Backstory: A requirement for the communications merit badge is to write an essay about anything and present it to my troop. Also, I am the leader of my troop, so the adults were… disappointed.

Today, I will be talking about the history of memes. But before I start talking about memes, you must understand what a meme is. A meme is defined as a picture or set of pictures that have text on top of them to express an emotion. Memes come in many forms, some are used to motivate people, and others are used for humor.

 Now, you would think that memes started in 2002 with the impact font, but they actually started in ancient times with the ancient nomadic civilizations of Egypt. These hunter-gatherers could not communicate with other nomadic tribes, so they would use memes to communicate with each other. The ancient meme format involved making 4 boxes on a clay tablet and drawing basic images with stick figures and crude images. Now they would show each other these memes and everybody would understand them. However, languages like Roman and Greek were made, so memes were eventually phased out as written languages were created.

 During the ancient Greek civilizations, many philosophers like Socrates attempted to revive memes. However, many people in these societies did not like memes, as they thought that memes contained a dark power unknown to them, that if unleashed, could create utter chaos. However, as Plato proved in one of his scientific studies, memes are harmless to society and do not contain dark power. But, memes eventually died as they were deemed to be too complex for people at the time.

 Around the times of the renaissance, as people were discovering new things, the people of Europe found long lost stories about Socrates, Plato, and their accomplishments involving memes. These memes lasted for a short while, but were banned because they helped lead to the protestant reformation. However, the kingdom of France did not ban memes because they were considered to be an art form. But, Louis XIV made a huge mistake not banning memes, because they led to the French revolution. However, Napoleon banned memes when he became emperor of France.

 Memes were unbanned briefly in 1901 but after leading to the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which is one of the factors starting WW1, memes were banned.

 Around the year 1990, US congress signed the 27th amendment, which led to the legalisation of memes in the United States after the meme lives matter movement. Modern memes have many differences from ancient memes. Modern memes were used for humor rather than communication. These modern memes also included text usually in the wordart font ‘impact.’ These memes would also have a picture in the center, which usually consisted of cats, the troll face, bad luck Brian, and pepe the frog. However, time brought new memes and expanded the community to more people through social mediums such as Instagram. Many new memes that were eventually brought in have also ‘died’ by being overused to the point where they become hated. For example, CNN considers pepe the frog to be a hate symbol after being used in a meme about the 2016 presidential election. This is one example of memes playing a bad role in society. However, memes also have a good place in society because many people today can convey emotions in a safe way online. But memes can also be used in more harmful ways. Some evil people use the powers of memes to cyberbully people online, which is not good.

 Many people believe that memes will soon face an inevitable death. One such reason is because many countries, like Spain, are banning memes after being used in a harmful way to offend government officials. If more countries follow through, memes could face an inevitable death.

 Overall, memes are very important and misunderstood in today’s society.