yeah it was definitely more niche. i remember when the motiwational poster format made way to the advice dog format, and at that paint we banically just copy-pasted the images around different forums.

Maybe you weren't, but in the places they were born they were quite massive. Enough that the rules officially said you could be banned for it.

You’re totally right! They were there, but sequestered to very specific places. You wouldn’t have run into a lot of memes or image macros at all unless you were part of the big sites for “internet culture”: LUE, SA, YTMND, /b/, then finally more mainstream stuff like Digg, Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. Shoot, “memes” had a whole different meaning than they do now! They weren’t even CALLED memes in th’ early 2000s even though the term existed, they began as being called “fads” and “meme” caught on in the early to mid 2000s!

iamold