Over the past 15 years, memes have gone from being repetitive niche jokes shared by small online communities to an integral part of presidential campaigns. Despite this more mainstream acceptance of meme culture, the internet’s insatiable hunger for content has led to memes having a much shorter lifespan than they once did. Jokes that previously could have sustained for months, if not years, now live and die within the span of a few days, forever banished to the annals of the web alongside Ikea Monkey and Dat Boi.
But now there is a burgeoning community on Reddit where you can revisit all those dumb macro images and videos you used to post on the message boards. r/antiquememes is one of many subreddits dedicated to asking the all-important question, “Hey, remember this thing?,” but its users are particularly interested in memes that have a heavy layer of dust on them.