Anecdotical of course, but I remember "memes" existing in localized/regional form long before the Internet was publicly available. If we had to have a name for

Anecdotical of course, but I remember "memes" existing in localized/regional form long before the Internet was publicly available. If we had to have a name for it, we said it was an "insider joke"[1]. This was usually small silly stuff like words or phrases that were repeated, sometimes situational and back-and-forth, or callbacks to earlier events that made a mark somehow. As a small and silly example, I remember that around the part of the city where I grew up, for a while we had this thing where when someone asked why we were going to do something (like going to some other neighborhood), instead of the real reason (like going to get ice cream) we would all answer with fake exasperation "it's about the principle!!"[2]. It's just stupid, fun bonding stuff teenagers do, most of which is probably forgotten when you grew up and absurdist humor becomes a bit less interesting. I remember that the word "meme" actually was invented to, so it seemed to me, describe exactly this phenomenon, and only years later the Internet meme superseded that more general meaning to something more specific. [1] Although this was Germany in the 90s, we literally used the English words "insider joke". There's a lot of expressions synthesized using English words in common usage in Germany. [2] This one actually in German.