I am pretty sure that Pepe already was a few years old when I first heard "old" persons use the word "meme" (apart from the ancient internet founding fathers that helped invent memes in the first place).
And was anyone seriously mocking them instead of just telling them how to pronounce it?

mehmeh-ehhhhh. mehmeh-ehhh. MEHMEH-EHHHH

I swear to god if you imply that we're supposed to say "Peep"....

They grew up with Pepe LePew so no excuse.

Maymay

The phonetic alphabet is so cool!

Kids been doing shit like that throughout time. Pig Latin is one example but nowadays they just do words instead of the whole language. It's easier and the internet makes it fly.

Sus domesticus Latin. Sus? Romans were imposter all along? Interesting

frfr no cap, like skibidi sigma ohio rizz.

peepee.

I never once heard "an old person" (whatever that means) mis-pronounce "meme".

And I've been around long enough as an adult to pre-date common usage of the term as its known today.

Famous cartoon skunk and sexual abuser Pepe le pew came first.

So, it's not "me me" as in pointing out a meme and thinking, "Oh, that's me!" Silly, whippersnappers. They probably still think GIF is pronounced similar to GIFT.

It's funny how "old" people literally invented the Internet and the word meme.

Plenty of other languages don't pronounce words how they are spelled.

I'm studying Russian, plenty of letters have different sounds than their spelling sound depending on where they are in the word or sentence. the russian v can sound like f, and the russian d can be a t, etc. and many russians in casual speach drop entire syllables from words or blur consonants into one sound. The only language I studied that didn't do this was German.

the word meme was popularized in 1976. It's 50.

the use of it as for images with quippy overlay it, is like 25 years old.

The internet was invented in 1983, and became a consumer product in 1993 when the web browser was introduced. prior to that the web was mostly messaging services and text.

Yeah the phrasing of this shower thought reads very naive to the point I am not even sure what they mean.

Like even further, the last name Pepe has been quite famous in europe for fucking centuries.