Circle, circle
Dot, dot, dot
Now you’ve got
Your cootie shot.
Word of mouth seems most likely to me. Wildfire compares favorably to their speed of dissemination. I always imagined a west-to-east wind carrying them along from Southern California to the rest of the country in a matter of hours to days, and for the really inside joke things, maybe weeks. We’d have to go back to pre-TV and pre-movies (including pre-radio) to get to the level of Pony Express speeds.
Paul Revere, maybe?
When You’re Up to Your Ass in Alligators and a couple of other books by Dundes and Pagter document pre-internet faxlore and what-are-now-called-memes (I don’t think Dundes uses that word). Loads of examples in these books.
We did this game a lot during my high school days in the early 90’s in Washington State.
Beautiful! I have to have that book. Thanks!
I remember seeing several xerox memes.
Banana bread “recipe” that was juvenile description of sex. “If bread rises, leave town”
“Achtenshun Lookenpeepers and Fingerpokerz” was a pigeon German sign, the point of which was “keep your hands off this equipment”
The Daffy Duck “You have obviously mistaken me for someone that gives a fuck!”
The only time I encountered a laser that did not have a "warning, Do not look into beam with remaining eye. " sign, I added one.
We used to modify cartoons with whiteout, literal cut and pasting, etc. Pretty much like photoshopped or Dogge memes.
What did you call it, if you recall? Glad to know it wasn’t a thing limited to my teen years.
Tons of things from certain TV shows, Get Smart had a lot
Missed it by that much
Sorry about that, Chief
Laugh-in had lots also
Sock it to me.
You bet your bippy.
Richard Lupoff’s parody of Harlan Ellison’s “Shattered like a Glass Goblin” was “Battered like a Brass Bippy.”
Nobody had a better “sock it to me” than Nixon. I still laugh at that!
We reach.
Herbert.
Nothing was ever sadder than my mother throwing around catchphrases from Welcome Back, Kotter.
“Up your nose with a rubber hose!”
“Sit on it!”
She thought she was so cool. :smack: In a later era, she somehow caught on to “Who let the dogs out?” and “Bad Boys” (the theme from Cops). She’s kind of a meme killer, really. Once she’s using it, you never want to hear it spoken again.
You speak for me in that department. My favorite of the sort was when whoever it was (some old gal in my acquaintance whose identity I have managed to repress) started saying “Right-oh” instead of “Right On.” Took the cool right out of that expression! Fortunately I have yet to have somebody take the sting out of “Far out” or “Cool” which are still useful in my vocabulary, in spite of the bastardizations like “Farm out” and such.
“Well isn’t that special?”
Around 1970 - men’s shirts had a button at the back of the collar. In high school, you buttoned the back button if you were gay (or had a girlfriend, or whatever). Or was it the other way around? Who knows where that came from???
And men’s shirts also had a small loop at shoulder height in the back – a loop like found inside jackets to hang them by though these were smaller. I never knew what they were for, but kids would yank on them to tear them off. Occasionally you’d rip the back of the shirt instead.
Remember those men’s slacks with the little buckle in the back between the hip pockets? We called those pants “flag britches” and guys who wore them were “flags.” This was in grades early enough that “fags” were not in common parlance.
Madras shirts anyone?
Where’s the beef?
The happy face
The pissing Calvin
The Darwin fish