People on Reddit are freaking out after discovering an almost century-old comic strip that could be the first ever meme. An anonymous user on Reddit shared an illustration from a July 1921 issue of “Judge.” For those who don’t know, it was a satirical magazine that was published weekly in the US from 1881 to 1947.
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Like many well known memes today, the comic strip shows a side-by-side image of two people. The drawing on the left shows a well versed polished-looking man. The image is captioned: “How you think you look when a flashlight is taken.” The drawing on the right shows a cartoon version of the same man along with the caption: “How you really look.”
In the caption, the Reddit user wrote, “These comics found in a 1920-21 edition of ‘The Judge’ are deemed as the oldest recorded memes. Both use the classic ‘expectation vs reality’ joke format.”
Here, have a look for yourself:
These comics found in a 1920-21 edition of ‘The Judge’ are deemed as the oldest recorded memes. Both use the classic ‘expectation vs reality’ joke format. byu/DragonChasm inDamnthatsinteresting
Since being uploaded, the image has gone viral and gathered multiple responses. “The original meaning of the word meme is an idea or concept that is shared from one mind to another. That’s why memes were called memes in the first place. So yes, by the original definition, a meme can be any of those things,” commented a Reddit user. Another person wrote, “Is this actually real tho? It kinda looks like someone made art that is supposed to imitate the 20ies style as in “this is what memes would have looked like in the 20ies”
“Posting memes back then took a lot of work,” remarked another user.
What do you think?
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