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You mean "demotivational posters".

Words change. "LOL" means something different than it used to. Such is the fluidity of language and the web.

But they're not demotivationals.

Image macros come from Japanese message boards; they are not really related to the faux motivational posters that are commonly known as "demotivationals".

Image macros came from SomethingAwful, although even then it was only a brief period where they were actual "macros".

Japanese sites don't even let you embed images. Everyone uses ASCII art (actually SJIS of course).

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