It's hard to decide if we're in the golden age of memes or if we've already left it behind. Modern memes, by their nature, have the potential to be as fleeting as they are hilarious, but the memes belonging to the early internet possessed a level of absurdity that gave them staying power. Since nerdiness powered the early internet, in opposition to the general admission vibe the net carries today, memes of yesteryear frequently featured science fiction characters compared to the array of randomness that begets modern memes. The Picard song, for example, was a massive meme for the entire internet, irrespective of their affinity for Star Trek. Had the Picard song come out today, it would've settled neatly into its Trekkie niche without much overlap.
That's why the video embedded above—pardon the pun—tickles me so much. If you told me that appreciation for Dune would leak out of comic convention halls and infect the mainstream, I wouldn't have believed you. Yet, here we are. With the level of attention that the 2021 remake of Dune brought to the franchise, memes were always going to be an inevitable consequence. In the video linked above, some wonderful soul edited the Gom Jabbar scene from the Dune remake by replacing Paul Atreides with Elmo. The editing mastery on display is clearly a product of the new era of memes, but the premise of the gag seems like a throwback to the early 00s.
