I suppose that must be true in as much as technology and culture influence each other, but while the term “meme” is fairly new, the phenomenon is quite universa

I suppose that must be true in as much as technology and culture influence each other, but while the term “meme” is fairly new, the phenomenon is quite universal. Like, what’s funny about Kilroy Was Here [0] or drawing that constructivist S-shape in elementary school [1]? Another thing to consider apart from cultural differences and translations is that a lot can go wrong betwen a hit joke being told and a scribe getting around to immortalising it. It’s obviously a game of telephone. Comedy is a craft and written comedy is different from stage comedy. I can imagine a joke absolutely killing at the end of a stand-up set, but falling flat when told in isolation, because it was a call-back or otherwise profited from a primed audience. It’s quite likely that someone might naively retell only the bit that got the laughs and only then realise their mistake. Or the shared experience of the audience might elevate a bit to an in-joke that is only funny to them because they know the rest. Decades later, only the devolved memes that obliquely reference this shared knowledge survive in writing and future generations are left wondering what was wrong with their ancestors’ odd humour. Here’s hoping future generations will be aware of Douglas Adams’ work, but it seems entirely possible that in a thousand years, people will speculate why our we found towels or the number 42 so funny. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S