It’s crazy to think how we occupied our time before memes were both mainstream and plentiful. We speak internet lingo where we once liberally quoted books and TV shows. While it’s true that plenty of us still do that, it’s often through the lens of something silly someone on Twitter said about it, or even some dumb TikTok trend. Memes are so much of a part of modern culture, even those who didn’t grow up with them can’t avoid it.

Although this might have its downsides, the immediate reward of memes takes us out of our heads about it. When there’s so much doom and gloom in the world, that’s as much as we can ask for. They dare us to dream of a few minutes where nothing but a collection of inconsequential funny pictures matters, and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s the small things that count the most, and memes are definitely that.