Why Memes Replaced Anecdotes in the Digital Age

According to statistics from the Google Trends search engine, starting in 2004 an astonishing trend can be observed: the popularity of the query “anekdot” has dropped fourfold, while interest in the word “meme” has reached peak levels. Digital culture is changing the ways we laugh and share humor. Let’s take a closer look at what lies behind this cultural shift.

What Memes Are

Many people associate memes exclusively with funny pictures of cats or movie stills that we send to friends in messengers. However, this concept covers a much broader range of cultural phenomena.

The Scientific Definition of a Meme

The term “meme” was introduced by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book *The Selfish Gene*, published in 1976. The scientist drew a parallel between biological and cultural evolution. If genetic information is copied and transmitted across generations at the biological level, then there must be an analogous unit for cultural heritage. Dawkins coined the word “meme” from the Ancient Greek μιμητής, which translates as “imitator.” In his memoirs, the author explains his choice of the term: he was looking for a short, monosyllabic word that sounded similar to “gene” and reflected the essence of the phenomenon. Additional semantic associations arise with the English word *memory* and the French *même* (“the same”). According to Dawkins’s concept, memes are popular ideas, cultural trends, catchy melodies, fashionable expressions, and winged phrases circulating within society.

Internet Memes: A New Era of Cultural Transmission

With the development of digital technologies, the concept has transformed. The Cambridge Dictionary provides a modern definition: a meme is an idea, image, video, or other content that spreads rapidly across the internet. The first mention of internet memes in academic discourse dates back to 1996 and appears in a collection of scholarly articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Common Features of Internet Memes and Anecdotes

The Mechanism of the Comic Effect

Both phenomena provoke laughter thanks to a similar underlying principle. Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor at *The New Yorker* who studies the nature of humor, argues that the comic always contains a deviation from the norm, an element of incongruity or contradiction. This principle, known as incongruity, underlies both anecdotes and memes. Daria Radchenko, a researcher at the Laboratory of Theoretical Folkloristics at RANEPA, gives a classic example: “Two crocodiles were flying. One was green, the other was heading north.” The comic effect arises not from the absurdity of flying crocodiles, but from the mixing of incompatible categories — a color characteristic and a direction of movement.

Belonging to the Folklore Tradition

Traditionally, folklore is associated with epics, fairy tales, and folk songs. However, anecdotes belong to the genre of urban folklore, while memes represent digital folk creativity. Both forms are collective cultural products.

The Function of Social Identification

Humorous forms help people identify like-minded individuals. Polina Kolozaridi, an internet researcher and lecturer at the Higher School of Economics, notes that a meme relies on a shared cultural code and rapid recognition of meaning. Acceptance or rejection of a particular joke allows a group to mark its social position and declare its values. This is easy to verify by visiting an online community of people of a different age or sphere of interests — their memes, obvious to group members, may be incomprehensible to outsiders.

Anonymity of Authorship

It is almost impossible to find an internet meme or an anecdote with a specific creator credited. According to philologist Svetlana Kanashina, anonymity gives authors the freedom to express opinions and emotions without regard for social norms and without the need to bear responsibility.

Reasons for the Decline in the Popularity of Anecdotes

A study by psychologists at Saint Petersburg State University showed that people aged 17 to 30 most often perceive anecdotes as an unfunny and outdated genre. The younger generation rarely tells anecdotes in social settings and associates them with older people, preferring spontaneous, situational humor.

A Connection to the Pre-Digital Era

Philologist Vasily Khimik notes that the mass popularity of anecdotes peaked during the Soviet period. Philosopher Evgeny Sokolov considers the anecdote a specifically Russian-Soviet cultural phenomenon, a distinctive product of that era. Social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova explains that the anecdote is especially widespread in cultures where it serves not only as entertainment but also as a way to express an opinion without the risk of punishment. By telling a joke about a political leader, a person conveys someone else’s opinion while avoiding personal responsibility. Thus, the anecdote becomes a “weapon of the weak” — a term referring to indirect forms of expressing protest. In totalitarian regimes, where authorities controlled public space, critical statements existed in oral form. In Cuba, for example, oral anecdotes still circulate actively today.

The Negative Impact of Printed Joke Collections

Many people remember the cheap joke booklets widely sold in the 1990s. Cultural scholar Oleg Borisov believes that such brochures stripped the anecdote of its aura of living oral history, turning it into archival material devoid of the context of direct communication.

The Problem of an Overly Extended Format

Modern audiences perceive anecdotes as unjustifiably long narratives. Extended introductions and detailed descriptions require concentration, but do not guarantee a high-quality punchline. Daria Radchenko points out a trend toward information compression: historical anecdotes of the 18th–19th centuries occupied an entire page, jokes of the 20th century became three times shorter, but modern people need even more compact forms. A single meme image contains many layers of meaning — the equivalent of not one, but a whole set of anecdotes.

The Evolutionary Advantages of Memes

Adaptation to the Digital Environment

Short and visual memes perfectly match the conditions of the internet era. Technology has accelerated and simplified communication. People often lack the time for detailed explanations of their attitude toward events — instead of a long text, they can send an image that will be understood instantly. Linguist Maxim Krongauz emphasizes that the internet is an environment of instantaneous information distribution, where a meme can cover vast space within hours.

A Culture of Collaborative Creativity

American cultural theorist Henry Jenkins describes the transformation of the internet user’s role: every person can move from being a simple consumer of cultural meanings to becoming their co-author. Some write posts, others take photographs, and still others invent and modify memes. Around memes, a community of creators, distributors, and viewers forms, with equal authorship rights. Daria Radchenko explains that memes operate within a culture of participation — a situation in which we become not only consumers but also co-creators of cultural products. This holds great value for modern individuals. When retelling an anecdote, we also participate in folkloric co-creation: we add details, shorten elements, change characters’ names. However, this variability is limited by the framework of a specific text. A meme, on the other hand, allows the general structure to be filled with fundamentally new meaning, making it a more flexible creative tool.

High Speed of Renewal

According to linguist Mikhail Krongauz, the mechanism of meme creation operates continuously and at a much higher speed than before. Content diversity is influenced by the capacity for transformation: the image and text that make up a meme can separate and exist independently. New captions are invented for a single illustration, and a popular phrase is combined with different images.

Conclusion

The shift from anecdotes to memes reflects deeper changes in the ways we communicate and consume information. Memes win not because they are “better” than anecdotes, but because they perfectly match the conditions of the digital era: they are compact, visual, easily modified, and allow everyone to become a participant in the cultural process. This is not the end of humor, but its evolution — an adaptation to a new reality of instant communication and collective creativity.