Absolute Unit Twitter Meme. An internet meme composed of a black and white photograph of a large ram, with additional text: 'look at this absolute unit'. Created on April 9th, 2018 by Adam Koszary for The Museum of English Rural Life. Captured using Connifer web recorder software to show the meme in the context of the twitter interface. WARC file.

Internet memes are primarily visual and textual objects created, edited and shared through a variety of online platforms, networks and communities. Digital photography is now the dominant form of photographic practice and memes are a key mode for using and disseminating digital photographic (and graphic) content. Memes come in many different formats, but image-based memes are the most widespread.

The ‘absolute unit’ meme is made from a digitised photograph of an Exmoor ram, held by the Museum of English Rural Life, the MERL. The original photograph was taken in 1962 and published in Farmer and Stockbreeder Magazine. The analogue photograph was later collected by the MERL, and digitised, making the image available to share online.

On 9th April 2018, the photograph was tweeted by the Museum of English Rural Life official Twitter account, along with the text caption ‘look at this absolute unit’. The Tweet went viral. It has been retweeted over 30,000 times, liked more than 100,000 times and received almost 800 direct replies. The 'absolute unit' was adapted into a wide range of user responses, including a reply from Elon Musk, who purchased the social media platform Twitter in 2022, re-branding the site ‘X’.

The ’absolute unit’ remains one of the most significant and famous examples of meme culture in the UK and is the first meme to be acquired by the National Science and Media Museum.