Comedy is complicated when creativity is lacking. And it's hard to use creativity when so much good has been invented. Still, a lot of what we laugh about today, especially when popularized over the internet, may not be that new or original.

That's what happens with a certain meme that a lot of people share out there on social networks. It's a joke comparing two distinct moments of a person who plays with how someone thinks he looks and what he really looks like. You might have seen some versions of this meme around, like this:

You think you look like Brad Pitt, but you look like Mr. Bean

Well, if you believe this was invented in the age of the internet, you're wrong. A comic strip published in an American magazine of 1921 makes the very same joke, obviously adapted to the reality of that time. In the comic, a neatly drawn man on the left represents how well you looked in the old pictures that were lit by burning magnesium - the flash of cameras of the day. On the right side, the harsh reality: a little weird little man reveals what the photographed man really looks like.

"What do you think it looks like when a flash photo is taken" / "What you really look like"

It is curious to see how similar this is to jokes that could be made today, with the amount of technological features in smartphone cameras that serve to enhance not only objects and landscapes, but also our dear faces. There are a lot of people out there that came out with a model face in the photos only thanks to filters and camera corrections, right?

What are you really like? Famous internet meme already existed in 1921 via TecMundo