I don't know if I've ever been immersed in 'memes', in fact I don't think you really could be immersed in them around the turn of the century. They were just am

I don't know if I've ever been immersed in 'memes', in fact I don't think you really could be immersed in them around the turn of the century. They were just amusing gifs being passed back and forth, that seemed to be especially good at catching peoples' eyes. Think dancing baby, zombo.com, cheezburger cat... they were funny, we passed em on, that was that. I do remember saving the ones I liked in a 'funny pics' folder -- which I still have -- but I'm not sure there were very many people 'immersed' in them any more than any other fringe part of internet nerd culture. That said, AYB was probably the first meme I ever 'immersed' in, in that it was the right combination of weird and zany and that it fit my zeitgeist back in the day. But then icanhazcheezburger.com and KnowYourMeme came around, and that their efforts to collect and categorize probably marked the beginning of the end.