entire emotional script, from irony to nostalgia to economic anxiety. It may even conjure bureaucratic reform: In 2025, the U.S. government launched the Department of Government Efficiency — officially abbreviated as DOGE — complete with a logo nodding to the Shiba Inu meme that once symbolized crypto-fueled chaos. In a twist no one saw coming, a meme is now embossed on federal documents.
But to someone from 1925, who lived in a world of slow information, telegrams and typewritten letters, that kind of information density would be nearly indecipherable. Not because they weren't intelligent, but because they lacked the context scaffolding we now take for granted.
Thanks To The Internet, A Meme Is Now Worth More Than A Thousand Words
When the internet first entered public consciousness in the 1990s, its adoption was gradual and far from universal. Like early personal computers, the web was initially explored by a small, tech-savvy minority. It took years before it became a daily fixture of modern life.
When it finally became a daily fixture, the internet evolved into a vast digital mirror of human culture. The early Web 1.0 era was static and text-heavy — home to personal blogs, bulletin boards and clunky HTML pages. But even then, it hinted at what was coming: a world where jokes, beliefs and shared moments could spread like wildfire.
The introduction of image files (like GIFs and JPEGs) into browsers allowed users to share visual content — from scanned photos to rudimentary graphics — marking the early foundations of meme culture.
Even with nothing more than ASCII characters and raw imagination, internet users at the digital frontier were creating absurdly relatable, experimental forms of humor. Text-based memes like "roflcopter" spread through message boards. It captured a uniquely internet-native blend of irony, randomness and communal in-joke.
By the mid-2000s, broadband connections and platforms like YouTube (launched in 2005) unlocked a new phase: internet culture became visual-first. Short clips, reaction images and viral videos quickly became the internet's new emotional currency.
This visual leap was pivotal. For the first time in human history, people could react to global events with a shared visual language — one that was remixable, fast-moving and capable of carrying tone, timing and irony in a single frame.
The Psychology Of Meme Literacy
It's easy to imagine someone from 1925 struggling to decode a modern meme. But their confusion would stem from a lack of meme literacy, not a lack of raw mental horsepower.
This isn't just about internet familiarity. It's about the brain's ability to process layers of meaning at speed. Psychologists refer to this as context-dependent cognition — our ability to make sense of new information based on prior cultural exposure.
Meme comprehension demands an internal library of references: political events, celebrity scandals, generational slang, even the rhythm of how memes "usually" flow. Without that scaffolding, the punchline falls flat.
This is exactly why modern IQ tests are calibrated by age, education and exposure. Intelligence is shaped by the cultural operating system we grow up with.
Decades of research on the "Flynn effect," the observed rise in IQ scores by roughly three points per decade, show that intelligence test performance is highly sensitive to changes in environment, education and cultural complexity. In other words, the mind adapts to the world it grows up in.
A meme, then, is like a joke that assumes you already know the setup.
Has Society Reached The Pinnacle Of Meme Efficiency?
Eerily, Meta billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, whose platforms helped fuel meme culture, doesn't seem to think so. In a recent appearance on comedian Theo Von's podcast This Past Weekend, Zuckerberg had this to say:
"I think a big part of the internet is that stuff just gets more fun and funnier and the memes get weirder and more specific. That's advancement too, right? The ability to express these complicated ideas in a very simple piece of media… I think we're going to get better and better at that. And that advances our understanding of ourselves as a society. I think we'll get superintelligence, and I would guess that it will be a continuation of this trend."
Whether we find this take strangely comforting or downright frightening, one thing seems to be clear: Just as someone from 1925 would struggle to keep up with memes today, we might be even more lost if we were suddenly dropped into the meme culture of 2125. And if our progress over the past century is any indication, tomorrow's memes will irreversibly reshape the way humans think, feel and connect.
Most of us consume and share memes on our phones. Want to know if you might be a little too attached? Take the science-backed Nomophobia Questionnaire to find out.
A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.