Me waiting for HR to finish their “we’re a family here” speech so I can quit. You’ve probably already pictured this scene. A side-eyeing, fake-smiling meerkat with a toothpick in its mouth.
In June 2025, the internet went wild over an AI-generated meerkat meme that hilariously captured everyday struggles. Within hours, it was in WhatsApp groups, Twitter threads, and even LinkedIn posts, for crying out loud. It didn’t matter that it was absurd. That’s the magic of memes; they live in our collective imagination.
Coined in 1976 by evolutionist Richard Dawkins, a meme is a piece of information, be it an image, video, or text that is humorous in nature and spreads quickly across the internet.
But if you take a closer look, memes aren’t some strange new language. They’re just the evolution of something older, bumper stickers. Think about it. Those one-liners were the original memes, compressing ideas, humour, and protest into a single phrase slapped on the back of a car.
Bumper stickers once gave your car a voice, memes now give your entire digital self a megaphone. The same energy that made someone proudly display “I love my dog” or “The earth is flat” on a rusty pickup now fuels memes. Both are a form of cultural shorthand.
This is the same principle that drives viral marketing. The most effective campaigns don’t drown us in detail, they hit us with a single, sticky phrase like “Kodi usamuka liti?” or “Ambiri amatero” or “Odya za…” okay, that’s not exactly a meme, but you get the point. Memes are a form of micro-storytelling. They spread not because they’re accurate, but because they’re contagious.
At their core, both memes and bumper stickers are branding devices. They package complex ideas into bite-sized slogans that people proudly adopt and share. “Got Milk?” is just a bumper sticker in campaign form. Nike’s “Just Do It” is practically a meme that refuses to die.
Marketers know the real battle isn’t just about shelf space or ad spend, but about attention. Memes hijack attention with speed and relatability. A clever meme can outperform a million-dollar TV ad because it feels authentic. Just like a bumper sticker on a car in traffic, the right meme can make people laugh or even rethink what they stand for… in seconds or less.
Today, memes aren’t just an internet joke anymore, they’ve become serious business. They are even entering academia. The University of Cambridge and the University of Arizona have both introduced courses on memes, treating them as modern artifacts of communication and identity. When universities start dissecting Wojak alongside Aristotle and Plato, you know the world has changed.
If a simple image can outshine a corporate slogan or earn a place in a Cambridge lecture hall, then we’re not just talking about internet jokes, we’re looking at a fundamental rewrite of how humans share ideas. Maybe this isn’t a fad but a paradigm shift in communication. So, let’s make memes.
