Memes have become an internet staple - and if you're anything like us, you spend more time than you're willing to admit sifting through memes for hours. There are only a few things quite so enjoyable as a good meme while high. As cannabis has continued to become more culturally relevant through increasing legalization, the rise of marijuana memes has begun. So, if you're looking for a few new weed meme Instagram accounts to follow, we've got you covered.

The History of Memes

The origin of "meme" might not be exactly what you were expecting. While the word is now instantly tied to millions of funny pictures accompanied by witty text, the first use of a "meme" was by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins used the term (its long form is "mimeme") to describe a unit of cultural transmission and imitation, and gave examples that included musical tunes, clothes fashions, architecture trends, or even ideas and catchphrases. The overarching concept was that information often behaves like organisms, replicating and evolving from person-to-person.

The first meme (related to amusing pictures with text) is a subject of some debate, but most contenders pre-date the internet. Here's one comic suggested to be the first modern meme, originally published in 1921. One of the first original memes to officially go viral on the internet was Baby Cha-Cha-Cha (aka Dancing Baby), posted in 1996. Other memes soon followed that subscribed to the modern format associated with memes, including celebrity memes, movie quote memes, and niche subculture memes. Merriam-Webster officially added "meme" in its modern internet context to the dictionary in 2015 with the following definition: "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of an item that is spread widely online especially through social media."

Because of their easy-to-share nature, memes have become so socially relevant that they often go viral. By viral, we mean getting spread around so much that a large portion of internet users are familiar and add to the content's popularity. Social media (especially Instagram) and messaging boards like Reddit have turned content sharing into a global phenomenon. Especially since anyone can recreate a meme by simply adding new text to a shared image or video, this sort of content can quickly escalate, change and be shared to millions of viewers within a matter of minutes. While the format of a meme has not evolved much over the last decade, the content that causes memes to go viral is ever-changing, shifting with cultural relevance and trends.

The History of Stoner Memes

It's hard to pinpoint when and where the first stoner memes were created and posted. However, we can highlight a few key stoner memes that had a massive cultural impact and helped put marijuana memes into the spotlight. The first prolific images that would become meme staples came to light in 2011. Good Guy Greg was one of the first wide-spread weed memes and rumored to come from 4chan's /b/ board. It's an image of a guy smoking a joint and smiling kindly at the camera, and the accompanying text usually jokes about someone being an outstanding person when they aren't expected to be. The second smoking weed meme to go viral is known as Stoner Stanley or Really High Guy. Stoner Stanley's image was first posted on the subreddit r/trees in November 2011 and shows a younger man who appears to be heavily under the influence of marijuana. The accompanying text to Stoner Stanley usually makes fun of things super high people might say or think.

As funny weed memes became more widespread, people began creating memes that incorporate pro-marijuana celebrities, such as Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Tommy Chong, Jason Segel and Seth Rogen. These memes often match actual quotes with a comical picture of the quoted celebrity. When creating viral memes, creators often reference moments in pop culture, movies and TV shows. The creative nature and sharing of memes brought about many different subgenres of stoner memes including munchies memes, too-high memes, situational memes and more. One of the most redeeming qualities of a meme is how often it reflects contemporary social climates. As you'll see if you keep up with current trends, many of the newest weed memes have proved this by incorporating political and social issues, current events, and relevant pop culture into viral content.

The Best Weed Meme Instagram Accounts

There are hundreds of stoner meme Instagram accounts out there, but there are several that post consistent laugh-out-loud content. Here are some of our favorite accounts with the best and most relatable funny weed memes.