Abstract: The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the Internet meme in computer-mediated communication, its lexical features and the place and role of the meme for the Internet. The authors also carry out a linguistic analysis of the Internet meme that demonstrates what should be expected from a typical meme and what aspects of a meme are subject to change. Internet memes that contain linguistic elements provide a unique opportunity to trace back changes that have been happening in the language over short periods of time but unfortunately, researchers only start to analyze the phenomenon of the Internet meme. The research involved analysis of different variants of Internet memes that were found on the Russian Internet by using the continuous sampling method. Internet communication researches are at their early stage of development now and Internet memes provide a great basis for such researches. Moreover, memes are a humurous genre and provoke interesting debates in which the language changes and evolves. Analysis of constructs that are created through such debates is essential for understanding the communication process.