How memes evolved from dancing babies to an everyday part of internet life

I remember my first meme. I was in my grade school computer lab — this was a time when computers were still novel, not mandatory. My fifth grade teacher was explaining email to our classroom, and how she could use it to talk with a friend in another country about what happened on this week’s episode of Friends. Presumably Friends didn’t air in said country. After an awkwardly long explanation of what Friends is to a couple dozen 11-year-olds, my teacher decided to show us something more our speed on the internet: the dancing baby. Then she showed us the dancing baby, but wearing a birthday hat. Then she loaded the dancing baby and a bouncing ball.

That was my first contact with an internet meme. Memes have become more prominent and stranger features of society, both online and offline. To explain internet memes, I invited my friend, The Verge’s senior reporter Adi Robertson to the show.