That didn’t hold in June, when Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the country. Suddenly, pastel backgrounds and girl-boss slogans stepped in, promoting antiracism as if it were a brand — or worse, a part of our brands. These disgraceful actions eventually got to the point of memeifying Breonna Taylor, showing the power of memes to steer us totally wrong.
Memes are just repetition, but that has a power of its own. A meme groups a few words, images, videos, or sounds, and as more people replicate it and share it, a meme grows stronger, more complex, and harder to pin down. In a way, the “best” memes are the ones that become building blocks for those that come after; they evolve into other memes and live through the ages. Through “dark times” — be they high school or a pandemic — that repetition can make us feel less alone. No matter what, as long as you get the memes, you’re laughing with somebody.
At this point in 2021, viral memes are a cacophony of laugh-crying moments. We were projectiled into 2021 with the same level of messiness that pulled us through 2020. Since we still don’t know where exactly we’ll end up, once again, we’re going to keep a record of the most viral and impactful memes, one month at a time, to help us along on this journey.
April: Fake Historical Pictures
Time is a construct and history is a story of the past as told by the victors. April saw the proliferation of a new version of the "gonna tell my kids this was __" meme that turned contemporary images of living people and pop culture icons into black-and-white or sepia artifacts.
Standout examples include black and white screenshots of Harry Styles in Dunkirk with a caption identifying him as "my great grandfather Harold" and the "look at all those chickens" Vine revised with a caption "my great grandma raising the chickens on the farm (1942). These memes read like a victory lap celebrating the internet's triumph over dusty pen-and-paper historical canon. Gatekeeping institutions and biased historians lose their power when average people from across communities don't just tell their own stories but rewrite history. Even if in jest, it points to how much power non-institutional actors have accumulated to tell their own stories on their own terms.
April: Vaccine Memes – The Sequel
Vaccine memes had their start when we were still digesting 2020 as if it were a movie, or as we realized around November, the first season of a riveting and potentially tragic television show. The first round of vaccine memes gave us the season finale we didn't see coming — not one but two vaccines, Big Pharma in absurd competition.
Almost six months later, vaccines are reaching the masses. The once absurd competition Big Pharma pursued was injected, and we began claiming the banner of the brand listed on our vaccine card. "Phizer Pham" for the elite-minded, original flavor crowd. "Moderna Mafia" for the alternative and funky ilk. Johnson & Johnson for the rebels that love a shortcut. A whole new crop of memes emerged.
April: Don't Be Surprised If One Day I Just...
This TikTok meme jumps right into the drama: it's the creator self-filming and telling the viewer "don't be surprised if one day I just..." and it cuts to idyllic music soundtracking the creator's dream. Recurring dreams shared across the platform include well-equipped kitchens, brimming home libraries, life on the road, vine-covered townhouses. But my personal favorite involves a sexy blood rave. My least favorite sees Addison Rae in thick-rimmed glasses, warning viewers she might come out the other side a fully-grown Gwyneth Paltrow.
Maybe it's a little bit sad that our dreams and fantasies would disrupt our current lives or that our current lives are not on a continuum with our dreams and instead, the best we can do is jump-cut to the good part.
March: Montero
When Lil Nas X dropped his masterpiece, "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)," the memes created in response were as much a part of the promotional strategy as the conservative reactions on Fox News. Lil Nas X has never dropped a song without viral TikTok potential and "Montero" is no exception.
<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="One popular meme (opens in a new tab)" href="http://
" target="_blank">One popular meme sees people at either the gates of heaven or hell, questioning where they are, when suddenly we hear Lil Nas grip the pole and swirl down to hell from out of frame. Another meme pictures how Satan would publicly handle the leaked news of his affair with the young rapper. Each meme touches on the righteous absurdity of condemning queer people to hell, like the video for the song does.@ishan.101 The tangfastics hit DIFFERENTLY! 😍- #fyp #foryou #CreatorRevolution #lilnasx #montero #callmebyyourname #viral #trend
♬ lil nas dropping by - John
Here, we have a two-for-one meme of Prince Philip pole-dancing to hell to make a deal with the devil.
March: Things That Would K-word Prince Philip
Rarely does a meme take on so many forms as this latest Prince Philip one. From viral Tweets and TikToks to a Reddit thread and even Spotify playlists, the internet's sickest minds had a field day listing all the things in modern culture that could severely hurt a very old and frail royal.
The building blocks: First, start with this 2019 picture of the now-99-years old Duke. Second, list off quirky, weird things (or totally mundane things) that exist today that you think would overwhelm him — it can be a banana peel, an episode of Kakegurui, a K-pop song, or Ponyboy by Sophie.
The memes didn't stop when the royal's actual death made headlines, in fact, they crescendoed into a triumphant roar
The internet's imagination and cruelty are boundless and much like the British Empire, it has no mercy.
March: RIP... they would've loved...
Here is a simple Twitter meme to keep your spirits up. The premise is simple: RIP [insert name of deceased public figure] you would've loved/hated [living public figure it weirdly makes sense to connect to the former].
Top examples include: "RIP Shakespeare you would've loved She's The Man" and "RIP Hamilton you woulda hated Hamilton." Some were more imaginative: "RIP Henry Kissinger you would've loved living in 2022" with the added disclaimer "it's called manifesting look it up."
These memes either celebrate or shame our current affairs — She's The Man is an accomplishment, Tesla... not so much.
February: Bad Girls Club & A Dramatic Sound
Also known as Dramatic Moment or BGC Drama Effect, this is a simple meme: The creator speaks into the camera calling out a specific group of people, repeating a question they often get asked, or quoting some commonly shared belief or assumption. Then, the dramatic reality show music plays just as the speaker throws it right back to the audience. It starts as a version of “bitches be like” but devolves into the desperate thrashing response of a general public that’s been pushed to the edge, often ending with a dare to either be killed or fucked.
Straight men seem to be the primary target of this rage. With classic premises like “Guys always say they want a girl who’s not like other girls,” and one creator taking a bite out of a carrot replying “okay... i wrote paula deen fanfiction in middle school. What more do you want from me?” The second-most popular target is parents who say things like “I brought you into this world and I can take you out,” with full-grown adults rehearsing how much they would’ve wanted to say, “then do it.” But nobody is spared: Another common version of this meme starts as “bishes be like, ‘i like your doc martens,” with the creator responding, “then fuck me.”
But this demand has been a long time coming, the audio track that marks this meme’s pivotal transition was part of a viral meme from last year and people on TikTok already connected the dots. The “Nobody’s gonna know” meme told stories of the little lies we tell ourselves, people online, and the lies that get fed to us every day. It poked fun at the range of lies that hold up our lives. But this latest iteration is way more aggressive; At this point of our quarantined existence, there’s no time for fucking around. Mean what you say and say what you mean. I dare you, this meme seems to demand, almost desperately.
February: Laughing Duet
For all of you unable to experience the thrill of a college campus party, TikTok’s viral laughing duet is here to help you get in on a very crucial part of that experience: You’re talking to two young women and they clink their drinks as they settle into listening to you talk, this is the first part of the meme. The second part, the duets, shows a man whip out his laptop as if a crowded dorm party is the right time and place to explain how Tame Impala is actually Kevin Parker’s solo project to two very alt-looking girls, who likely already know this. They stop you in your tracks to laugh at you and look at each other in disbelief. Another popular example shows someone telling the two women about how her new boyfriend is a Saggitarius and faithful. They think that’s hilarious.
On TikTok, people duet this while geeking out over the nerdiest things — the Spiderverse, Attack on Titan, and yes, indie music. The creators of this meme have been cast as both uncultured mean girls, reality-grounded besties, and as every-girls getting mansplained. The creators are laughing at you, the dueters set themselves up to be laughed at. And we all laugh together.
January: Stonks
This is likely not the first meme to threaten the stability of the economy, but it certainly is the only one that set out to do it and almost succeeded. What started out as a Reddit discussion and ballooned into an organized effort to buy up Gamestop stocks and spike the company’s value in an attempt to teach short-sellers a lesson: Two can play at that game.
The latest stonks meme is a powerful combination of a number of familiar memes: Movies like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short turned a whole generation onto how much of the stock market and the economy are just… a sort-of-collective decision we made to pretend that money is real. Add to that the joke-questions that turned into heated debates about printing more money that drew a line across the TikTok sand: You either understand the economy or you’re poor. Finally, the word “stonks” comes from a 2017 meme depicting an animated man standing with folded arms in front of a blue screen full of numbers and graphs. According to Know Your Meme, the word “stocks” was originally misspelled to convey the blind confidence behind so many bad financial decisions.
Despite the very real consequences the market has on the lives of very real Americans, who have faced disappearing retirement funds and lost homes, the recurrent memeification of the stock market is a constant reminder of just how precious an illusion it really is.
January: Bernie at the Inauguration
A simple, meat-and-potatoes, no-frills meme to start us off: Senator Bernie Sanders, once again, not giving too much of a shit, Inauguration Edition. With all the pomp and circumstance of President Biden’s inauguration, you’d think the air would’ve been filled with more electricity and enthusiasm, if only for its symbolic potential. But no. Once again, the best we can do is fixate on a small detail that strikes us as incredibly funny, in this instance, it was Sanders’s signature sentimentality. The man carried a manila folder. He wore warm mittens and a very practical coat. He just wants to pump through his to-do list so he can go to bed early.
Sanders is routinely memed for the same unamused demeanor he brings to every public appearance, for the same awkwardly direct attitude he brings to every conversation. Bernie Sanders is reliably memeable.
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