Developments
Lennon’s Murder In Memes
The exact first meme to reference Lennon’s murder is unknown, but such memes appeared online at least as early as 2011 as the public opinion of Lennon became more negative after knowledge of his domestic abuse and other facts were exposed. One of the first memes to seemingly support Chapman over Lennon was a cyberbully meme template that had Chapman’s mugshot used as an avatar in a chatroom, writing a message to “bully” Lennon. The meme’s original source was lost, but it was posted to Know Your Meme on October 25th, 2011, by user VintageVCR (shown below).
Memes about Lennon’s assassination were seen sporadically for several years, with the most prominent examples made using an Advice Animal template of John Lennon made for the site MemeGenerator on July 27th, 2011. An example of this was uploaded anonymously to the website (shown below).
