James Dalzell Hodge of Jam2Go, who previously explained how to geolocate songs based on their lyrics, took a comprehensive look at the entire history of cat memes in three waves over 25 years – the early 2000s (I Can Has Cheezeburger), the 2010s (Nyan Cat, Grumpy Cat, Li’l Bub) and the 2020s (Cat Distribution System).
Cat memes have evolved based on our culture and the sites of each era. Maybe by charting the course of cat memes, we could see the direction our culture is moving in.
Hodge is also very specific in what he considers a cat meme.
To do this we need to look at the entire history of cat memes. Let’s define what a cat meme is. First of all it needs to be about cats it could be a specific cat an image or video of a cat or…drawings in any cat-like characters. This includes any fictional cat characters let’s also include any ideas related to the concept of cats in general like the cat distribution system.
