Memes aren't entirely associated with computers or the Web (despite their massive distribution through that medium), and for decades we've made photocopiers burn with all kinds of texts. Determining the true origin of memes is an almost impossible task, but the latest hypothesis on the internet points to a publication of the old Judge magazine in 1921...
The 1921 Connection
1921. The Red Army invades Georgia, Egypt fights for its independence from the 'old' United Kingdom, Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party... let's say political activity was considerable. At the same time, it was the year the actor Peter Sallis (the voice of Wallace in the famous Wallace & Gromit series), the unforgettable Gene Roddenberry, and Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov were born.
Now, what if I said that 1921 was the year the first meme was created? The idea seems ridiculous, but that's exactly how it appears to have been, and it all comes down to a simple image buried in a jokes section published by the old Judge magazine:
That's right: Expectation versus Reality in 1921. How can you not associate the joke with the meme? Until recently, most thought the meme had been born as an image on the FARK portal in 2008 with two women playing slot machines, and that the concept had been recycled to exhaustion with images from the film 500 Days of Summer... but it wasn't so.
Verifying the Claim
As expected, some have doubted that Judge is the true source of this format, and suggested the possibility of digital manipulation. However, the magic of the Internet allows us to access an online copy, preserved by none other than Google during its massive book and magazine digitization campaign. I imagine it will be a matter of time before someone finds an even older example... and we forget about it five minutes later.
