Gary Larson's 1982 Far Side cartoon "Cow Tools" is being reassessed as an unlikely forerunner of internet meme culture, decades after it baffled its original newspaper readers. The single-panel comic depicts a cow standing beside a workbench holding four crudely made, largely indecipherable objects, and its lack of a clear punchline provoked a furious response when it first appeared, offering a striking case study in how humour and audience expectations have shifted over time.

The strip ran in syndication across thousands of US newspapers on 28 October 1982, prompting Larson, local papers and syndicator Chronicle Features to be flooded with phone calls and letters of complaint, with Chronicle's phone reportedly ringing non-stop for two days. Larson eventually issued a press release explaining it was "an exercise in silliness." The cartoon remained a byword for reader frustration for years until social media exposed it to a new generation more attuned to absurdist, self-referential meme humour, and it is now viewed by some as an unintentional precursor to modern "shitposting" and inside-joke culture, suggesting online humour may have changed audiences less than assumed.