Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined internet culture in 2017 as we know it.

ike 2012 was the year of advice animals image macros, 2017 was the year of webcomic edits.

Two standout series that were heavily represented in the realm of exploitables were Deathbulge and Owl Turd, which each spawning numerous photoshopped parody variations of their work on sites like Tumblr, Reddit and 4chan. Near the end of the year, Shenanigansen, the creator of Owl Turd, even became a bit of a meme himself following the spread of his infamous “Bike Cuck” comic.

On the relatable content side, Problems, Stress, Pain was used to share comforting sanctuaries from life’s turmoil. The comics Das Good Shit and I Sure Wish I Had Some Bread revealed memers deepest desires, while Coffee You’re My Only Friend watered down many of life’s brutal truths.

But if there was one type of exploitable that just wouldn’t die, it was the dreaded “Things I Don’t Like” memes. These low effort, unoriginal edits have shown no signs of abatement, and are typically used to make superficial criticisms of opposing political or philosophical beliefs. Over the course of the year, the meme economy was flooded with an avalanche of these webcomics, including Stress Powered Lightbulb, Self Aware Robot, Get Better Material, As a Father, To Survive in the Wild, All Life Is Precious and Your Mother and I Will Always Love You.

In order of appearance, let’s examine the top 10 comics to make a splash online this year.

Buenos Dias, Mandy

The year started off strong once the internet got their hands on a page from a hilariously bizarre pornographic comic based on the children’s animated TV series The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. In the comic, the character Billy slaps Mandy on the rear end while saying “Buenos dias, Mandy,” leading her to swiftly punch him to the ground where a car runs over his outstretched arms.

The absurd premise mixed with its amateurish illustration style created a perfect storm for memes, spawning countless photoshopped variations combining the comic with other popular exploitables, including The Trolley Problem, How to Talk to Short People and, of course, Loss. By the end of the year, over 110 submissions had been added to the gallery on Know Your Meme.

The Scroll of Truth

In February, artist Tate Parker published a comic in which a tenacious explorer discovers a magical “Scroll of Truth,” which proceeds to inform him that no one reads his “rants” on social media.

Oddly enough, a comic with a nearly identical premise had been tweeted by artist Nathan Pyle in 2016, in which the fictional archaeologist Indiana Jones hunts down a crystal that "utters only truth. Unlike the Pyle comic, the “Scroll of Truth” inspired the creation of numerous creative edits, with new additions popping up throughout the entire year.

First Class

British artist Dan Martin, the creator of the webcomic series Deathbulge, jumped on the internet meme scene in February with the release of his comic “First Class,” which features a smooth-talking young student who aces his class on “flirting.”

As the opposite of a “Things I Don’t Like” meme, the Deathbulge comic was a breath of fresh air to many online, with numerous edits reaching the frontpage of various subreddits and even 4chan’s infamous /pol/ board. However, it didn’t take long for variations changing the teacher’s “A+” stamp into an “F” to predictacly take hold.

How to Talk to Short People

What started as a simple illustration created to scold those who patronizingly crouch when talking to short people reemerged this year to spawn some of the most bizarre comic photoshop series the internet has ever seen. Titled “How to Talk to Short People,” the original 2014 drawing gave clear instructions on proper etiquette for socializing with the vertically challenged.

After being discovered this year, the comic took a turn for the absurd with some of the year’s more creative, and even disturbing, fifth world-style variations, including an “unholy abomination” from some horrific other-worldly dimension. “God save us,” indeed.

The Cuck Comic

In an attempt to destigmatize the cuckolding kink, commonly associated with the emasculating pejorative “cuck”, artists Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan created a comic titled “What the Fuck’s a Cuck?” explaining the sexual preference through the character Joe, Kate and Craig.

While it may have intended to be a serious exapliner about the alternative sexual lifestyle, the comic was just begging to be parodied. The most memeable panel of the bunch showed a hilarious scene in which Craig orders Joe to “shut up and get the fuck out” so he can have sex with his wife. Photoshops superimposing all sorts of popular characters from television shows, anime and video games into the panel took over Tumblr and Twitter, fillling up our image gallery with nearly 60 different examples.

Hey Man You See That Guy Over There

A newcomer to the internet meme scene, artist Florkofcows popped up in late April with an anime-themed comic featuring a pair of socks who aren’t fans of the anime Sword Art Online.

The comic exploded in popularity due to its simple setup and easily customized artwork, culminating in an impressive animation created by Imgur user Reckreations.

I Will Now Buy Your Game

A common complaint regarding characters in today’s video games criticizes the stark differences in how men and women are portrayed. In early July, Twitter user @glitchedpuppet published a comic urging game developers to avoid using designs relying on sexual dimorphism, using a pair of anthropomorphic rodents to illustrate the point.

The comic was immediately met with a slew of parody variations, predictably combining the premise with other exploitables like Loss and Buenos Dias, Mandy. However, Know Your Meme user WhyMe began creating original illustrations of the rodent characters as companions in a role-playing game, inspiring Know Your Meme user JamJelly to create an amazing pixel art animation.

Conflict in Literature

Longing for a different kind of webcomic to meme, a 2014 illustration by artist Grant Snider titled “Conflict in Literature” was repurposed this year as the perfect template for a variety of internet fandoms.

Initially popping up on Tumblr in October, the series quickly spread to Tumblr and Reddit, grabbing the attention of the experts over at /r/MemeEconomy.

My Bike Got Stolen Recently

There seems to be something about Owl Turd Comix that are ripe for parody, but none of Shen’s works have been quite as popular as his infamous comic about a boy, a thief and a bike. In mid-November, a comic in which Shen recounts how he was able to make peace with having his bike stolen by thinking about how the thief’s happiness caused “the total happiness in the world” to increase exploded online, with many mocking the outlook on theft as absurd.

After a cuckolding-themed parody began circulating on Twitter, people began referring to Shen as “Bike Cuck.” In the end, Shen managed to reclaim the meme by creating his own parody variation on the subject of net neutrality, in which a future version of himself goes back in time to warn him about the dangers of his outlook on life.

I Will Survive

Just before the end of the year, a new challenger appeared in the form of a Zootopia fan comic bizarrely focused on the issue of abortion. In the comic, the anthropmorphic animal characters Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps have a blowout break up while discussing the termination of Hopps’ pregnancy, leading to a melodramatic ending of epic proportions.

Due to the intense dialogue and heavy handed delivery, many interpreteded the comic as some sort of anti-abortion screed, leading to rapid mockery in the form of photoshopped edits. When confronted on DeviantArt about the purpose of the comic, creator Borba bluntly denied being pro-life or writing the comic to push an anti-abortion agenda. Just one day after being submitted to Know Your Meme, the entry accumulated more than 210 image submissions.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined internet culture in 2017 as we know it.

nline technology continues to reach new heights as our connection to the internet becomes deeper with each passing year. Mobile technology in particular has grown by leaps and bounds, as nearly everyone and their grandmother has a smart phone now-a-days.

While no one was able to surpass the virality of 2013’s Flappy Bird, a number of notable mobile games took off this year. Nintendo jumped back on the scene with the release of their social simulation game Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and an Android version of their side-scrolling, auto-run game Super Mario Run. Meanwhile, the Pokémon Company hooked fans with the highly addicting gacha game Magikarp Jump, allowing players to raise a fleet of virtual fish to endlessly collect coins.

However, not all social media platforms and internet companies fared too well this year, with the internet bidding farewell to Vine as it officially shut its doors in January, though co-creator Dom Hofmann hinted a new project is in the works, while Uber, the world’s largest taxi company and one of the most successful startups in history, struggled to shake off seemingly endless bouts of scandals involving its executives’ conducts and massive data breaches. In digital publishing, many independent production companies like Super Deluxe continued to rack up millions after millions of views with their hilariously bizarre content, while major news publishers like DNAinfo and Gothamist suffered a shocking closure when Joe Ricketts, the publisher of silent made the stunning move to shut both operations down after the company’s writers and employees voted to unionize, leading to an enormous backlash online.

Above all else, 2017 proved to be an enormously successful year for cryptocurrency platforms, as the price of Bitcoin soared from less than $1000 per token at the beginning of the year to upwards of $16,000 per token at the time of writing, yielding a whopping 1,900% jump in valuation.

In photo-editing apps, the mobile app Meitu gave users the ability to make anyone kawaii, while MakeApp boasted the opposite effect with their controversial makeup removal feature.

In no particular order, here are some of the top sites and apps to make waves throughout the tech world this last year.

Me.me

Seemingly out of nowhere, the online meme aggregator sign Me.me popped on to the scene this year in a big way. Initially launched as Onsizzle.com in 2015, the site does an impressive job of gathering memes from across the web, and even cites the source from which it was taken. This year, they teamed up with data scientist and former NASA researcher Evan Freitag to released Me.me Trends, a tool that graphs meme popularity in a similar fashion to how Google Trends tracks search volume for keywords. Most recently, the site appears to be working on some sort of meme exchange database, featuring presale form to trade 1 ETH for 3,000,000 MEME.

Musical.ly

In online cringe content, one application stood out this year as an impressive incubator for some of the most annoying videos on the web. After kicking off the career of teen pop star Jacob Sartorious, this social networking video app started attracting young cosplayers with some very high IQs. In September, Musical.ly clips featuring teens acting out various skits while dressed as characters from Rick and Morty came along just as fans of the animated television show were gaining an online reputation for being exceedingly irritating and obnoxious.

/r/MemeEconomy

The /r/MemeEconomy entire subreddit is a place on Reddit for internet culture enthusiasts to speculate about the viral success of various internet memes. Launching in late 2016, the community exploded in popularity this year by crossing the 300,000 subscriber milestone in September, cementing its place in Reddit’s top 300 subreddits. If you’re wondering which memes to “buy” or “sell,” this is the place to find out. In case you missed it, be sure to check out our “Meme Exchange Stock Market Report” summarizing our meme economy-inspired April Fool’s Day event!

FaceApp

There certainly was no shortage of bizarre photo-editing software this year, and the mobile application FaceApp may have taken home the crown for the weirdest of all. While it was initially released with a fairly innocuous set of filters allowing users to make themselves look old, young or paste a creepy smile on their face, an update to the app released in August allowed people to use filters that change a person’s race to Asian, Black, Caucasian and Indian. Needless to say, the new feature didn’t go over very well, and the race filters were removed just hours later.

HQ Trivia Game Show

This mobile application allowing users to play a live trivia game show gained a lot of buzz this year, leading the Daily Beast to write a profile on the app’s popular host Scott Rogowsky. After finding out that Rogowsky had been contacted for the article, HQ Trivia CEO Rus Yusupov went off the rails demanding it not be published, even threatening to fire Rogowsky if the profile ever saw the light of day.

GoFundMe

This online crowdfunding platform became the go-to place to raise money for a wide variety of causes, including health care costs and charity projects. Following October’s tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas, a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for victim’s family collected upwards of $3.2 million in just two days.

Discord

Back in the 90s, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was the top dog when it came to real-time group communications, but has seen a steady decline in popularity since 2003. This year, the application Discord exploded on to the scene with their multi-platform chat client, allowing users to create their own custom servers for both text and voice communications. Initially marketing itself as a video game-oriented service, Discord has since been adopted for a variety of different interests, including politics, music, hobbies and even memes.

Gab

After numerous high-profile conservatives saw themselves banned from the social networking giant Twitter, including the controversial British writer Milo Yiannopoulos, entrepreneur Andrew Torba launched Gab as an alternative social media platform dedicated to the principle of free speech. Since then, the site has been widely reported as a haven for racism and white supremacists, including a Vice News episode on HBO which referred to Gab as “Twitter for Racists.”

Bitmoji

Remember Bitstrips? Well, it’s dead, and Bitmoji has risen in its place. After being acquired by Snapchat in July of last year, Bitstrips shut its doors completely to focus on the emoji-style stickers. Since then, Bitmoji surged in demand, becoming Apple’s most popular application of the entire year.

8values

As divisions widened in the wake of last year’s United States presidential election, the 8values quiz site capitalized on the politically conscious zeitgeist with an impressive survey application. Asking users a variety of detailed questions, the site generates graphs outlining where someone falls on four basic political spectrums.

s pervasive normification threatens the very existence of our planet’s dankest memes, Know Your Meme took a bold step to send a satellite collection of digital cultural artifacts into lunar orbit to serve as a remote backup of our internet heritage. In order to safeguard against a future meme crisis on Earth, project MemeX would commence an emergency safety protocol to ensure our precious memes could be recovered by future generations. We would not let our memes become dreams.

The Meme Vault

Over a 24-hour period, specimemes were submitted by Know Your Meme users to the MemeX collection vault, where a total of 561 images and 245 videos were submitted. All submissions that reached a score of six or higher were selected to be stored in the vault, which included a total of 140 images and five videos.

Top Specimemes

Out of the all the memes submitted to be included in the meme vault, three specimemes stood out above the rest. In third place, KYM media moderator Stoffe submitted a Don-themed edit of a page from the infamous hentai manga Emergence, gaining a score of 123 (shown below, left). KYM pundit Beatie came in second with a It Was Me, Dio image cleverly marked with an NSFW flag, receiving a score of 127 (shown below, right).

Ranking it as the top-voted specimeme included in the collection was an incredibly rare“Tritium Pepe” image submitted by RandomMan, our resident database moderator and meme boi.

The Launch

While the historic MemeX launch was scheduled to commence the evening of April 1st, a pipe rupture was discovered feeding spaghetti sauce into the main thruster, forcing Know Your Meme to delay the event for 24 hours.

On April 2nd, 2018, Know Your Meme launched its KYMLOR-1 (Know Your Meme Lunar Orbital Receiver) satellite from the Dogeberg Air Force Base at an undisclosed location in the Eastern United States.

Due to unforeseen technical problems, the satellite was forced to make an emergency landing on the moon’s surface. After several nail-biting minutes, the vessel touched down unharmed, providing a safe location to store the precious meme vault for many years to come.

The object-labeled variations of the classic "Is This a Pigeon?" meme, which features a screencap from an episode of the 1991 Japanese anime series The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, have seen an enormous resurgence in popularity nearly seven years after the first image macros began circulating online.


Here are some of the staff's favorite edits based on the original template (shown above):

Mario's Identity Crisis

(Source: Reddit)

Christopher Columbus Makes a Discovery

(Source: Reddit)

Bohemian Rhapsody

(Source: Reddit)

It's Just Like Dark Souls

(Source: Know Your Meme)

Predictable Anime Fans

(Source: Reddit)

Brock's Jelly Donuts

(Source: Reddit)

Thumb Wars

(Source: Reddit)

Retro Video Games

(Source: Twitter)

Feeling underwhelmed? Not impressed? Post your own favorite picks, or even better, upload and share your original creations in the comments section below!

Earlier this year, a deep-fried image of the Let's PlayerMarkiplierphotoshopped onto the face of Lord Farquaad from Shrek captioned "E" appeared online. It was a perfect cocktail of surreal shitpost signifiers, combining YouTube culture, Shrek, gross filters, and the ultimate nonsensical text. In April, it spread like a mind virus infecting the meme subreddits, and eventually the meme reached its zenith when PewDiePie reviewed it (using many images culled from the KnowYourMeme gallery, thank you Felix).

Here are some of the staff's favorite examples of this brain-melting meme.

"Despacito" by Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber is quite literally one of the most popular songs of all time. Its music video, with over 5.2 billion views on YouTube, is the most watched video on the platform. It peaked at number 1 in dozens of countries around the world. For nearly an entire year, one couldn't walk through a grocery store or pharmacy without hearing the track's gentle latin-tinged tones. If there's one thing the song lacked, it was a proper sequel, which is where memers came in. Earlier this year, jokes about a so-called "Despacito 2" started spreading online, generally in the form of mock-breaking news headlines. Tons of images referencing this mythical song have flooded the internet the past few months. Here are some of our favorites.

Shrek may truly be the Lord of the Memes. The multi-layered ogre has been a staple of online meme culture for nearly a decade and is always a reliable character to cause a new meme to trend. The latest Shrek meme is his Cringe Compilation, an image macro series featuring the ogre taking a photo of all the cringeworthy garbage that happens online daily.

It may be a simple concept, but it's proven surprisingly versatile as a meme template, spawning dozens of variations and even a little controversy thanks to conservative commentator Bill Mitchell losing his mind when people kept spamming the image at him on Twitter. Here are some of our favorites.

C

ada día y a cada encuentro salen mas y mas memes. En Loquillo consideramos que estos preciosos documentos históricos deben ser preservados para la posteridad y por eso hemos decidido hacer listas con los mejores del momento.

C

ontra todo pronóstico, la selección mexicana de fútbol derrotó a la actual campeona por la mínima diferencia en el primer partido de ambas escuadras en este torneo.

El partido fue intenso y Alemania tuvo claras opciones de gol pero sirvieron mas las ganas que la sangre fría y México se alzó con los 3 puntos de oro de este primer encuentro.

Por supuesto, internet no se iba a quedar callado y respondió como mejor lo sabe hacer: a punta de memes.

A continuación los mejores.

1. Este es el histórico gol de irving Lozano

(Source: Facebook)

2

(Source: Facebook)

3

(Source: Facebook)

4

(Source: Facebook)

5

(Source: Facebook)

6

(Source: Facebook)

7

(Source: Facebook)

8

(Source: Facebook)

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(Source: Facebook)

10

(Source: Facebook)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined internet culture in 2017 as we know it.

he year began with the issue of "fake news" taking center stage in online discourse, which only escalated the discord between social media and news media in the United States and elsewhere. But contrary to popular belief, rumormongering and hoaxing have been a long running craft in the world of internet trolling. And as the public awareness and counter-troll intelligence grow with each passing year, trolls come up with increasingly sophisticated methods to outwit the skeptics.

2017 was no exception. Many of these pranks have been done in good fun, including fake posts about eating "Piss Jello", conspiracy theories that Avril Lavigne is dead and absurd "quick rundowns" on Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff.

On Reddit, a conspiracy theory arose out of an investigation into the Kentucky Fried Chicken Twitter account, with some suspecting that a Redditor was behind a guerilla marketing campaign for the fast food company. Meanwhile, Redditor danorexia managed to trick the entire /r/me_irl subreddit into turning him into a meme by falsely claiming he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Meanwhile on Facebook, a campaign to convince the world that Australia is not real was widely successful, bearing many similarities to a similar conspiracy theory about Finland.

Without further adieu, strap on your tinfoil hat and take a cruise down memory lane as we go over all the rumors, bamboozles and other fake news that took the internet by storm in 2017.

Sam Hyde Is the Shooter

An ongoing campaign in which internet trolls falsely identify comedian Sam Hyde as the perpetrator of shootings and terrorist attacks across the United States.

• Duration: 2015 – Current Day

• How It Started: As early as 2015, online pranksters circulated photographs of Hyde wielding an assault rifle along with claims that he was identified as a gunman in various mass shootings.

• How It Unraveled: Following a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez mistakenly said he was given the name Sam Hyde as the gunman responsible.

Clovergender

A fake gender identity term created for pedophiles who supposedly identify as young children.

• Duration: December 2016 – January 2017

• How It Started: In late December of last year, 4chan users began creating fake Twitter accounts to spread images promoting Clovergender as a gender identity, which were then amplified by celebrities like Lauren Southern and Martin Shkreli.

• How It Unraveled: In early January, Snopes published an article exposing the 4chan operation as a hoax titled "Cloverfailed".

How to Break Your Thumb Ligament

A viral infographic which falsely claimed viewers could break a ligament attaching their thumb to their wrist.

• Duration: January 2017 – January 2017

• How It Started: In early January, Twitter user @RahSenpai posted screenshots of a text message conversation in which a friend appears to dislocate his thumb while attempting the instructions in the infographic.

• How It Unraveled: Following the spread of viral photographs showing what appeared to be thumbs injured and deformed by the challenge, various news sites published articles exposing the infographic as a fraud.

4chan Alien Sighting Hoax

A digitally altered image claiming to show an alien creature outside the Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, Arizona turned into a full blown conspiracy theory after a temporary server outrage caused the image to be lost on 4chan.

• Duration: February 2017 – February 2017

• How It Started: What appeared to be a corrupted image file of a alien figure walking in front of a tree was submitted to 4chan with a description claiming it was taken 24 miles outside of the Luke Air Force Base. After 4chan's Cloudflare servers went down, the thread was lost, leading many users to speculate that a government conspiracy had taken the image offline.

• How It Unraveled: Internet sleuths discovered the original images used to create the fake picture, which included a photograph of an alien sculpture.

Zenzi

A fake meme created in an attempt to trick the meme explainer YouTube channel Behind the Meme.

• Duration: February 2017 – February 2017

• How It Started: In late February, a 4chan user launched a thread to brainstorm ideas to bring down the Behind the Meme YouTube channel. In the comments section, one user suggested spamming the word "zenzi" in the channel's comment section to trick him into making a poorly-researched video about the non-existent meme.

• How It Unraveled: The same day, Behind the Meme uploaded an explainer video on the meme, in which he exposed the 4chan threads and discouraged meme elitism on the web.

TheReportOfTheWeek Goes Missing

False claims that YouTuber TheReportOfTheWeek had gone missing in the aftermath of a tragic shooting or terrorist attack.

• Duration: May 2017 – Current Day

• How It Started: Following the tragic suicide terrorist attack outside the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, United Kingdom, a collage of missing people began circulating including a photograph of TheReportOfTheWeek.

• How It Unraveled: Photographs of TheReportOfTheWeek began circulating along with the false claims that he had gone missing in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting, leading news outlets like the BBC to publish articles exposing the social media posts as a hoax.

NAMBLA Protest Sign

A viral photograph featuring a masked man holding a sign bearing the logo of the North American Man/Boy Love Association in front of protesters.

• Duration: October 2017 – October 2017

• How It Started: A photograph of a man holding a sign appearing to defend pedophilia in protest of Mike Cernovich began circulating on Twitter in late October, with many on the right accusing Cernovich protesters of promoting pedophilia.

• How It Unraveled: While it hasn't been proven to be a hoax, several news sites published articles investigating the authenticity of the photo, with many speculating that it had been staged by a Cernovich supporter.

Starbucks Dreamer Day Hoax

A fake Starbucks promotion in which discounts would supposedly be provided to undocumented immigrants at the coffee chain.

• Duration: August 2017 – August 2017

• How It Started: In early August, users on 4chan's /pol/ board launched a plot to spread fake images promoting a "Dreamer Day" at Starbucks, where undocumented immigrants would be granted discounts.

• How It Unraveled: After discovering the hoax operation, Starbucks announced that the rumors were completely false via their official Twitter feed.

It's Okay to Be White

A slogan created as a "proof of concept" to demonstrate that if signs printed with the phrase were placed in public then they would be accused of promoting racism and white supremacy.

• Duration: October 2017 – Month 2017

• How It Started: In late October, 4chan users began encouraging viewers to place printed signs with the slogan in various public areas in order to cause a "media shitstorm."

• How It Unraveled: Many news sites published articles about the intial 4chan threads, exposing how the operation was meant to be a media troll.

Sahar Tabar's Instagram Photos

Viral photographs from an Iranian teenager's Instagram who several news sites falsely reported had undergone 50 plastic surgeries to look like Angelina Jolie.

• Duration: October 2017 – December 2017

• How It Started: In late November, various tabloid news publications began circulating the sensational rumor that Iranian teenager Sahar Tabar had received numerous plastic surgeries to resemble Angelina Jolie.

• How It Unraveled: In early December, Tabar spoke the Russian news site Sputnik, revealing she had only received three plastic surgeries and that she was not trying to look like Jolie. Additionally, she revealed that the looks seen in her photographs were obtained using makeup and Photoshop.

At first glance, Piper Perri Surrounded looks like your average porn-screenshot meme. When it began spreading in 2016, it was a natural fit for the modern era's object labeling fad, and most of the edits were about what a modern memer would expect (think Perri labeled "me" with the surrounding male porn stars labeled "stress," "responsibilities," etc.).

In June of 2018, however, creative memers, perhaps inundated with a barrage of Loss edits, saw the potential in the "Piper Perri Surrounded" image, and minimalist Piper Perri variations began exploding on the meme subreddits. Here are some of our favorites.

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate presentation at E3 2018 stunned fans when it revealed that every character who was ever in a Smash game would be returning, along with Splatoon characters, Daisy, and Ridley. But one name conspicuously absent from the roster was Nintendo's mischievous party-game staple, Waluigi. Waluigi, Luigi's inverse and Wario's good evil-doing buddy, has only appeared in multi-player Mario games, and would seem a perfect fit for the Smash series, but no dice. Waluigi fans took it hard, and major publications (including the dang Washington Post) wrote about the injustice. Memers got to work to. Here are some of our favorite jokes about Waluigi's Smash snub.

We're nearing the end of the group stage of the 2018 World Cup and the memes have been flying, thanks in large part to some larger than life personalities. Senegal head coach Aliou Cissé stood out as the most animated participant in the World Cup not on the field with his incredible, instantly GIFable reactions. Diego Maradona had himself a wild, likely drug-fueled day during Argentina's victory against Nigeria to the delight of the internet. On top of that, moments from the games have been screenshot, edited, and meme'd on in various ways throughout the World Cup. Here are some of our favorite World Cup memes.

In late June, a Twitter user added an illustration to a popular tweet from 2014, and a meme was born:

At first glance, you might not expect the Slaps Roof of Car meme to have taken off quite like it has. After all, there's only so much mileage you can get out of the snowclone "This bad boy can fit so much X in it." Nevertheless, clever memers saw the potential in the format, and soon the meme went in absurd directions, with every facet of the original joke riffed on, replaced, edited, photoshopped, and broken. Here are some of our favorite examples of the weirdest meme of summer 2018 so far.

The 50th episode of My Hero Academia featured one of the cutest dang scenes in anime. In the scene, we see the mother of the series' protagonist Izuku Midoriya (aka Deku) playing make-believe with the boy, pretending to be in danger and causing him to burst out shouting "I am here!" Look at this and tell me it's not heartwarming:

After the episode aired, the scene became an instant exploitable among anime fans. Generally fans kept up with the wholesome tone of the scene, making the Deku Playing With His Mom one of the nicest memes of the summer. Here are some of our favorites:

Look, we get it. The internet is a very horny place, and sometimes folks just wanna honk it to anime tiddies. No judgment from us. The recent Don't Look at Her meme spreading on 4chan, /r/animemes, and other Reddit communities however, offers plenty of people who would judge. In this template, a naked girl is covered by a figure saying "Don't look at her" and offering sage life advice like "Boobs are temporary" or "Skyrim is forever" (because a lot of the times this figure is Todd Howard for some reason). Here are some of our favorite examples of this ridiculous and slightly NSFW meme.

Remember 1998? It was a simpler on the Internet: Less than half of the American adult population were online^[1]. Microsoft was the biggest company in the world. Google had been just incorporated as a garage startup in California. AOL reigned supreme as America’s biggest internet service provider. You’ve Got Mail hit the box office and became an instant classic romcom of a new era. But then again, 1998 was a momentous year for internet culture. Dancing Baby made its prime TV debut on Ally McBeal, while some of the earliest known memes like "All Your Base Are Belong to Us,"Hello My Future Girlfriend and Hamster Dance began sweeping across the world wide web.

Fast forward a decade. In 2008, three out of four American adults were online.^[1]Facebook, YouTube and Twitter began eclipsing their predecessors Digg, LiveJournal and MySpace. Computer games like Starcraft and Half-Life paved a new road for online gaming culture. As viral videos and social media seeped into our everyday conversations, the word "meme" soon came to encompass the ever-expanding belt of miscellaneous content we clicked on and passed on. That summer, a group of “internet scientists” in New York City undertook the monumental task of mapping the evolution of internet culture, by researching one meme at a time. So began the mission of Know Your Meme.

In celebrating our 10th anniversary and two decades of internet culture, we are paying a tribute to the ten most influential memes of our times Two Decades of Memes, a special weekend event we are hosting at the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in September. We want YOU to help us determine the first ten choices that will be inducted into the Hall of Memes!

If the poll is not displaying properly on this page, proceed to Google Forms to fill out the survey.

^[1]Americans’ Internet Access: 2000-2015 and The Internet Circa 1998, Pew Research Center.

Sometimes a format is ahead of its time. Such was the case with 'How Old Is' Google Searches. The meme, which features a black man crying as he discovers, via Google, that his favorite characters are close to death, debuted in February of 2017 and featured the Sonic the Hedgehog character Knuckles.

The format laid dormant for about a year and half, when all of a sudden it surged on Reddit in July of 2018. In the span of a week, dozens of new edits trended on sites like /r/dankmemes and /r/animemes, leading to a robust new meme. Here are some of our favorites.

First there was "Updog." Then there was "BofA." Now there's "Ligma." What's "Ligma," you may ask? "Ligma BALLS" is what I would say. Get the joke? Good. About two weeks ago, Ligma started as a death hoax about Fortnite streamer Ninja (Editors Note: Isn't it nuts that every single noun in that sentence would be completely incomprehensible two years ago? The wonders of the internet!).

Since then, the term has taken off, going down the common path of the modern meme. That means we've seen deep fried edits, Piper Perri edits, and even a Doki Doki Literature Club joke. Here are some of our favorites of the growing Ligma.

Throughout the course of human history, cats have wanted many things. They have wanted Cheezburger, Chicken Nuggets, Pills, the species as a whole festering countless desires it implores its human overlords to satiate via internet maymays. This month, the feline has craved Fruit Loops.

Thanks to some adorable pictures and a little help from the Super Best Friends Play network, Cats Wanting Fruit Loops became a trending meme in July. Let's take a look at some of the best examples.