@Alfred When did cat images and memes take over the internet?
@piquant00 @Alfred: I would say the mid- to not-too-late-2000s, after Facebook went from being a school/regional platform to national and growing. MySpace was in there as well, certainly. Then there was the opening up in 2008 and 2009 of imgur and imgflip, and that really catapulted cat memes as well.
@thedisasterautist @piquant00 @Alfred Keep going back. rec.pets.cats c.1990s was serving up cat pictures.
@b4cks4w @thedisasterautist Yes, I was on Usenet in the early and mid 90s. Downloading binaries was slow and tedious.
@piquant00 @b4cks4w: I was as well! It was fun, but man, it was slow. At least it gave us time to go to the Pepsi machine or across the street to Substation II for some noms while it was downloading.
I used to weekly gopher to Rutgers and download hundreds, if not thousands of jokes, riddles, and puns -- all text, of course -- sometimes with ASCII pictures/figures.
Good times.
@b4cks4w @piquant00 @Alfre: They were not memes then, however. They did not "go viral". The only reason we know of them lately is because of families and researchers and photo restorers finding them and putting them out (often as memes).