What memes are there

Well, many in favor of the trend began using the above copypasta as a counterpoint. Celebrities had a difficult time relating to us at the start of the pandemic and continuously throughout. Why did they think we wanted this? It is still unclear, but we did get to mock it relentlessly which made for some pretty great memes, so thanks, Gal. After shocking fans with the surprise release of her 8th studio album Folklore in July, the internet was thoroughly shook just five months later when Swift announced she was releasing a sister album titled Evermore.

Memes of course ensued as the internet attempted to process the news. One of the first memes of quarantine was one of the best. The template was used to succinctly answer questions related to Peppa Pig and the U.

This image of a man wielding a knife was the perfect template to express all the terribly tumultuous events our poor brains tried to process this year. Like Taylor Swift releasing another surprise album, or the fact that March is somehow already approaching. Among Us was the hottest video game of the year , and it inspired a ton of memes across TikTok, Twitter and other social platforms.

While the online multiplayer social deduction game was developed back in , it became a hit this year thanks to quarantine, offering kids, teens and young adults a quick answer to boredom while allowing them to safely socialize with friends and others on the internet.

Even U. Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar played a few rounds of the game in late September to get out the vote, inspiring more viral internet reactions and even fancams. Successfully immunizing the population against COVID is going to have its setbacks, especially as anti-vaxxer rhetoric, conspiracies and misperceptions about the efficiency of the vaccine have been circulating on the internet.

This image of D. No coronavirus meme has managed to transcend its interweb plane quite like the Dancing Pallbearers, also known as the Coffin Dancers. The meme refers to a Ghanian group of pallbearers who dance with coffins in order to make funerals a more celebratory occasion.

The group gained worldwide attention from a BBC feature story , where they were seen showing off some impressive choreography all while hoisting up a coffin. But as the pandemic started to unfold, the pallbearers were used as PSAs for the virus. A video posted to Twitter by one of the members of the group showed the pallbearers wearing surgical masks, thanking first responders and again urging the public to stay home or dance with them. A Russian cereal commercial sound went viral on TikTok over the summer.

Another meme inspired by a debate during the election cycle, this time from President Donald Trump. Some on the internet devised a full-proof solution: sexualizing the USPS. At the start of lockdown, as humans retreated into their homes for an extended period of time, Twitter users began posting photos of nature returning to its natural state.

These tweets racked up millions of views and likes, the only problem? None of it was real according to Buzzfeed News save for a Wales town overrun by goats. But it was too late, a meme was born. A post shared by Brian Esperon besperon. Users turned the plea into a viral meme, replacing text to reflect their dire needs. It was a way of channeling the very real anxiety about the possibility of war into some comedic relief.

After four years of letting misinformation run rampant on the platform, Twitter rolled out a feature ahead of the election designed to flag tweets that had false or misleading info in them. The warning label quickly became a meme, with users posting personal claims that have been disputed by outside sources.

After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.

Not long after posting photos from her private island extravaganza, West got the full meme treatment. Migos popularized it. And Squidward turned it into the ultimate surprise. But then there were Bill Gates and this sociopath. The jury's still out, but the simplicity of the original could place it in the pantheon of celebrations.

Have you ever loved someone like these two loved each other in the midst of a riot, Canada's largest display of violence since Vice Admiral Cantwell made a rude remark about Queen Victoria's corset?

No, you haven't. To love like this would mean ignoring the realities of the real world and also having a heart. Photoshoppers agreed, highlighting the effect by placing them in historic situations about which they couldn't care less.

So, whenever you need an explanation for a difficult question, use this macro and all will be revealed. For Tom Cruise's career, there is Before the Couch-Jumping, when no one questioned the biggest movie star in Hollywood, and After the Couch-Jumping, when his mere presence raises an eyebrow.

The profession of love for his then-wife Katie Holmes raised the scrutiny over the Church of Scientology and, well, the rest is history. Meanwhile, over 15 years later, the internet is still meme-ing this brazen display of love. Swaggy P's career as a basketball player befuddles those who know him as a shoot-first, overconfident ball hog.

And yet he possesses a strange charisma encapsulated in this meme, which serves as a macro AND a reaction to anything as befuddling as Young himself—to make things even more meta, the meme has come full circle. An OG cat meme that has taken on new macro-meaning in the age of constant government surveillance. Ceiling Cat is watching you illegally download NSA documents you acquired through your private contracting gig! Hate when your MacBook Pro restarts for no reason?

Bored of all your video games? Sick of the ads on Hulu? Go cry about it, Jared Kushners of the world. Hillary Clinton ended this meme when she tweeted it at Donald Trump during her presidential campaign. But its origins as a Myspace insult that migrated to Tumblr that migrated to all social media as the ultimate shut-down retort indicate it has a long, long, long shelf life. Those of us who lived through the planking craze will tell our grandkids tales about the glory days of and , when anything seemed possible, any situation ripe for a good ol' plank.

Or at least we'll tell our mom's friends when she has them over for dinner, and we decide to come up from the basement to have some wine. This meme stands as the quintessential example of spontaneous brilliance subsequently ruined by others who tried too hard to replicate it. Remember "owling" and "Tebowing"? Yeah, those sucked so hard. It says a lot about John Kerry's presidential campaign that this is the most memorable Kerry moment , and it happened in Overzealous police officers attempted to remove a man who interrupted Senator Kerry's speech at the University of Florida; knowing what would happen next, the protester offered one final, futile plea: Don't tase me, bro!

The line has become a response to any unpleasant experience, and its close relative, "Don't tease me, bro," has become an antidote for anxious anticipation the world over. Future generations, take note: This is right up there with " Playing at St. Before he was a mainstream movie star, Will Ferrell was the off-kilter backbone of Saturday Night Live , with an eye for the hilariously mundane.

The sketch that generated this now-famous line focuses on the fictional percussionist of the Blue Oyster Cult who rocked the cowbell during recording sessions for their hit song, "Don't Fear the Reaper. For those who think memes don't matter: Consider James Van Der Beek, who parlayed his horrendous cry-face in the teen show Dawson's Creek into a universally recognized expression of low-stakes bereavement, and a second, self-parodying act.

Well done, Van Der Beek. Well done. Bill, we're going to remember you for a number of reasons. None of them good, but some more meme-able than others. Remember Antoine Dodson? This is him like you've never heard him. Way before Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was doing it, other people with The Gregory Brothers leading the charge were Auto-Tuning the fuck out of the news and making gloriously awful masterpieces.

It really doesn't matter what Baby Goose does, shit will not stick to him. The man played Robert Durst, for God's sake! The Gossiping Gosling moment only added to the actor's meme legend status.

Thanks to this kid's talent show performance , this other kid's incredible Halloween costume , bottle flipping reached new heights in The only thing better than watching everybody's daring attempts to pull off plastic acrobatics were the heavily edited fakes that emerged as part of the " haters gonna say it's fake " meme, one that exists well outside bottle flipping.

It's sad this is dead. For a while—including before this trend hopped from real-life frat stars to the internet—one of the great joys in life was watching a bitchin' bro top off a Smirnoff Ice in earnest, then get up and plaster a super-cool look on his face—you know, the kind of smirk that said, "Fuck, man, I'm tragically uncool, aren't I? Arthur , the PBS educational TV series based on the Arthur the Aardvark books that just ended its year run, has generated some of the best memes.

In particular: One Twitter user's insightful take on an Arthur freeze frame led to 's greatest representation of inner frustration. It's the gift that keeps on giving. But surely he didn't realize the moment would later turn into one of the most enduring memes of all time. It functions almost like the simple setup of a knock-knock joke. You know what's coming next. And it ain't good.

The Occupy Wall Street movement spawned dozens of social media campaigns, images, political action, and protests. Summing up the confusing melange was an overzealous, dickish campus cop at UC Davis who decided it would be a good idea to stroll up and down a group of peacefully protesting students and pepper spray them directly in the face.

Almost immediately, the cop found himself ruining the rest of history. Just a few months after the launch of YouTube, commercial editor Robert Ryang inadvertently kicked off a movement by recutting Stanley Kubrick's The Shining into a lighthearted family comedy. Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" clearly worked its beaming, inspirational magic; the viral success of The Shining trailer spawned countless recuts, with a few—see: Brokeback to the Future —catapulting the practice to legendary status.

The Slender Man—sometimes spelled as one word and occasionally referred to as "Slender"—is a towering, faceless humanoid who dresses in a suit and stalks lonely children. Entirely fictional, he was created in , when a user of the internet forum Something Awful submitted a doctored photo for a paranormal image contest. The character quickly exploded in popularity and became a fixture of horror sites namely Creepypasta , inspiring countless videos, photos, and pieces of fan fiction.

He is the horror meme. Casual stereotyping has fueled the internet for a long, long time. Before we had the starter packs you see today on Instagram and Facebook, we had the slightly related YouTube videos that poked fun at what certain types of people used to say. Finding out you or one of your beloved Oregon Trail wagon-mates perished via unrelenting diarrhea was the grade-school equivalent of being audited by the IRS.

OK, maybe not. As much as we love this guy, and his incredible feats, we hate to break this to him: He's basically the mall version of Chuck Norris Facts more on that below. We still love you, and you were undeniably huge, my man. Just not quite the real deal. This turn-of-the-millennium hit found second life in the irony-soaked hands of a new generation, who find that relentlessly mocking the song is much more pleasing than listening to it. Peak "All Star" is owned by the lovable, neck-bearded Jon Sudano, who poignantly squeezes Smash Mouth lyrics into other popular songs.

Smash Mouth, who performed at a COVID superspreader event in Sturgis, North Dakota, had this to say about the meme: "It's funny because a large percentage of our fans don't even know what a meme is—heck, we didn't really know either at first.

Not the sharpest tools in the shed. The phrase may date as far back as Saturday Night Live 's "Wayne's World," but it's still riotously funny to year-olds the world over and Michael Scott from The Office. Anything can become sexual, and these four words are the proof.

It wasn't that long ago that former Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen took the word "winning" out of the sports realm and applied it to life in general. Unsurprisingly, his antics quickly spread to bros the world over and Donald Trump. Parodied by such comedy stalwarts as Stephen Colbert and Arrested Development , this video of a kid wielding a ball fetcher like a lightsaber exploded onto the pre-YouTube internet, repurposed by any and every internet user with video-editing skillz.

The bittersweet twist is that viral fame took its toll; after suffering emotional damage, Star Wars kid slapped the cyberbullies who leaked the video with harassment lawsuits. Shepard Fairey's reproduction of an Obama portrait quickly became one of the most iconic images of the presidential election. It wasn't long before several parodies, imitating the style and minimalist message, spawned. This one doesn't require that much unpacking.

Dick Butt is a drawing of a penis with a mouth, nose, and eyes who also happens to have another penis emerging from its rear end. This second penis does not have facial features.

It's a dick with a butt. Hence, Dick Butt. It came from a webcomic by artist K. Green and was popular on 4chan, YouTube, Reddit, and other places that you might assume would find Dick Butt hilarious. Either you think Dick Butt is funny or you're probably not reading this explanation anymore.

Vladimir Putin has been the subject of countless memes over his seemingly eternal reign heading the Russian oligarchy. While "Shirtless Putin" memes—featuring him riding eagles , shootin' guns, and engaging in other real-life and photoshopped badassery—have been Westernized riffs on his over-the-top and well-staged acts of masculinity, the people of Russia have used an image of Putin as a gay clown to protest the regime's harsh stance on LGBTQ rights.

This meme and all memes of Putin, really were promptly banned by the Kremlin—meaning they clearly got under his skin, proving not all memes have to be vessels for Dick Butt jokes.

Animals make excellent internet fodder, and "Philosoraptor," a popular image meme where a quizzical dinosaur thinks deeply absurd thoughts, is the perfect example of what even an extinct creature can accomplish. Where did this Jurassic meme hatch from? While you'd think this particular joke was cooked up on a web forum, Philosoraptor actually debuted as a T-shirt sold on the website Lonely Planet by a designer named Sam Smith. Yep, that's right: Novelty clothing can still be funny. WIlliam Shatner's entire existence has morphed into a meme, from the vocal modulation to appearing on Shit My Dad Says, and you can't argue with the results.

He's continued to make bank as a octogenarian actor, with this angry Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan scream echoing through the annals of history. Not long after the release of Oliver Hirschbiegel's film, Downfall— about Adolf Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker—YouTubers turned the climax into a subtitled burst of absurdist comedy.

In the real version, actor Bruno Ganz fumes with German fury over a failed assault. But in many of the viral parodies that followed, he kvetches about trivial pop-culture matters, everything from late-night show politics to Taylor Swift.

A beautiful experience to behold, one complemented nicely by Bear, whose commentary made him sound like he was scared, happy, and on the verge of an orgasm. The video was a meme creator's dream, immediately spawning songs and catchphrases , and changing the world forever. It's fun to watch other people have fun. That's the driving philosophy behind many of the memes, especially the ones that popped up online in the early '00s like "Numa Numa," which emerged from a video of New Jersey resident Gary Brolsma dancing like a mad man to "Dragostea Din Tei" by Moldovan pop trio O-Zone i.

Brolsma's joyful lip sync inspired countless tributes, parodies, and sequels, but nothing beats the original for pure, unhinged joy. It's hard to think that when Ice Cube was shooting Friday , his classic stoner comedy, he had any idea that a throwaway line like "Bye, Felicia" would go on to become a popular dismissive catchphrase—much less the source for countless GIFs, Twitter put-downs, and even the title of a VH1 show.

But that's how the internet works. Once people latch onto a piece of culture, it takes on a life of its own. This particular phrase went from the movies to the internet and then back to the big screen: Friday director F. Gary Gray incorporated the line into his N.

Remember how fun it was to watch Kip Dynamite score a huge win? This meme was like that, but on steroids. The cuteness mixed with the often idiotic quips made this macro one of the most-used of its kind. And for good cause—whenever you needed a dose of optimism, Success Kid was there to remind you about how good or dumb life could be.

Whether you saw it first on Myspace, in Zoolander , or on the cover of Little Feat's Down on the Farm , you know damn well what this pose is. Heck, you might've even duck-faced a few times yourself. Never forget. While this meme has faded into obscurity, it deserves a slot on this list for being one of the first memes to thrive on the internet.

The archived and delightfully '90s website started by University of Illinois student Nehal Patel as a simple joke, featured Mr T.

It just goes to show you, the internet has always had an affinity for well-placed genital humor. Hopefully, it always will. Who would've thought that a random screengrab from Futurama 's "The Lesser of Two Evils" would become so meme-orable ahem? Probably not Fry, but here he is anyway, still being used as a macro stand-in for suspicious moments and confusion.

Earwormy passages? Easy dance moves? Absurd imagery? All of the above? We've already tried, and failed , to figure out exactly why Psy's "Gangnam Style" is so popular and immortal. But having surpassed 4 billion views, Cho Soo-hyun's cheesy horse trot-filled music video has proven it will live on in internet history books for the rest of time.

Images of the gorilla began popping up on the internet as a way for people to comment on the absurdity sometimes present in our modern lives. Before long, Harambe became an internet sensation, and memes made about him are now some of the most popular and easily recognizable. Willy Wonka, as played by the late Gene Wilder, first burst onto the scene in with the release of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

However, his childlike love for chocolate, quirky personality and strong moral sense helped him stay relevant for many more generations.

The film has since been redone starring Johnny Depp, but Wilder will forever be known as the original Willy Wonka. However, Willy Wonka became even more relevant in when Redditors took a screengrab of him and began creating memes known as "Condescending Wonka. It's tough to provide much more of an explanation for the popularity of LOLcats other than that they're hilarious. There's just something about a cute, cuddly cat Photoshopped into a totally random scene complaining about something equally as random that just makes us all laugh.

Maybe it's the idea we all share that cats really do have minds of their own, or perhaps it's the z-laden text used to describe feline thoughts, or maybe it's something we simply can't understand. In the end, it doesn't matter. They're just funny. This universe consisted of several LOLCat characters who all play different roles in our lives. The two most recognizable of these characters are Ceiling Cat, who is supposedly watching you when you think you're alone, and also Basement Cat, who over time became known as the devil of the LOLCat universe.

Although Futurama only ran for seven seasons between , reruns still air to this day and the animated show has become a cult classic enjoyed by all different types of people. Its main character, Fry, is a dim-witted slacker from the 21st century who is cryogenically frozen and awoken 1, years in the future.

His diminished intellect plus the confusing situations he often finds himself in means he is frequently confused or frustrated, and a screengrab from the episode "The Lesser of Two Evils" captures this emotion perfectly. Since then, thousands of different captions have been added to the image to create memes that poke fun at some of the more humorous conundrums we face on a daily basis.

Snagging a photo of a little kid when they're expressing true emotion makes for a priceless picture, and in the case of Sammy Grimer, also known as "Success Kid" or "I hate sandcastles," a timely picture led to instant fame.

Because of the look on Grimer's face, and the fact that he was a toddler when the photo was taken, most of the memes made using this picture were designed to celebrate some of the smaller yet still significant victories we experience on a daily basis, reminding us to smile more and not take life so seriously.

Here are a few great examples:. Interestingly, the story of this meme goes a bit deeper. In , Grimer's father needed a kidney transplant, and he was able to pay for it using the money made off this meme. So, in the end, all those free smiles and chuckles went towards helping save someone's life.

What could be better than that? What originally began as an advertising campaign for Dos Equis beer, "The Most Interesting Man in the World" meme took off rather quickly and became one of the most popular memes of all time. The star of the ad, Johnathon Goldsmith, depicts cool and collected like no one else. However, the internet took this disposition and juxtaposed it with some of the more menial aspects of life, allowing us once again to smile at ourselves and remember that life is often a joke.

There are many different variations of this meme, but they all follow the same format of the ad, which said, "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis. The current U.

Several have become quite famous, but perhaps one of the most popular to come out has been the meme of Trump showing off his first signed executive order.

People took to Photoshop to erase the actual text of the document and replace it with something times funnier, the most common image choice being, of course, cats. In a time of political stress and turmoil, images like these are a nice way to remind ourselves that the world isn't going to end tomorrow, even if sometimes it feels that way.

If you want to make your own Trump meme, check out the app DonaldDraws. Although the guy who became known as Scumbag Steve is not named Steve, and we have no idea if he's really a scumbag or not, the picture of this guy standing in a doorway with a goofy look on his face and a baseball cap sideways on his head has become synonymous with all the behaviors we associate with a first-class jerk.