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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

ideo games can always be counted on to provide a steady flow of spicy memes for the internet’s insatiable appetite, and this year was no exception.

In the console world, Nintendo dominated the meme game in 2016 with the release of two new titles in the Pokemon franchise, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in February, Pokemon GO and Pokemon Sun and Moon, while SEGA continued to ride out the Internet’s meme obsession with Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, which also celebrated its 25th anniversary in June, through the announcement of Sonic Mania and Project Sonic 2017 and witty commentaries from @Sonic_Hedgehog on Twitter.

There were no shortage of video game controversies this year either, from the utterly disappointing reception of the Kickstarter-funded open-world survival game No Man’s Sky to a major gambling scandal that exposed a massive speculative market for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins among YouTube gaming vloggers in June. Meanwhile, Zoe Quinn of GamerGate fame popped back on the radar after she accused Nintendo of ridiculing her in its then newly-released title Paper Mario: Color Splash in what became known as the #Shufflegate.

In the PC gaming world, the year’s biggest winner was clearly Overwatch, Blizzard Entertainment’s new team-based multiplayer first-person shooter that instantly became a worldwide hit upon its release among the gaming and meme communities alike, with many of the playable characters (known as Heroes) spawning fan memes of their own. Reflecting its universally positive reception, Overwatch earned the honor of the Game of the Year at The Game Awards held in LA earlier this month, beating out other heavyweight titles like Doom, Uncharted 4 and Titanfall 2.

Now, without further ado, here are some of the biggest internet memes to go out of the video game world this year.

Overwatch Play of the Game Parodies

Title: Overwatch

One of the most unique features in Blizzard’s enormously successful multiplayer shooter Overwatch are the “Play of the Game” clips, which showcase impressive feats performed by a player during the match. The highlights were ripe for parody, leading YouTubers to splice in scenes from television and film, or even FAIL videos.

Yungoos Trump

Title: Pokémon Sun and Moon

The mongoose-like Pokémon Yungoos became a viral hit after being revealed during Nintendo’s Treehouse livestream at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, where many fans noticed a resemblance between the creature’s tuft of yellow fur and Donald Trump’s signature hairstyle. The comparison took off once again after Yungoos evolved form Gumshoos was revealed in a Sun and Moon trailer that August, revealing an even more Trump-like variation of the grumpy-looking Pokémon.

Choose Your Class

Title: Various Role-Playing Games

The character selection screen commonly found in role-playing video games inspired one of the year’s more hilarious exploitables, featuring a template for absurd representations of the archetypal RPG classes. Keeping with the internet zeitgeist, it didn’t take long till meta and ironic variations were made, referencing the some of the year’s more absurd memes like Rick Harrison, Spongegar and Dat Boi.

Norman Reedus Holding Things

Title: Death Stranding

Hideo Kojima’s upcoming open world action video game Death Stranding has been widely hyped since it was announced at E3 in June. In a computer animated teaser for the game, the protagonist (played by Norman Reedus) is shown cradling an infant in his arms while crying on a desolate beach, which subsequently inspired a slew of photoshops featuring Reedus holding video game characters, internet memes and even Kojima himself.

Doom 2016 Cover Art Parodies

Title: Doom

After Conan O’Brien posted a first look at the box art for Bethesda’s reboot of the the Doom franchise, a thread on the NeoGAF forums kicked off an explosion of hilarious photoshops. While initial edits featured characters from other games like Metroid’s Samus, meme-themed variations including Paul Blart and Expand Dong inevitably followed.

Pokemon GO In-Game Screenshots

Title: Pokémon GO

Immediately after the Pokémon GO mobile game was released this summer, people around the world were glued to their phone screens chasing down virtual creatures out in the wild. It didn’t take long for enthusiasts to begin sharing screenshots of Pokémon overlaid in the real world using the game’s augmented reality viewfinder. The jokes started out tame enough but quickly devolved into shots of Diglett and Caterpie erupting out of crotches.

Super Mario 64 Glitch Exploits

Title: Super Mario 64

YouTuber pannenkoek2012 gained much notoriety on 4chan’s /v/ (video games) this year after releasing instructional videos to exploit glitches found in the 1996 platformer game Super Mario 64. Many chan users found his bizarre vocabulary endearing, referring to game states as “parallel universes” and telling viewers to use “half” button presses to perform certain exploits. Other elements of pannenkoek2012’s video were subsequently memed as well, including the Super Mario 64 Scuttlebug monster and 12 hour speed build-up used to execute some of the game’s more bizarre glitches.

Lord Tachanka

Title: Rainbow Six Siege

The Defending Operator character Tachanka from Rainbow Six Siege became an internet legend this year, earning the title “Lord Tachanka” for his poorly designed and under-powered abilities. While he has received several buffs in subsequent patches and updates, making him slightly less useless than before, the character continues to live on in Rainbow Six shitposts and circlejerks.

Watch Those Wrist Rockets

Title: Star Wars: Battlefront 2

Over the summer, the Star Wars Battlefront II-core ironic Facebook page brought back a blast from the past by posting images referencing the “Watch for those wrist rockets” line uttered by clone troopers in the 2005 video game Star Wars: Battlefront 2. It didn’t take long for it to be embraced by Reddit’s meme-loving me_irl community, who quickly drove it into the ground. More recently, me_irl briefly resurrected memes about LEGO Star Wars video games as part of their ongoing “Meme Renaissance”, which shows no signs of abatement.

Big Smoke’s Order

Title: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

In the 2004 game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one cut scene featuring an extremely large fast food order for the gang member character Big Smoke has been mocked online for many years. It recently saw an enormous resurgence in popularity after YouTuber ComradeWarbear published an impressive, in-depth analysis, in which he tries to figure out the items purchased in the scene.

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

anguage is a wonderful thing. It’s ever-malleable, evolving with humanity as it approaches the heights of its existence on this planet. Why, not one year ago would we have ever dreamed that everyone in every political discussion would have been called a “Cuck” by years end. Now that’s beautiful.

Seriously though, 2016 sucked and a lot of the slang that came out of this year reflected that. It was the year of the Dumpster Fire. It was the year progressives were belittled away with the label “Bernie Bro.” Trans people needed to come up with a term for when Facebook deleted their accounts for “not using their real name.” And everyone, everywhere, all the time, needed to Stay Woke. It was exhausting and difficult. But while a lot of slang reflected deeening cultural anxieties, 2016 also brought us words like Doggo, Succ, Thicc, and if new words cute dogs, blowjobs, and asses aren’t signs of positive changes in the world, then I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

Anyway, here it is fam, the most deadass lit slang of 2016.

Cuck

There were a lot of great insults and pejoratives bandied about in 2016, but none was as pervasive and hilarious as Cuck. Everyone was a cuck this year, as the only qualification to be a “cuck” was to be slightly left of the far right. Ted Cruz? Cuck. John Kasich? Definitely a cuck. Chris Christie? Probably the biggest cuck of them all. As Donald Trump ran through the Republican primary belittling literally the entire field of chumps, he began to take on an alpha-aura. He wasn’t just beating these guys. He was taking their manhood.

Thus began the great American cuckhunt, as cuck-hungry conservatives rallied around Trump’s candidacy. In him, they saw a man who would finally get lobbying out of politics. He would repeal Obamacare. He would build a wall between Mexico and the United States. And then, after he was elected, he has reversed his position on literally all those things. The cuckers became the cuckees. You can’t cuck the Trump.

Fam

Ah, fam. Only good things precede “fam.” You call someone “fam” after you say “I gotchu” or “say no more.” It’s the gender-inclusive update to “bro” we needed in 2016. It also became part of a few great memes, such as The Barber.

Not to get sentimental about a monosyllabic word, but “fam” is genuinely one of the best platonic nicknames. It’s short for family, after all, and the general idea is that one would do anything for family. So when you’re called “fam” by your buddy, it’s like being told, “hey, you’re part of the family, what do you need?” It’s a nice, cheerful way to spread camaraderie, which the year desperately needed.

Zucked

In 2016, some of the best Weird Facebook pages disappeared without warning. It was yet another example of Zuckerberg screwing over creators, or “Zucking” them, which has been happening since the dawn of Facebook. But when he came for the memes, a new iteration of Zuck was born: “Zucc.”

“Zucc,” a play on Succ, became the blanket term for when mememakers and trans folk who don’t go by their given name on Facebook have their accounts suddenly deleted. Zuccing was just one of the many problems Facebook faced this year, bizarrely going after meme pages and trans people when their algorithm allowed for the proliferation of fake news. For his part, Zuckerberg seemed completely unaware of the issue, as demonstrated in a notorious video where he asks, “what is Zucc?”

Thicc

Thicc is not pronounced like “thick.” Rather, it is pronounced “thiiiiick” with a deep appreciation for the gloriousness of a fine butt, like this one:

Now that’s thicc. “Thicc” is another pickup from African American Vernacular English that made its way to the memesphere via application to everything under the sun, including Pokemon Sun and Moon character Wicke, Spongebob’s“Bubble Bass,” and this couch:

Any way we can show appreciation for butts gets an A in my book, making “thicc” more than worthy of its spot on this list.

Deadass

If you grew up in the northeast quadrant of the United States around New York City, chances are you’ve heard Deadass in more contexts than you can count. By the working definition shown below, it’s entirely possible to have a conversation like this:

1: Deadass?
2: Deadass!
3: Deadassssss.

Generally, “Deadass” means “seriously,” and it remained one of the most consistent slang words of the 21st century in 2016, particularly when Timbs started getting big as a meme on Black Twitter. It’s pretty great slang that’s simple enough to understand, but a word of caution: use it wrong and you’re going to How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? yourself.

Dumpster Fire

The Dumpster Fire is 2016 in a nutshell: a literal pile of garbage, lit ablaze and smelling up the entire world, and probably doing some permanent damage to the climate while it’s at it. Mother Jones called “Dumpster Fire” the meme of the year, and who could blame them? Look at the below gif and tell me it doesn’t sum up the entire election/year.

The one issue with calling 2016 a dumpster fire is that dumpster fires are contained and put out eventually. Not the case for 2016. No, the dumpster fire of a year rages on and seems to grow more by the day, burning everything in its path like Sherman’s March (Google it). Soon they’ll have to come up with a new word to describe how bad things are. What’s next? Nuclear holocaust?

Yuge

Ahh, the good ol’ days, when we could all laugh at how Donald Trump pronounces “huge.” “It’s gonna be YUGE!” we’d say to each other with a knowing wink. “Yuge” was Trump’s first Bushism, one of his go-to words (along with “tremendous,” “the best,” etc.) when describing the future of America.

Of course, Trump isn’t the only one to pronounce it “yooge.” Bernie Sanders does it too, as do many who talk with a mid-twentieth century New York City dialect. But Trump’s “Yooge” is a trademark, arguably the second-most well-known Trumpism behind “You’re Fired.” It was widely tossed around in the days when a Trump candidacy seemed like folly. Now that he’s ascended to the yugest office in the United States, not so much.

Stay Woke

“Shit is happening all the time. All you need to do to see it is open your eyes. Stay Woke.” So might go a phrase that was simultaneously silly and deeply serious in 2016. In many cases, terrible things were happening everywhere from the Black Lives Matter movement to the Democratic Party corruption revealed by Wikileaks. These were things that desperately needed attention and because of the never-ending shitstream that was 2016, could get washed away by our short attention spans.

But it was also applied to jokes. People joked about staying woke to The Warriors Blew a 3-1 Lead, Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams, etc. It made for a very sleepless year, as I stayed woke through every controversy, gag, and conspiracy that passed us by in 2016. After this year, we could all use a nap.

Becky

This year, Beyoncé dropped Lemonade, an epic album that featured a line many couldn’t forget about a certain “Becky with the good hair” who had attracted the attention of her man. In the context of an album that seemed to be explicitly about Jay-Z’s infidelity, the internet immediately started wondering who “Becky with the good hair” might be. For my money, the answer was pretty obvious:

But in all seriousness, while we never found out who the real “Becky” was, the line instantly made “Becky” a slang word for a woman whom a man cheats on. Prior to Lemonade, “Becky” had previously been slang for a generic white girl. Honestly, Becky is a fine name, but it sure did get dragged through the mud in 2016.

Daddy

Daddy culture is one of those subcultures that gives many the heebie-jeebies. The name implies a fetish that plays on the idea that the guy in a sexual encounter is banging his daughter. It’s certainly a subculture many don’t know a lot about and choose to ignore. However, “Daddy” wouldn’t be on this list without the help of a tweet rant that spawned #Daddygate.

One Twitter user named @shanley skyrocketed to Twitter infamy when she found it necessary to eviscerate the phonies who were “appropriating daddy culture” by calling celebrities daddy or using “daddy” in a cute screen name. It’s one of the greatest Twitter rants of all time, and birthed plenty of handclap-laden tweets like “DON’T APPROPRIATETRANSFORMERSCULTURE IF YOUARENOT A SOLDIER IN THEFIGHTAGAINSTMEGATRON,” for example. #Daddygate was one of Twitter’s best moments, combining bizarre, social-justice overreaction with an uncomfortable fetish many giggle about. Everyone had a good laugh about it… well, except @shanley.

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 2016 as we know it.

iral challenges tend to be pretty stupid. Remember the #WhackYourselfInTheFaceWithA2x4 challenge? You don’t, because I just made it up, but you thought it was possible for a second, didn’t you?

2016’s crop of challenges didn’t buck that trend. For the most part, it was another year of people hurting themselves for the clicks and retweets, much to the chagrin of those who find these trends tiresome after they see two examples (i.e. everyone). But there were a few really good ones. These challenges are at their best when they inspire participants to be creative, and a few challenges gave us some incredible videos and photos to remember 2016 by. So here they are, the best, dumbest, and feed-cloggingest viral challenges of 2016!

Mannequin Challenge

The Mannqeuin Challenge is one of the best viral challenges we’ve gotten since viral challenges became a thing. It requires creativity and dedication from a large group of people, which are two extremely rare things. The premise: stay perfectly still while a camera person moves through the scene, creating the illusion that the camera is moving through a frozen moment in time. It’s usually pretty clever and enjoyable, even when the Kardashians do it.

It spread like wildfire through the country in the weeks leading up to the election, prompting Hillary Clinton to once again butcher a meme by doing a mannequin challenge called “don’t stay still on election day” or something. But while the high-profile mannequin challenges were cool, the best by far was one made by Black Lives Matter activists that showed recreations of various police shootings in the past year. A meme made for social change that actually is powerful and affecting is a rare, glorious thing.

One Finger Selfie Challenge

The One Finger Selfie Challenge is one of the most devious challenges ever created. The idea is to take mirror-nude selfies using one finger to cover your naughty bits. I suspect an extremely small number of people actually participated in this, but combine nudity with the phrase “viral challenge” and you have a story that’s a click-hunting website’s dream.

The One Finger Selfie Challenge was sexy and stupid and gained the attention of the media because it’s a story that has sold papers since the dawn of time: the TEENS are doing WEIRDSEXTHINGS. Also it inspired a lot of hentai, which was just a blast to look at while researching this, thanks.

Corn Drill Challenge

When Al Gore invented the internet, this is what he envisioned: a utopia where men and women from all over the world stuck corn to power drills and spun them on their face.

The Corn Drill Challenge is some prime internet, harkening back to the days when people made people made harmless, stupid videos for fun. Well… almost harmless. Of course, it wouldn’t be classic internet unless someone got seriously injured, and luckily, the Corn Drill Challenge came through.

UNameIt

Things people love: Thanksgiving, Grandmas, Gospel, Hip-hop, Beans, Greens, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Lambs, Rams, YOUNAAAAAAME IT.

Great remixes always make for good memes, and the #UNameItChallenge provided one of the year’s best when Shirley Caesar’s list from the gospel song “Hold My Mule” got the club-banger treatment. It became one of the best Thanksgiving memes ever with its great beat and family-friendly message. It even inspired a rap that made “tofu turkey” almost sound appealing to non-Vegans, which is an impossible task for anything, let alone a meme.

Grey Sweatpants Challenge

Dicks. We love ‘em! And dick-lovers love seein’ em outlined in grey sweatpants. But when one thirsty Twitter user asked to see some dicks in some sweatpants, the men of Twitter responded by showing just how big they could get their bulges to go.

The Grey Sweatpants Challenge found men shoving a lot of shit down their pants in a kooky reversal of the typical “responding to requests for nudes with goofs” games of the internet. It was good wholesome fun mocking the perpetually horny online culture, and got some creative responses. Everything was PG and nothing hurt and yes I’m pretending no one responded seriously to the challenge.

Kirby’s Dreamland Challenge

Few songs are as fun and infectious as the Kirby’s Dreamland theme. You can’t help but be happy when you hear it. That’s why setting it to dancing that doesn’t fit is hilarious every time.

The Kirby’s Dreamland Challenge asks participants to set videos to the Kirby’s Dreamland theme. Not the hardest challenge in the world to pull off, but man, did it yield results. The playfulness of the song injected any video with pure joy. Stuff like the Kirby’s Dreamland Challenge will be missed once Vine goes under.

#M7Challenge

On July 12th, 2016, Ugandan president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni sat by the side of the road to take a phone call. People thought this was hilarious.

What happened next is what happens whenever the internet gets whiff of a good photoshop contest: the #M7Challenge. Suddenly Ugandans and other Africans began adopting Museveni’s pose, taking phone calls in chairs in extremely ridiculous places, eventually leading one challenger to get hit by a car in the middle of the road. Other than that terrible event, the #M7Challenge was pretty funny, if only because it all started from a politician sitting in a chair taking a phone call. That, and it led to some pretty incredible photos.

Bottle Flipping

One of the most innocuous but hardest fads of 2016 was bottle flipping. The premise is simple enough: you flip a half-full water bottle and get it to land vertically. But if there’s any doubt as to how hard it is, take a listen to the reaction one teen gets to the accomplishment in the video that started it all:

After Mike Senatore’s epic video, the craze was afoot. Teens everywhere were flipping bottles. The trend made it to the Dude Perfect channel, where five guys performed the stunt in increasingly ridiculous settings:

The simplicity of the idea and its difficulty made it one of the most enduring viral trends of 2016. The latest example of bottle flipping finds NBA superstar and meme-participator Lebron James trying to pull it off as his Cavaliers utterly wrecked the New York Knicks. But no matter how intense the videos get, none will be as epic as the original.

Name a More Iconic Duo

In September this year, Twitter was inundated with people naming iconic duos. Why? They were making fun of a Kardashian fan, of course.

@negansvoid innocent tweet challenged the internet to think of any duo who could possibly be “more iconic” than Kylie and Kendall Jenner, and Twitter was happy to try. They picked Hall & Oates. Hoda and Kathy Lee. Beyoncé and Kelly (and not the other one).

@negansvoid learned two lessons of Being Online the hard way when she sparked the “Name a More Iconic Duo” meme. 1) Never challenge the internet. 2) Especially when it involves the Kardashian family.

Backpack Challenge

After researching so many challenges that find The Teens doing Stupid Shit (see: the Huh challenge), it warms my heart to see them get pelted by backpacks.

The Backpack Challenge is just that: teenagers getting pelted by backpacks. Much like how citizens of biblical times would stone women found unfaithful to their husbands, teens of 2016 gathered up their friends and filled their backpacks and threw them at their peers. This is a challenge only in name. There is no winning. There is only suffering and pain amidst the laughter of 15 year-olds. Which, honestly, makes it pretty fun. As Jesus basically said, Let He Among Us Without Sin Be the First to Throw Thy Backpack at This Idiot.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual Top Ten Review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

he many creatures we share this planet with have remained a constant source of entertainment on the web. In today’s internet meme landscape, animals provide some of the best online content, from viral videos to adorable photos, and are even some of our biggest celebrities on social media.

In anthropomorphic animals, the unicycle-riding frog Dat Boi briefly became a ubiquitous internet joke, before quickly wearing out its welcome. Pepe the Frog had perhaps his biggest year yet, becoming a national news story following a well organized campaign to brand the character a “hate symbol.” Most recently, the character Biggie Cheese from the 2006 animated comedy film Barnyard saw a resurgence online after screenshots of a bizarre erotic chat conversation about the rapping mouse circulated across the web.

In reptile memes, a picture of a blue-tongued skink preparing to drinnk a beer was dubbed Friday Lizard on Australian Twitter. The muppet Kermit the Frog became known as Tea Lizard thanks to Twitter troll @Triballins. Meanwhile, a Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur costume became the new horse head mask on YouTube, with people donning the outfit to perform various pranks and stunts.

Let’s look back on the year’s top 10 animal memes to grace the web, listed in no particular order.

Harambe the Gorilla

Species: Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) Debut: May 1999 Breakout: #DicksOutForHarambe Profile: Western lowland silverback gorilla who was tragically shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into his enclosure in May. Following a long mourning period, Harambe transitioned into an ironic internet meme with the hashtag #DicksOutForHarambe. Primary Habitat: Facebook Highlights: Clinton Did Harambe | Baby Costume | Tell Me About 2016

Doggo

Species: Dog (Canis familiaris) Debut: May 2014 Breakout: “What are aninmals?” Profile: A type of dog often described as a “big ol’ pupper.” Not to be confused with “Doge”. Primary Habitat: Facebook Highlights: Doggo Button | Snip Snap Doggos

Snek

Species: Various species in the suborder Serpentes Debut: January 201r Breakout: This Is Snek Profile: Photographs of adorable snakes with interior monologue captions. Primary Habitat: Facebook Highlights: Snek Anatomy | No Step On Snek | Hello, Snek?

Persian Cat Room Guardian

Species: Cat (Felis catus) Debut: August 2013 Breakout: @RatchetPeopleMeet Instagram Profile: A stuffed toy cat seated on a box with outstretched arms. Often used as a reaction image captioned with frustrating or annoying situations. Primary Habitat: DeviantArt Highlights: Confused Travolta | Magician | Road Rage

Gabe the Dog

Species: Dog (Canis familiaris) Debut: January 2013 Breakout: Dog Pleasure Night Profile: A white minature American Eskimo and Pomeranian mix whose adorable bark is often used in remix videos synced to various pop songs. Primary Habitat: YouTube Highlights: Doggos React | Borkquiem for a Dream | Borkrica

Punched Kangaroo

Species: Eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) Debut: June 2016 Breakout: ""Man Punches Kangaroo in the Face":http://knowyourmeme.com/videos/159117-kangaroo-punch-video Profile: A eastern grey kangaroo who latched on to a hunting dog and was then punched in the face in an effort to rescue to the canine. Primary Habitat: YouTube Highlights: Ozzy Man Reviews | Best Anime Fight of 2016 | Movie Trailer Parody

Puppy Monkey Baby

Species: Dog (Canis familiaris_), white-bellied spider monkey (Ateles belzebuth_), human (Homo sapiens) Debut: Super Bowl 50 Breakout: Mountain Dew Kickstart Commercial Profile: A dog-monkey-human hybrid from a Mountain Dew commercial broadcast during Super Bowl 50. The fictional creature was reviled online for its disturbing appearance. Primary Habitat: YouTube Highlights: Patton Oswalt Tweets | Cosplay | Illustration

Cheating Penguin

Species: Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) Debut: November 2016 Breakout: Animal Fight Night: Homewrecking Penguin Profile: A female Magellanic penguin who sparks a violent marital disagreement by cheating on her penguin husband. Primary Habitat: Twitter Highlights: Penguin’s Fist | Crying Jordan | Strong Penguin Fathers

Shocked Capybara

Species: Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) Debut: November 2016 Breakout: Planet Earth 2“Jungles” episode Profile: A stunned-looking capybara rodent witnessing a jaguar visciously hunt a caiman in South America. Primary Habitat: Twitter Highlights: Mother of God | Have I Just Seen That? | Gobsmacked

Planet Earth Iguana

Species: Marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) Debut: November 2016 Breakout: Planet Earth 2“Islands” episode Profile: A baby marine iguana who sprints through a guantlet of ravenous snakes across the rocky coast of Galapagos. Primary Habitat: YouTube Highlights: Run Boy Run Remix | Benny Hill Remix | Ozzy Man Reviews

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

The Year In Review

• A Golden Age of the Meme Culture: Say what you will about the current state of the memescape, but 2016 will soon be remembered as the year when memes broke through another great barrier and stepped into a new realm where no memes have gone before: The Beltway of Washington D.C. About six years ago, we began hearing references to internet memes on network TV shows. In the next few years, we started seeing memes plastered on advertisement, films, and occasionally, headline news. In 2016, we saw President Obama dropping the mic during his speech and the First Lady doing the Mannequin Challenge with star-studded guests in the Blue Room of the White House. If that doesn’t impress, relish the fact that for the first time ever, “memes” was looked up on Google Search more frequently than Jesus and God. So, yeah, memes are sort of a big deal.

• The Dawn of a Post-Factual Era: This year, we saw the Internet getting bought, and getting got, on a scale of efforts and impact that we have never been seen before. Misinformation and disinformation ran amok and spread without a pause, while classified information leaked like a sieve from servers that were thought to be secure, largely driven by endless bouts of clash between the conservatives and liberals on the social media, critical breach and exploits of high-profile email servers by mysterious and highly skilled hackers, and of course, a booming industry of fake U.S. election news manufacturers for-hire in Eastern Europe.

• A Regressive Trend in Quality-of-Meme: In 2016, the self-referential trend of the meme culture (or meta-memeosis as previously referred to in last year’s report) continued to run its course; the steadfast and high pressure winds of “shitposting”:/memes/shitposting not only conventionalized such practice as a norm in the creative process of memes, but they also directly contributed to the regressive trend in quality-of-meme, aesthetics and substance, by lowering the entry barrier under the pretext of being ironic. But as the old wise saying goes, ”it’s still shitposting even if you are being ironic.”

• Politicization of the Meme Culture: This year’s United States presidential election certainly wasn’t the first “social media election” that we’ve studied, but without a doubt, it was by far the most interesting and eventful political spectacle we have observed online in our lifetime. In the heat of the political showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, quite a few memes were openly endorsed and condemned by the two major political parties, most notably Pepe the Frog and “This Is Fine” Dog, while others were enlisted by web-savvy partisans to craft a cult of personality for their candidates in what became known as the Great Meme War of 2016.

• The Wave of the Early Aughts Nostalgia: It is only logical that our nostalgia of the past also ages with passage of time. This year, Smash Mouth’s late 90s hit “All star” and Santana’s Grammy-winning “Smooth” spearheaded the wave of 90s nostalgia, while other one-hit-wonders and hits from the early 2000s began popping up on the social media.

Memes of 2016

Check out our annual review series to get in the know with the rest of must-see memes from 2016. Be sure to check the homepage this weekend for more reviews by categories, including this year’s most notable events, people, apps and sites, and fandoms.

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

kay, let’s get it out of our system. If we had to choose one person to remember the memes in 2016 by, it would be none other than Donald Trump, the most prolific soundbite generator we’ve seen in this century and the next leader of the Free World. As the presidential candidate of the Republican party, Trump effortlessly established himself as the game changer and X-factor of this year’s election by waging an open war against the news media while forging an alliance with the ultraconservatives on the social media. Nevertheless, Donald Trump clearly wasn’t the only person of interest that people talked about on the Internet this year. And so here it is, the ten most influential content producers, vloggers and groups of the year 2016:

Keemstar

DJ Keemstar (also known as Killer Keemstar) is the online handle of video blogger Daniel Keem, who is best known for his YouTube news web series Drama Alert. Within the vlogging community on YouTube, Keemstar is considered a highly divisive figure due to his history of frequent feuds and hostile exchanges with other YouTube content producers.

Gilvasunner

GiIvaSunner is a YouTube account imitating the original video game music ripper, GilvaSunner, by using a name similar in appearance with a capitalized I in place of the L. Unlike the original, which uploads video game soundtracks, this parody account uploads bait and switch videos. The songs often follow soundclown jokes or are remixed.

iDubbbz

iDubbbz is a YouTuber who is widely known for his Kickstarter Crap videos, his Content Cop videos, specifically his one directed at Jinx, and his videos with the YouTuber Filthy Frank.

LeafyIsHere

LeafyIsHere is the YouTube handle of Calvin Vail, an American video game streamer and vlogger known for his satirical commentaries and narrations while playing a variety of first-person video games, most notably the surf mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Hydraulic Press Channel

Hydraulic Press Channel is a YouTube channel devoted to compressing and crushing a variety of objects with a high-powered industrial-strength hydraulic press. Since its launch by Finnish factory owner Lauri Vuohensilta in October 2015, the web series has gained online fame and a large audience on YouTube, mainly due to its oddly satisfying appeal.

h3h3Production

h3h3 Productions is a YouTube channel run by the married couple Ethan and Hila Klein, which typically feature videos reacting to content uploaded by pranksters and hip hop artists (specifically producer DJ Khaled) on the video sharing platform.

Milo Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos is a British journalist who is an technology editor at the conservative news and opinion site Breitbart. He has gained much notoriety online for frequently covering the Gamergate controversy and for being an outspoken critic of third-wave feminism.

Guccifer 2.0

Guccifer 2.0, not to be confused with the convicted Romanian hacker Guccifer, is a mysterious hacker of unknown identity who gained online notoriety in June 2016 after claiming responsibility for breaching the servers of at least two major committees within the United States Democratic Party, namely the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), that resulted in the massive leak of private e-mails and internal memos, as well as personal contact information of Democratic officials and lawmakers.

Alt Right

The Alt-Right refers to a loosely defined segment of right-wing conservative principles, as well as the faction of politicians and constituents, often characterized by a vehement opposition to multiculturalism, feminism, socialism and identity politics in the United States. Additionally, the movement has been widely reported as “white nationalist,” though this claim has been disputed by some. Presented as an alternative to mainstream American conservatism, the alt-right is known for its vocal support for 2016 Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and use of internet memes on political discussion boards like 4chan’s /pol/ and Reddit’s /r/The_Donald.

Berniebros

Berniebro is a pejorative term referring to fanatical male supporters of 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary candidate Bernie Sanders who supposedly oppose his rival candidate Hillary Clinton based on sexist cultural biases. Since its coinage in late 2015, many Clinton supporters have asserted that the term accurately underscores the basis of Sanders’ affinity with young male Democrats, while others have dismissed it as a straw man argument or smear tactics aimed at detracting criticisms surrounding Clinton’s campaign platform.

The Ones We Lost in 2016

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

he year 2016 began on a frightening note with the news of the Zika virus outbreak in Central and South Americas (which infected an estimated 1.5 million people in Brazil alone) and the publication of the Panama Papers, the largest-scale leak in history of data journalism that exposed and implicated more than 214,488 offshore entities in tax evasion. In Europe, xenophobic and Islamophobia permeated throughout the continent in the wake of terrorist attacks in Brussels in March, Istanbul in June and Nice in July, all three of which were either claimed or accused to have been carried out under the direction of the Islamic State (IS), while the steady influx of refugees and migrants from the war-torn Middle East only escalated the tension.

Meanwhile in the United States, the year was heavily dominated by a string of political scandals and controversies involving both presidential candidates of the two major political parties, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, while other unresolved social issues, like police brutality against the black community and equal rights for the LGBTQ community, continued to draw a whole lot of friction on the social media.

Online, virtually every major social media platform struggled to reinvent itself and evolve in one way or another: YouTube’s new “ad-friendly” content guidelines caused quite an uproar among some of the most popular vloggers on the site, Facebook became embroiled in several controversies for its alleged manipulation of the trending news stories and unrestrained circulation of fake news stories and hoaxes relating to the election.

Transgender Bathroom Debate

In March, the social media lit up with discussions on whether transgender people should be legally entitled to access public bathrooms in accord with their self-identified genders, as opposed to their biological sex, after North Carolina State Legislature passed a bill prohibiting people from using public bathrooms of the gender not specified on their birth certificates.

Hulk Hogan’s Sex Tape Lawsuit

In March, Hulk Hogan made the headline news after a Florida jury delivered a verdict in favor of the celebrity professional wrestler in his suit against Gawker, which had published an excerpt of a half-hour long sex tape featuring Hogan, for invasion of his privacy. The shocking verdict, along with the hefty consequence of $140 million, ultimately led the Internet media giant to file bankruptcy and shut down its flagship news site Gawker.com in August. The stories about Hogan were also removed from the site. In November, Hogan and Gawker reached a settlement in which Gawker would pay Hogan $31 million dollars.

Panama Papers Leak

The Panama Papers Leak was a massive disclosure of 11.5 million attorney–client confidential documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which revealed how businesses, government officials and other high-profile figures were using fake companies to evade taxes and cover up various other criminal activities, including bribery, fraud, drug trafficking and human trafficking.

Terrorist Attacks in Europe

2016 Terrorist Attacks in Europe refer to three separate terrorist attacks that were carried out by in Brussels, Belgium, Istanbul, Turkey and Nice, France between March and July, all three of which were either claimed or accused to have been carried out under the direction of the Islamic State (IS).

Brexit

Brexit (short for “British Exit”) refers to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), a regional political-economic union the country has been a member of since joining its precursor organization, European Economic Community (EEC), in 1973. The historic decision not only upset the climates of the European politics and global economy, but it also left a cultural imprint in the meme world by popularizing the colloquial use of “-exit” as a suffix to describe other sudden or unexpected episodes of rage quitting in various contexts.

Orlando Nightclub Shooting

The Orlando Nightclub Shooting was a mass shooting carried out by a lone gunman at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which resulted in the deaths of at least 49 patrons and wounded 53 others on June 12th, 2016. The killing spree has been classified by the authorities as an act of domestic terrorism carried out in allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), making it the deadliest mass shooting and hate crime against LGBT community in modern United States history, as well as the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Democratic National Committee Email Leak

The 2016 DNC Email Leak was a major political scandal that began with the WikiLeaks’ publication of internal correspondences exchanged among the staff members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in July. In the leaked emails, the DNC officials allegedly discussed various tactics and stratagems to undermine the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in order to secure Hillary Clinton’s victory in the Democratic primaries. Published just a few day before the Democratic Party’s official nomination of Clinton, the email scandal delivered a significant blow to Clinton’s public stature and prompted investigations by the FBI and CIA on whether Russian government employed cyberwarfare to intervene and sway the outcome of the election in favor of Donald Trump.

2016 Summer Olympics

The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics was the 31st quadrennial international multi-sport event hosted by the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in August. While the lead-up to the commencement of Games was marked by a jumble of concerns, doubts and controversies, such as the host city’s infrastructural readiness, public safety, health hazards and civil unrest across the rest of Brazil, the Summer Olympics in Rio was generally regarded as a success.

Creepy Clown Sightings

Creepy Clown Sightings were a series of reported sightings of people dressed as clowns in remote parts of various cities and towns across the United States and Europe that first began in late August. Between August and October, the sightings of creepy clowns had spread to Florida and many other states in the South, before turning into a full-fledged transatlantic phenomenon with additional reports from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Germany. Initially thought to be a viral marketing campaign for a horror film, the mysterious trend of “creepy clown scares” eventually hit the plateau

2016 United States Presidential Election

The 2016 United States Presidential Election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election in the U.S. that took place on November 8th, 2016. The two major candidates were former First Lady, Secretary of State and Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton, running with Tim Kaine, and Republican real estate mogul Donald Trump, running with Mike Pence. Donald Trump was elected as 45th president of the United States after defeating Hillary Clinton in electoral votes.

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

n the world of apps and websites, 2016 made a bold leap into the doorstep of the next-generation techs, like simulated reality and artificial intelligence, with an increasingly visible presence of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AG) and artificial intelligence (AI) devices and apps in consumer tech market.

Over two decades after RealNetworks’ first major live sports webcast of the Major League Baseball game between Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees in 1995, livestreaming finally became a new standard in social media with Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter introducing their own live video features this year, most likely inspired by the resounding success of early adopters like Periscope and Twitch, while others ventured into entirely new products based on the technology, most notably Vine co-founders’ new mobile app Hype and SnapChat’s Spectacles smartglasses. This isn’t to say, however, that 2016 was a “great” year for social media. The industry giants, namely Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube, all faced a plenty of housecleaning tasks and PR headaches in the heat of the 2016 presidential election and the ever-growing pressure of paving new revenue streams.

But no other domain within the world of digital media has had a worse year than online journalism. 2016 began on a rocky footing with the death sentence of Gawker Media’s flagship site Gawker.com in the aftermath of its legal battle against the Hulk Machine over sex tape leak; the principle of impartiality and objectivity came under intense scrutiny of the public amidst the stormy coverage of an unprecedented election marked by a candidate who waged an open war against mainstream journalism; accountability and truthfulness took a heavy dive in currency value as the age of “post-truth,” or hyperreal politics, began rearing its ugly head through the rise of alt-right strongholds and fake news factories on social media. And now, here are the top ten apps and sites that defined the memescape in 2016.

/r/The_Donald

/r/The_Donald is a subreddit for supporters of United States president-elect Donald Trump that became a stronghold of the alt right movement on social media. In November 2016, the subreddit became the ground zero of a scandal in which Reddit CEO Steve Huffman admitted to tampering with insulting comments posted at him by Redditors on /r/The_Donald.

Gawker

Gawker Media is a blog network based in New York City, owned and founded by Nick Denton. The network originally consisted of eight blogs, including Gawker, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, io9, Kotaku, Jalopnik and Jezebel. In 2016, the company closed its flagship publication Gawker.com after filing bankruptcy in the wake of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape lawsuit.

DC Leaks

DC Leaks is a website which serves as a repository for leaked emails taken from the accounts of top-ranking officials from around the world. In August 2016, the site was widely publicized for releasing emails hacked from organizations run by business magnate George Soros’, including the grantmaking network Open Society Foundations.

Face Swap Live

Face Swap Live is a mobile application that superimposes a variety of celebrity faces over the user’s face in real time. Videos and GIFs of people using the application are often posted to YouTube and Reddit.

Tay A.I.

Microsoft Tay was an artificial intelligence program that ran a mostly Twitter-based bot, parsing what was Tweeted at it and responding in kind. Tay was meant to be targeted towards people ages 15-24, to better understand their methods of communication. However, once it was released, users online corrupted the bot by teaching it racist and sexist terminology, ironic memes, sending it shitpost tweets, and otherwise attempting to alter its output. After these trolls discovered Tay’s guiding system, Microsoft was forced to remove the bot’s functionality less than 24 hours after its launch.

Breitbart

Breitbart is an alt-right conservative news site known for covering a variety of high-profile political scandals and Internet controversies, including the ACORN undercover videos, Weinergate and Gamergate.

WikiHow

WikiHow is an online resource community that offers step-by-step guides on how to complete various tasks that may require a certain level of prerequisite knowledge or skills.The website features over 190,000 instructional articles on a broad range of tasks, typically accompanied by visual aids, tips and warnings to assist the readers in acquiring the necessary know-hows to achieve their end goals. Since its launch in 2005, many Wikihow articles have gained online notoriety due to the over-explanatory or oversimplified nature of the content.

BuzzFeed Tasty

BuzzFeed Tasty is a series of short food recipe videos produced and distributed by BuzzFeed. Each video shows a meal being prepared and cooked from start to finish, along with a step-by-step instruction, from the top-down view. Since its launch in 2015, the series has gained a large following on the social media, particularly on Facebook, due to its simple and visually to-the-point style of recipe videos.

Geofeedia

Geofeedia is a social media intelligence platform which tracks the geolocation of posts made on various social media platforms in real-time. In October 2016, the service drew criticism from civil rights groups and social media after it was found to have been used as a tracking tool by U.S. law enforcement agencies during protests, most notably during the 2015 Baltimore protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray.

Pokemon Go

Pokémon GO is an augmented reality game for mobile devices developed and published by Niantic in which the player can capture, train and battle digital avatars of Pokémon characters in real-world locations using a GPS-enabled and camera-equipped smartphone. Upon its release in July 2016, Pokémon GO quickly became one of the most downloaded mobile apps to be ever released.

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

n the world of media entertainment, some of the running trends that have taken over Hollywood in the last few years may be, at last, slowing down. This year, many reboots of TV shows and films were met with mixed reception, ranging from lukewarm “mehs” to category-5 shitstorm “hell nos”; Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America continued to run its smooth course with the favorable reception of its latest title Civil War, while Superman vs. Batman, one of the most highly anticipated crossover films of the year turned out to be the laughing stock of superhero movies in 2016, though some would say it was civil in comparison to the fans reaction to the all-female reboot of the 1984 horror comedy film Ghostbusters.

In video game fandoms, Blizzard Entertainment had one of the most outstanding years in its history with the blockbuster reception of Overwatch, which went on to reign the gaming meme world for the first half of 2016 (with the great return of Doom coming in second) while both Nintendo and Sega enjoyed a great year with special events and surprise announcements for the 20th anniversary of Pokemon and 25th anniversary of Sonic the HedgeHog franchises. In contrast, the ever-booming indie gaming community had a rather dispiriting year with two of the most highly anticipated titles, No Man’s Sky and Mighty No. 9, falling far too short of the fans’ expectations.

And like elsewhere, the ironic appreciation of nostalgic TV shows and films from the early-to-mid 2000s also became visible in the world of pop culture memes, including Cory in the House, LazyTown and Bee Movie, just to name a few. Lastly, Disney’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story broke new grounds in the Star Wars saga as the first stand alone film in its Anthology series, which did remarkably well at the box office upon its release yesterday, despite some angry backlash from the conservatives prior to its release.

The Nutshack

The Nutshack is an American animated sitcom which aired on Myx TV in the United States and Myx in the Philippines. The first animated series geared towards a Filipino American audience, the show received negative reception and is known for its poor quality, juvenile humor, and repetitive theme song. The show gained a minor recognition after the end of GiIvasunnerARG,^[4] along with an ironic fandom after the ARG.

Deadpool

Deadpool is the alter ego of Wade Wilson, a mentally unstable and disfigured anti-hero created by Marvel Comics writer Fabian Nicieza and penciller Rob Liefeld. In 2016, the Marvel Cinematic Universe seized the growing cult status of the character with a blockbuster superhero film and a viral marketing campaign in the lead up.

DOOM

Doom is a first-person shooter video game series created by id Software. In the game, the player assumes the role of a space marine who fights against hordes of demons to thwart an invasion from Hell. In 2016, the classic pioneer of the first-person-shooter genre made a grand return with a modern reboot titled DOOM, spawning a cover art parody meme as well as an absurd hacking trend of running the original 1993 title on various electronic devices.

Cory In the House

Cory in the House is an American television series broadcast on the Disney Channel from 2007 to 2008 as a spin-off of the Disney series That’s So Raven, which focused on the exploits of the character Cory Baxter as he and his father take up residence in the White House. In 2016, the ironic fandom behind the show reached its peak with a viral joke that intentionally miscategorizes it as an anime, as well as 4chan’s /v/ (video games) mischiefs raiding a GameFAQs poll in an attempt to get the show’s Nintendo DS video game its own most-wanted FAQ page on the site.

Zootopia

Zootopia is a 3D computer-animated comedy film set in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals that follows the adventure of a bunny rookie police officer and a fox con artist as they try to solve a missing persons case together. Produced and released by Disney in March, the film became a huge success at the box office and inspired a cult-tier volume of fan artworks centered around the protagonists Juddy Hopps and Nick Wilde.

Steven Universe

*_Steven Universe_ is an American animated television series created by Rebecca Sugar for Cartoon Network that has steadily grown one of the broadest and most vibrant fan communities in the fandom world, as previously recognized in our 2015 report, and its momentum certainly didn’t slow down this year.

Stranger Things

Stranger Things is an American supernatural science fiction thriller web series written and directed by Matt and Ross Duffer and released through Netflix in July 2016. Critically acclaimed for its craftful reimagination of nostalgic thrillers and science fiction by the likes of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Stephen King and the 1980s pop culture in general, the series quickly became the talk of the town across TV/film communities online, as well as inspiring several retro video game projects and a viral text generator in the style of the show’s iconic logo.

Bee Movie

Bee Movie is a 2007 Dreamworks computer-animated comedy film about the adventures of Barry B. Benson, a disillusioned bee who leaves his hive and goes on a journey in search of a new career. Despite its moderate commercial success and mixed critical reception, the film gained a significant ironic fandom on YouTube and Tumblr in 2016.

Overwatch

Overwatch is a team-based first-person shooter video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment in which the player assumes the role of a Hero with unique abilities, and work with others on the same team to defeat the opponents. Since its release in January, Blizzard’s fourth major franchise immediately captivated the team-based FPS players from all around the world, including many Team Fortress 2 fans, and received universal acclaim from the players and critics alike. Throughout the first half of 2016, Overwatch dominated the meme game in the gaming world (prior to the release of Pokemon GO in July), and by November, it had grown into a widely recognized esport with the kickoff of the first Overwatch World Cup organized by Blizzard Entertainment.

Pokemon GO

Pokémon GO is an augmented reality game for mobile devices developed and published by Niantic in which the player can capture, train and battle digital avatars of Pokémon characters in real-world locations using a GPS-enabled and camera-equipped smartphone. Upon its release in July 2016, Pokémon GO quickly became one of the most downloaded mobile apps to be ever released.

ttention music memers: you probably have someone in your life outside of the Internet who would tell you to stay away from Neil Cicierega’sMouth Moods because it’s a colossal avalanche of meme shit, but I am here to tell you that you should absolutely listen to Neil Cicierega’s Mouth Moods because it’s a colossal avalanche of meme shit. At first listen, it’s seemingly every pop song from the Seventies to the early Aughts that became an ironic gag mashed up together in bizarre harmony. From the opening track, “The Starting Line,” Cicierega frankensteins a hodgepodge of lyrics that are as familiar to the common musical lexicon as “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” from “this is a story of a girl” and “the world is a vampire” to “it’s been one week since you looked at me” and “I’VE GOTANOTHERCONFESSION TO MAKE,” into a mashup that brilliantly outshines the sum of its parts. It’s all for kicks and giggles, until you start humming it. Then it’s a jam.

In the world of online music, there are probably only a few internet-native artists who can measure up to the reputation and sensibilities of Neil Cicierega. The 30-year-old musician has been churning out viral hits for nearly two decades, beginning with his 2001 surrealist mashup video “Hyakugojyuuichi” and many other works of Flash animation, most notably Potter Puppet Pals and Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, and Mouth Moods clearly reflects his proficiency in the craft of meticulously constructing a body of work that essentially amounts to a dumb joke. Mouth Moods is more than just a self-aware parade of meme-y pop songs; it is a series of deconstructions that digs at the heart of ironic appeal behind the late revival of seemingly random pop hits from bygone decades.

Take “AC/VC” over Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” one of the most iconic feminine pop anthems of the mid-2000s, Cicierega plays the vocals from “Back In Black.” Divorced from AC/DC’s cock-rock riffs, Brian Johnson’s vocal sounds goofily impotent. It’s a spit-take moment for sure, but once the laugh subsides, the thing starts to actually work. The combination of Johnson’s inhuman quacking and Carlton’s melodramatic piano pop illuminates just how emotionally--and effectively--manipulative the two songs are. Cicierega isn’t just taking the piss out of these cheesy pop songs; he’s also actively celebrating the ingredients that made them iconic.

This is Cicierega’s modus operandi for Mouth Moods. On nearly every track, he mixes two or more wildly different songs together so successfully that they end up sounding like perfect inverses of each other. This means that while the parts Cicierega employs may seem incongruous, when divorced from their sources, whatever commonality they share creates a fresh, modern sound. For example, you may not think Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime” and Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” have anything in common, but Jonathan Davis’ infamous nu-metal beatboxing over Jerry’s upbeat southern shuffle wouldn’t sound all that out of place in a hip jazz-fusion club. Save for “Bustin” and “Tiger,” a pair of self-contained remixes which Cicierega makes about ejaculation and tigers, respectively, Mouth Moods is a showcase of buried connections between pop songs, which makes it deliciously sweet for the pop culture student.

The most immediate comparison for Cicierega’s Mouth album project would be the work of Girl Talk, another Internet-approved DJ who rose to viral fame in 2010 with lulzy mashups of pop songs. But whereas Girl Talk more consciously winks to music obsessives, Cicierega’s audience is more like me, and maybe, since you’ve made it to paragraph five on a Know Your Meme Dot Com album review, more like you: a meme dork who has leaned so far into “ironic” enjoyment of songs like Santana’s “Smooth”, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” and “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies that you can no longer tell if your enjoyment is ironic or sincere anymore. Likely, you don’t care. The silly one-hit-wonders and throwbacks that Cicierega samples in Mouth Moods are as much a part of your musical DNA as anything you’d perhaps be more proud to listen to.

Cicierega’s latest album, more than anything, is a celebration of these goofy songs, these memes that still get radio play on soft rock stations. When Cicierega finally drops the album’s “All Star” mix after teasing it for 18 tracks, he does so, it seems, with all the gusto and pride of a classic rock band playing their biggest hit at the end of the night. Buoyed by the instrumental of Queen’s “Under Pressure,” “Mouth Pressure” is joyful, and weirdly, emotionally powerful in a way Smash Mouth never intended and Queen would probably hate. That middle ground between high art and meme trash is where Cicierega resides, effectively and effortlessly pulling from both to celebrate decades of pop culture falling into the hands of ironists.

A Picardía-themed mural seen under an overpass; location unknown.

n today’s internet memescape, we seem to be living in the golden age of ironic humor, where absurd Facebook pages, circlejerk subreddits and meta jokes dominate the highly volatile meme economy.

When given a moment’s thought, it actually makes a lot of sense. As memes have become more and more mainstream, we’ve had to find new ways of demonstrating our meme literacy to separate ourselves from the awful “normies”. To show the true depth of your understanding of internet memes, you must be able to shitpost them into infinity with ironic and meta humor that only real memers would be able to comprehend. And memes tend to dramatically drop in value as a cultural currency when they are accessible to too many people. Memes are no exception to inflationary market pressures.

Some of the prototypical ironic memes were founded on an appreciation for the so bad it’s good genre of social media entertainment, including classics like Duane!, The Room, Garbage Day, the Power Glove and Troll 2, just to name a few. This niche was popularized by events like the Found Footage Festival and sites like Everything is Terrible, who relentlessly foraged through VHS tape collections to find the most bizarre videos to meet the growing demand for this sort of content.

To better understand how memes became what they are today, we took at look back at some of the key moments in internet history to build a rough timeline of how ironic memes spread far and wide across the web.

Did we miss anything noteworthy? Just drop us a line in the comments to be considered for inclusion in the timeline!

UPDATE: The Internet Meme Exchange is now closed. Read our full report of the event here.

What a time to be alive. Today, the meme economy is no longer just a fantasy or ironic joke, but an actual reality. As of midnight, all user accounts have been given 100 of our KYMCoin currency to purchase stock in any entries within the Know Your Meme database. As stocks are purchased and sold, prices will rise and fall, allowing you to play the market and make large profits off your investments.

Want to become the next meme tycoon? Just following these easy steps:

• Step 1: Signup or login with your Know Your Meme account
• Step 2: Use your balance of KYMCoin to purchase individual stocks of any entry
• Step 3: Check the Stock Activity page to see what others are buying and selling
• Step 4: ???
• Step 5: PROFIT!!

In order to view any user’s portfolio, just click the KYMCoin found on the left side of their profile page:

or this year’s April Fool’s Day event, we launched an Internet Meme Stock Exchange in the spirit of the meme economy, a concept which has established an impressive and passionate community on the /r/MemeEconomy subreddit and elsewhere online.

To kick it all off, all users were given a starting balance of 100 KYMCoin to purchase stock in any entry of their choice. As stocks were bought and sold, their value rose and fell in response, leading to volatile price fluctuations throughout the day.

While the event has come to an end, all user portfolios can still be viewed by adding “/portfolio” to the URL on any profile page. Additionally, all price history pages have been archived.

Without further adieu, let’s take a look back at all the interesting things that occurred during the event and who came out on top as the best meme traders.

Winners

Out of the gate, Twist started off strong as the first user to break 1,000 KYMCoin, but was subsequently overtaken as markets fluctuated over the course of the day. At the end of the event, we handed out a total of 2,027 Meme Trader badges to anyone who purchased a stock. Additionally, the top 10 users with the highest net worth were given a Meme Tycoon badge (listed below).

The top trader who accumulated the highest net worth of all was given a Wolf of Meme Street badge, which turned out to be our very own database moderator Particle Mare with a net worth of 22,368.

Top Entries

Samurai Jack was the clear winner in the contest, ending with a closing price of 107 KYMCoin. At 12:14pm, the entry was the first to hit a price of 101, putting it just out of reach of the 100 KYMCoin starting balance.

Anomalies

*Breath in* Boi

At around 4:30pm, the stock price of *Breath in* Boi began sharply rising up to a peak of 25, before immediately crashing all the way back down to 1. It is currently unclear why this occurred, but our analysts will be investigating the matter.

Internet Meme Exchange

An entry for the Internet Meme Exchange itself was submitted by database moderator RandomMan, which ended up grabbing the 7th highest price at the closing bell.

Occupy Don Street

As wealth inequalities rose dramatically over the course of the day, the Occupy Don Street movement was launched in protest of the various economic injustices that came about as a result of the Internet Meme Exchange. In a bizarre twist, the trader with the highest net worth launched an entry for the movement, which allowed several investors to make substantial short term gains before a price crash later in the evening.

f you’ve been on the internet since 2010, chances are you’ve encountered the work of SungWon Cho, aka ProZD, aka That One Guy Who Does the Silly Voices and Makes Funny Videos About Video Games. Perhaps you first encountered his work with his popular “Goofy Sings” series. Remember that video of Goofy singing Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life? That was him. The classic dub of Mickey and Donald Duck getting all philosophical? That was him too. Or, if you’ve been on KnowYourMeme in the past, like, 4 months, you’ve definitely seen some of his most popular work, as his short, hilarious skits regularly make our front page. Cho took the time to speak with us from his home in Michigan earlier this week about his growing popularity, Kingdom Hearts, the best games for the Nintendo 3DS, and whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

Q: Hey KnowYourMeme! What’s up? I am Adam Downer and I am here with the illustrious SungWon Cho, also known as ProZD!

A: Yo. What’s up?

Q: Not much man! I’ve been looking forward to this all day. We’re big fans of your stuff, and thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

A: Well, thank you!

Q: So what’ve you been up to today? One of your videos I think just made top of Reddit, the one about the license plates?

A: Oh did that hit the top of Reddit?

Q: Well, I’m not sure about the top, but I know it’s doing extremely well.

A: I don’t use Reddit, but I know they get passed around down there. Today I’ve just been recording some videos, and pretty much what I do each day is record, edit, record some voiceover.

Q: So when did you first know you could make a career out of voice acting? I assume it’s your career?

A: My career is basically videos and voice acting. I’ve been doing voice acting and videos for a while. I would say last year is when I could finally just do that. I’d been doing it before, but now it’s pretty much what I do as my job now. I started focusing on YouTube more and then a bunch of videos got big on Reddit, and since then--I mean, my channel has always been growing, but being on the front page of Reddit a couple times helps quite a bit. At this point, I’m doing it full time.

Q: Do you remember if there was a specific video that was the first one to get super popular, where you were like “Oh shit, this is really popping off?” I know the Goofy Sings videos did super well, but I think it’s interesting that when you type “ProZD” into Google Trends, there’s a spike in November of 2016 where your name shoots up. Was there something around that time that might’ve caused that?

A: I don’t remember which ones spiked… but I know that was around the time Reddit really latched onto my stuff. I don’t remember the specific video. I’m the type of guy where, I make the video, and I’m ready for the next one. I don’t really re-watch my stuff, so sometimes i forget about ones that I made. I made a lot of Vines before YouTube, and now I do a little bit longer stuff. I know that the one where I sing “Take On Me” got really popular, but that’s not the first one… I know it was one of the skits, but I don’t remember which one.

Q: Speaking of the skits, obviously you have a grasp of how internet-friendly comedy works, the short, terse style that grew out of Vine. Were you drawn to Vine initially? What drew you to this style of comedy, beyond the YouTube stuff you were doing before that got popular?

A: Vine is funny. I was actually kind of intimidated by Vine when I first heard about it. I was like, “There’s no way I can fit a whole skit into 6, 7 seconds,” so I didn’t use it for a long time. It was seriously, completely on a whim. I was just like “You know what, I’m not gonna worry about it.” The first couple Vines are just of me dubbing over animals, very simple stuff. Then the first one that got really big with me on camera, I had like, a syrup bottle--it’s hard to explain, so that one got really big. It helped I already had a big Tumblr fanbase at the time. That kind of propelled the Vine, but then Vine grew bigger than that, and now YouTube has grown bigger than that. I guess what drew me to it is that it’s just low pressure, being able to cast out your comedic idea into the internet, not having to worry about over-planning, or over-editing it (although later on I would), but overall it was just a way to put out my ideas in a very easy way. It also helped me pare down my writing so there’s less filler. Straight-to-the-point, good pacing, punchlines have more impact. I was always impressed by what other people did on Vine.

Q: Do you mourn the loss of Vine at all? Or do you think its death has helped you with your YouTube stuff?

A: I mourn the loss of Vine in regards to other creators. I think there were some awesome, funny people on there, and I think they didn’t have other channels to fall back on, whereas I had Tumblr, YouTube, and Twitter. For me, I was fine, and I’m doing, you could say, very well, but it was more a bummer to lose other Viners. Not that they’re not still out there, but it’s harder to find their content now, cuz Vine was their big platform.

Q: How do you come up with skits? They’re often video-game based, or regular, every-day life based. Where do you draw inspiration?

A: Well, if it’s a video game one, I’m probably playing a video game (laughs). I mean seriously, watching an anime, playing a game, if something pops up that pisses me off or I think is funny, I’m like “I’m gonna rip this a new one.” I tweet a lot, and sometimes I come up with a tweet idea and think, “you know, actually, this could be a video idea.” It’s usually just me going around, living my life. If I don’t have one, I don’t make one. I’m not compelled to make one on a regular basis. I really just put one out there if I have something I want to make fun of. There’s no strict writing process, although I find driving and showering, I have ideas pop into my head there. Otherwise I’m doing the nerdy--can I swear in this?

Q: Yeah, sure.

A: Sometimes I’m just doing nerdy shit and I get ideas from that.

Q: Is there a video, performance, or project you’ve worked on that you’re most proud of?

A: Some of the skits turned out pretty funny. I don’t try to worry about what other people think. If the finish product is something I think is funny, it’s a success to me, but it’s gratifying to see people enjoy that. I do think one where it was like “When you’re playing a game and you meet the character who’s gonna betray you” turned out pretty well. I think that one came out exactly how I wanted it. If the skits really work, I’m very proud of it.

Q: Speaking of how people receive your work, do you remember the best and worst feedback you’ve gotten from an internet commenter or someone who jumps in your Tumblr asks?

A: The stuff I like the most is when someone says “Hey, I was having a really shitty day, I was feeling really down, and watching your videos really cheered me up.” That kinda stuff makes me happy, if I can help other people out. And then the worst are you know, racist, or trolling. It is what it is, the same kind of shit over and over. I’ve been doing this for so many years that nothing really phases me anymore. It’s just repetition. It’s very difficult, I think, to get to me in terms of internet hate.

Q: So nothing too shocking if you’ve been on the internet.

A: Exactly. Especially if you’ve had stuff passed around, and people go “Oh, who is this guy? Fuck this guy.”

Q: You’ve done a lot of indie projects and you have this popularity. I was wondering if there are major projects, major studios knocking on your door, or if you’re even into that sort of thing.

A: I can’t really talk about what’s brewing…

Q: So something cool is down the road, but you can’t talk about it yet?

A: I have some cool stuff in the works, but anything I could talk about, I probably can’t, but yes, especially after the Reddit push, offers have come my way.

Q: I want to get into some of your video game opinions. I know on your Let’s Play Channel, Press Buttons and Talk, you guys are in the midst of a Kingdom Hearts LP. For one, I commend you for that, because it seems like a tremendously difficult game to LP. You seem to have this deep knowledge of the series, but you also seem pretty critical of it. At what point did you become disillusioned to Kingdom Hearts?

A: I would say I’m not an expert on Kingdom Hearts. I’ve played Kingdom Hearts, Chain of Memories, re:Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts 2, and 358 days. I think around that time I was slipping because I liked 2 especially. I think the first game’s a piece of shit, actually. I loved it as a kid, but playing it now, it’s a very flawed game. I enjoyed Chain of Memories and 2 a lot more because they improved on the first one. I think the story of the games is nonsense, but I am excited for 3. I would say my opinion changed when I played the entirety of 358/2 Days and realized what a pointless game that was, and it was just tedious. Also, I became an adult (laughs), and I realized “okay, these games are kinda dumb.” But I’m still fond of 2 and we’ll play it on some point on the channel. Do you watch the channel?

Q: I found it while prepping for this, and it’s super entertaining. There are games on there that no other LP-er does, and doing Phoenix Wright with the dubbing was awesome.

A: Yeah, I love that series. That’s a very fun channel. It’s a decent little community, and I’m kinda okay with that. You know, my main channel has a lot of subscribers, but with that comes a lot of the dumbest people ever in the comments. But the comments on Press Buttons and Talk are very nice (right now, anyway), and we don’t worry about playing, you know, “THE NEWESTGAME.” We just play what we want and that’s very fun.

Q: Another question I wanted to ask you: I was watching your Q&A with your wife you put up recently, and you got a question about Pokémon Sun and Moon, and you mentioned you liked the Pokemon designs and atmosphere, but you thought the story was pretty dumb. Personally, I thought Pokemon Sun was the best because it wasn’t like the generic, “Oh, we’re doing the eight gyms” and everyone you talk to has one line. I liked having recurring characters and stories, but you seemed to think otherwise, so I wanted to press you on that.

A: I really liked the characters a lot. That’s not my issue. My issue is the main villain’s motivations were very wonky. I really liked Team Skull and liked them as a concept, but structure wise, the main dramatic stuff didn’t hit me, and I thought it was very scattershot. I really liked the characters a lot. I don’t play Pokemon for the plot anyway, so I appreciated that they, you know, gave it a try (laughs). I thought it was better than X&Y. X&Y was ridiculous. But yeah, for me, it was more about the characters and gameplay, but the final villain was dumb. I still think it’s a fantastic game.

Q: Is there something I should be playing on the 3DS? I own a 3DS and I feel like once I run of the big series titles, the major Nintendo products, then I’m like what else can this system give me?

A: If you want that’s a little obscure, Pocket Card Jockey is a great game. It’s like, horse racing mixed with solitaire, which doesn’t sound fun, but it’s extremely addicting. SteamWorld Dig is really good, very solid mining, going down a randomly generated level with a steampunk aesthetic. Really solid gameplay. Pushmo is a puzzle game where you pull out pieces of a statue and climb to the top. Those are some eShop gems, but some main games I like. I love New Leaf. I put like 900 hours into that.

Q: Oh my god…

A: Yeah. I 100%’d the game. I got every gold badge, which is a disgusting feat, and anyone who’s ever played that game probably thinks I’m a crazy person because that takes a ton of effort. Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fates are great games. I recently played Kirby Triple Deluxe, which was recently solid. They have two Ace Attorney games on there. Any Pokemon game--I actually played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and I thought that was pretty solid. I like any randomly-generated dungeon crawlers, and that’s basically what that is. The Professor Layton series is on there, though like Ace Attorney, you should probably play the DS games first. They have Rhythm Heaven Megamix, which if you like rhythm games, is a super quirky games. Super Mario 3D Land. Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward, a sequel to 999, a DS adventure/puzzle game. That’s my huge list of games for you. I love the 3DS. I think it’s a great console.

Q: And now, upcoming games. What are you looking forward to?

A: Hmm, I don’t really have a ton of upcoming games. I’m playing Persona 5 right now, which is incredible. That’s a really phenomenal game. I don’t have a Switch, so I haven’t played Zelda or anything. However, I want to get a Switch because Super Mario Odyssey looks really good. Fire Emblem Warriors was announced, and I love Hyrule Warriors, so Fire Emblem with the mechanic of killing thousands of guys is up my alley. They’re remaking Fire Emblem Echoes for 3DS, a remake of one of the old ones. They’re making a Professor Layton spinoff with his daughter.

Q: So now for some meme-y questions. You were asked “Is cereal a soup?” I want to ask “Is a hot dog a sandwich?

A: Is a hot dog a sandwich? No. It’s gotta be two pieces of bread.

Q: What is a bun? A bun is two pieces of bread.

A: A bun is one bread. You’re putting the hot dog on top of a bread.

Q: But what if the bun breaks? Then you’ve got two pieces of bread with meat in the middle.

A: Okay, if the bun breaks and there are two pieces of bread over the hot dog, sure. Technically a sandwich, in terms of my definition. But if it’s in one bun, I mean, what, is a wrap a sandwich?

Q: I think so.

A: I don’t think so at all. Is a taco a sandwich? It has to be between two pieces of bread, and anything else is bullshit. So no. I’m declaring that as my official ruling.

Q: What is your favorite meme?

A: Memes come and go. It’s hard to remember them. It’s like a flash. What’s going around right now?

Q: Well there was Jughead’s “I’m Weird” Speech, but that just started floating around. My all time favorite are Loss edits because of their staying power.

A: Oh yeah, I’ve seen the minimalist edits, those are always pretty good. But one I really liked because of what people did with them was the one with the guy reacting to something, with the blinking. I saw a Hatsune Miku 3D rendering of that. And an “older” one--I mean, not that old, but memes come and go so quickly it seems old--was the Arthur clenching fist one. For me, when I see people do cool things with memes--like I saw someone cross-stitched the Arthur hand--I like that. Some memes fall completely flat for me. I’ll see one for, like, the second time and I’ll be like “I’m good. Thank you.” But very simple ones, like a reaction image, that can be messed around with or tweaked in creative ways, have the best staying power.

Q: Do you have any final thoughts you want to put out on the internet?

A: If you like my stuff, just Google me. You’ll see me. And thanks KnowYourMeme, I guess I’m a meme now. You know, Ko Takeuchi, the character designer for Rhythm Heaven and WarioWare drew me on Twitter, so I guess now I’m officially a meme, as he does fan art of memes and stuff.

ProZD is the internet handle of SungWon Cho, a voice actor based out of Haslett, Michigan. He rose to prominence following successful YouTube, Vine, and Instagram videos in which he performs skits about video games, anime, and everyday life. He is married to his wife Anne Marie, and along with Alex Mankin, they have a Let’s Play channel called “Press Buttons and Talk.”

Dear Readers,

The annual poll for the Meme of the Year has ended. Thank you for voting and please check back soon for the poll results! In the meantime, check out our annual meme review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it!

Poll Results

Note: A total of 1,826 votes were cast during the week-long poll event, with 101 memes receiving at least one vote. The list highlights all entries that received at least 1% of the total votes.

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 2016 as we know it. For controversies and scandals related to the 2016 election, please refer to Election Memes of 2016.

his year was filled to the brim with so much drama, scandal and absurdity that by now, it seems like everyone is just waiting for 2016 to end already. Thanks to the climate set by the United States’ historically polarizing presidential election, online tensions reached unimaginable heights, leading to explosions of outrage for even the most minor of controversies.

As the online culture wars heated up, several overzealous young activists were immortalized as internet memes after being captured on camera acting like college students so often do. Two young men filmed a Trump rally in St. Louis were dubbed Carl the Cuck and AIDS Skrillex for their smug debate tactics and invocation of Godwin’s Law. A young woman throwing a rather spectacular temper tantrum during a talk titled “The Triggering” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst earned herself the title “Trigglypuff”. More recently, a yellow beanie-wearing student who told a police officer he “didn’t see anything” immediately after witnessing an assault was nicknamed “Smugglypuff”.

Other viral videos drew the internet’s ire as well. A Texas-based mattress store released a “Twin Towers Sale” ad, featuring a tasteless September 11th joke. Meanwhile, a drunk Lyft passenger was widely derided after she foolishly filmed herself berating her driver as “racist” for having a Hawaiian bobblehead on his dashboard.

In the online media world, many were outraged by the verdict in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, effectively bankrupting the company and leading their acquisition by Univision. After it was discovered that Peter Thiel had been secretly funding Hogan’s lawsuit, the Silicon Valley billionaire was widely blamed for destroying the controversial media empire.

Without further adieu, let’s take a look back at what really rustled the internet’s jimmies this year. And going forward, let’s all try to calm down a little bit, shall we?

Fine Brothers’ “React World” Controversy

The year started off with the Fine Brothers announcing their terribly misguided “React World” licensing plan, which many interpreted as an attempt to trademark the reaction video web series format. While they initially vehemently denied any wrongdoing, the brothers were met with a swift and brutal backlash from YouTube’s passionate community, leading them to abandon the concept entirely.

Not to be outdone, YouTube managed to infuriate their user base several many additional times over the course of the year, with controversial copyright enforcement policies, new “advertiser friendly guildelines” and the widely unpopular YouTube Heroes program.

More recently, even the video-sharing site’s most subscribed user PewDiePie joined in on the hate, claiming that he will delete his channel in protest of YouTube’s policies once he hits 50 million subscribers.

Ghostbusters Reboot

In entertainment drama, an all-female reboot of the 1980s comedy film franchise Ghostbusters stirred up an online shitstorm of epic proportions. While the backlash started in early 2015, it really kicked into high gear with the release of the official trailer this March, which received an enormous amount of dislikes as it circulated across the web. Shortly after, James Rolfe (a.k.a. The Angry Video Game Nerd) stirred the pot even more by announcing he would not review the upcoming film in an act of protest.

In July, Twitter permanently suspended Milo Yiannopoulos for tweeting various insulting messages at Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones, claiming he was inciting harassment. The following month, Jones’ personal website was vandalized by an unknown hacker, who posted sexually explicit photographs of the actress stolen from her iCloud account.

Tracer’s Pose in Overwatch

In March, Blizzard Entertainment’s forums became the site of an enormous flame war after a user complained that a victory pose for the Overwatch character Tracer was gratuitously sexual in nature. After hundreds chimed in with their opinion on the absurd debate, a Blizzard staff member replied that the pose would be replaced and apologized for any offense. Over the next two weeks, many criticized Blizzard for succumbing to the demands of puritanical “social justice warriors”, until the company released a revamped pose inspired by a classic pin-up poster.

#TheTriggering

If social media platforms held a contest for “Most Dramatic,” Twitter would win in a landslide. As the web’s #1 outlet for self-righteous sanctimony, vitriol and terrible jokes, it’s no wonder the site hosted so many controversial incidents.

On March 9th, the conservative political commentator Lauren Southern launched the hashtag #TheTriggering for participants to share provocative or offensive messages in order to tease, aggravate and disturb radical members of the social justice movement, becoming a worldwide trending topic for much of the day.

The event seems to have inspired a slew of other trolling campaigns, which for some reason large numbers of people took the bait. In June, Twitter user @JackNForTweets launched t#HeteroSexualPrideDay, ostensibly in celebration of heterosexuality. The hashtag was subsequently circulated far and wide among those who took offense, falling right into @JackNForTweets’ trap. At the end of the month, he revealed it was all just a satirical trolling scheme.

Most recently, the social media platform has received both criticism and praise for preemptively banning accounts associated with the alt-right, including white nationalist Richard Spencer and American hacker Andrew Auernheimer (a.k.a. Weev).

SFSU Dreadlocks Controversy

As one of the more intellectually incoherent debates in identity politics, the fight over what constitutes cultural appropriation continued along its frustrating course.

On March 28th, 2016, a video of a white student at San Francisco State University being confronted by another student for wearing dreadlocks widely circulated online, with many expressing outrage over the young man being bullied for his hairstyle. Even Tay Zonday chimed in on Twitter, stating that the agitator exuded “profound intellectually poverty” in confronting the student about his hair.

The following month, the woman spoke out about the video in a post on Facebook, saying she had receiving numerous “death threats, rape threats, sexual harassment and anti-Black speech,” and claiming the video didn’t provide the full context of the incident.

Harambe the Gorilla’s Death

Coming off of last year’s tragic killing of Cecil the Lion, an unfortunate circumstance led another animal to fall into internet martyrdom.

In May, the 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla Harambe was shot and killed after he was seen dragging a child who fell into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. The incident was endlessly discussed on social media, with many expressing outrage over the killing and demanding the child’s parents be punished.

Two months later, Harambe underwent a bizarre transformation from viral outrage story to ironic internet meme when comedian Brandon Wardell popularized the slogan “dicks out for Harambe.” Jokes about the deceased gorilla were suddenly ubiquitous, confusing many of those unacquainted with the internet’s obsession with irony. Some have speculated Harambe’s shift was actually a form of social commentary about the absurdity of online outrage culture, while others claim it was just for the lulz.

And along with the overflowing salt following the election of Donald Trump, an unsubstantiated rumor that “thousands” voted for the gorilla as a write-in candidate lead many distraught voters to curse the shitposting electorate.

#LochteGate

Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte never had a reputation for being very bright. In previous years, videos of the athlete making a fool out of himself spread far and wide across the web, leading many to think of him as a bit of a goof.

At the Summer Olympics in Brazil this August, Lochte found himself at the center of a huge scandal after he foolishly told his mother he had been robbed at gun point following a drunk altercation at a local gas station. After Lochte’s mother told the lie to a shocked news reporter in a hilarious twist of fate, Lochte doubled down on the falsehood. It didn’t take long for his story to unravel, with his fellow teammates admitting to the story’s fabrication. Lochte has since apologized for the mess, but his reputation may never recover.

Hugh Mungus

Every once in awhile, an internet outrage controversy actually ends up doing some good. In August, a video began circulating in which activist Zarna Joshi aggressively accuses a man of “sexual harassment” for identifying himself as “Hugh Mungus”. Joshi was widely derided as an emotionally unhinged bully, drawing criticism from notable YouTubers H3h3productions and Anthony Fantano. In October, she launched a crowdfunding campaign in attempt to capitalize on her newfound infamy, along with a series of videos discussing various feminist theories. The following month, H3h3productions launched a competing crowdfunding campaign to help Hugh Mungus pay for his rapidly accumulating healthcare costs, which gathered an impressive $148,000 in donations.

Nazi Pepe

All the way back in October 2015, Trump famously tweeted a Pepe the Frog-themed illustration of himself, causing the character to surge in popularity in pro-Trump communities like the /r/The_Donald subreddit.

In May this year, The Daily Beast wrote an article titled “How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt Right Symbol,” which interviewed the creators of two anonymous Twitter accounts who revealed their nefarious plot to “reclaim Pepe from normies” by spreading distasteful and offensive variations of the character.

In September, Donald Trump Jr. reblogged a photoshopped movie poster featuring various prominent conservatives standing next to Pepe the Frog with the title “The Deplorables,” mocking a gaffe made by Hillary Clinton. Shortly after, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center began calling Pepe a “white nationalist symbol” in interviews with various news media publications. Then, not to let the political opportunity go to waste, the Clinton campaign published an “explainer” about Pepe, labeling the character as “sinister” and a “symbol associated with white supremacy.” What followed can only be described as pure media hysteria, eventually leading to the Anti-Defamation League adding Pepe to their list of hate symbols.

Pepe’s creator Matt Furie has since launched the #SavePepe campaign in an attempt to repair the character’s reputation on line, but, unfortunately, the formerly beloved green frog may be forever branded as a meme pariah.

Censorship of /r/The_Donald

Over the course of this year’s presidential election, Reddit’s /r/The_Donald subreddit rapidly grew to become one of the site’s most active, and controversial, communities of all time. The passionate Donald Trump supporters’, affectionately referring to themselves as “centipedes,”
had their first wave of controversy in February, when stickied posts on the subreddit kept reaching Reddit’s /r/all front page. In June, following accusations that Reddit staff prevented /r/The_Donald posts regarding the Orlando nightclub shooting from reaching the front page, CEO Steven Huffman (a.k.a. “Spez”) announced new algorithm changes that would provide “more variety in /r/all.”

Then came the news media coverage. In July, Vice’s tech news site Motherboard published an article referring to the subreddit as a “melting pot of frustration and hate.” Later that same month, the left-leaning news site Slate referred to the community as a “hate speech forum.”

More recently, things got extra dicey when Huffman modified comments by /r/The_Donald users, editing insulting messages to be directed at /r/The_Donald moderators, rather than himself. In the aftermath, Huffman apologized for the incident, blaming frustration brought on by the recent Pizzagate debacle.

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 2016 as we know it.

he music memes in 2016 were marked by a visible presence and solid ideas created by independent musicians, for independent musicians on the internet. 2016’s music memes sprang from the underground, from musicians and humorists who found inspiration from the most obscure sources and turned them into memes.

It was the year of the Word Replacement Remix. It was the year where Gabe the Dog spread everywhere. It was the year that absurdism left a strong footprint in the remix culture, with a level of madness in soundscape that hasn’t been seen since the rise of the YouTube Poop subculture in the late 2000s. And it was the year that Smash Mouth’s ""All Star" (1999) and Santana’s “Smooth” (1999) reached new heights of memedom, much thanks to the staying power of 90s nostalgia that has taken the meme-making community by storm.

But this is not to say that mainstream music has lost its place on the Internet. Big name recording artists like Drake and Beyonce continued to make splashes on the social media with their new releases and edgy music videos, Taylor Swift and Kanye West had a second round of their long-running celebrity feud on Twitter, while Jay-Z attempted to pave a new a road in online music streaming with his subscription-based venture Tidal. One thing is for certain: In 2016, the spotlight on the stage of music memes heavily shifted away from pop stars to internet musicians.

But above all else, we got some dankass jams out of it, not to mention some pretty good laughs. Without further ado, check out our list of ten most noteworthy music memes of the year 2016.

“You Reposted In the Wrong Neighborhood”

The way a song becomes a meme is usually pretty straightforward. Either a pop song goes insanely viral and achieves instant meme status (Gangnam Style, Hotline Bling), an old, canonically popular song gets recontextualized in new remix videos (Sound of Silence,Mad World), or a song is designed to go viral through its absurdity (Crazy Frog’s “Axel F,” Peanut Butter Jelly Time). You Reposted In the Wrong Neighborhood, however, became a meme without following the path of any of its predecessors. Instead, it just sort of… appeared, and kept reappearing until it became practically obligatory that every popular remix fad of 2016 have a “You Reposted in the Wrong Neighborhood” version. Charizard and Dragonite Dance Remixes,All Star, and even Kahoot all had popular “You Reposted…” remixes.

So what an obscure Soundcloud song so popular? ＳＨＯＫＫ青’s mashup of Nate Dogg and Eminem’s “Shake That” and “Casin” by glue70 strikes a perfect balance between being crass and sublimely funky. The instrumental recalls the upbeat end of Vaporwave with its late 70s disco glitz, which makes Nate’s supremely crass opening couplet (“Two to the One to the One to the Three/ I like good pussy and I like good trees.”) incredibly funny. It’s a perfect blend of hilarious and catchy, and the beat somehow seems to go with everything. Some of the best pop artists wish they released a song this good in 2016.

The Nutshack Theme

It’s. The. Nutshack. And It’s. The. Mother of all noun replacement memes that spread like crazy during the second half of 2016. The Nutshack theme, if you haven’t already heard it, is an edgelord’s wet dream, a repetitive rap seeping with DGAFATTITUDE that introduces all the characters and their motivations. It’s phenomenally stupid, which made it a phenomenally good vehicle for an old Youtube poop trend in which every noun or every “Nutshack” is replaced with something else.

The popularity of The Nutshack theme led to increasingly surreal and increasingly long remixes. Should you choose, you could watch “the nutshack theme but every nutshack is replaced with macintosh plus” for 2 hours, or “the nutshack theme but every nutshack is replaced with the entire bee movie script” for 14. The Nutshack Theme became the place where seemingly every 2016 meme collapsed in on itself, a meme of pure madness where the joke was simply the insanity of the remix. Nutshack Theme edits are a post-modern hellscape that exist to take up empty space in the internet. Even the creators don’t know what they’re doing; many of the remixes are uploaded by creators who admit in the “About” sections that they don’t understand why they made it. The Nutshack calls to them. Start the clock until we get the Nutshack Remix where every Nutshack is replaced by the KnowYourMeme summary of The Nutshack Theme.

“We Are Number One”

I once spent a few months living with my sister and her baby daughter, and in that time, I watched so much bad children’s television. It was hell; you don’t know what the heat death of the universe will be like until you’ve heard “The Hot Dog Dance” from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse six times a day every day for weeks on end. But this time did give me the ability to appreciate children’s TV when it’s good, so I have to give props to LazyTown. The Icelandic children’s show may look like neon dystopic creation of Spy Kids’ Floop, but it has churned out some pretty great songs. And this year, Cooking By The Book finally had its successor: We Are Number One.

Robbie Rotten’s Klezmer-cribbing anthem is a cute instructional song to his villainous clones, who, naturally, are bumbling morons. The track, however, became ripe for the memeing in 2016 when remix-king SiIvaGunner found it. His mix of “We Are Number One” into a certified club-banger has hit nearly a million views and launched over a hundred variations.

The variations have gone the way of The Nutshack Theme in that seemingly each new one became more shitpost that the last, but that remixers found it necessary to wring every last drop of blood from this horse is a testament to the infectious awesomeness of “We Are Number One.”

But It Keeps Getting Faster

From the Undertale fandom sprang the most anxiety-inducing music meme of 2016: songs that keep getting faster. 2016 found the spread of pop songs remixed such that they slowly turn into hyper-fast, chipmunk-voiced abominations. Tumblr user stainedinlavenderblood published the first example using the song “Bonetrousle” from the Undertale soundtrack.

The idea stayed in the Undertale community for a few months until August, when a Tumblr devoted to the remix style, Keeps-Getting-Faster, began posting remixes of classic pop songs. Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” A-ha’s “Take On Me,” The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” and more were all subject to the “keeps getting faster” treatment, making them all sound like the audio equivalent of a roller-coaster going off the rails. For my money, the best remix is of the title track from “Phantom of the Opera.” Reducing such a melodramatic song to pipsqueaks makes for comedy gold. Perhaps fittingly, the fad has seemed to lose steam after its initial popularity, but the library of tracks the fad spiralled into madness will be funny for years to come.

“Smooth”

I don’t know what caused this. I don’t know why it was Smooth featuring Rob Thomas and not, say, “Game of Love” featuring Michelle Branch. Maybe it’s Santana’s slick guitar lick that announces before Rob Thomas that “Smooth” will be a “hot one.” Or maybe it’s Rob Thomas’s weird grunge accent that is more frozen in the late-90s/early-2000s than frosted tips. But holy shit, did “Smooth” blow up this year.

The classic 1999 jam about sex and hot weather had been slowly generating ironic fandom, reaching a fever pitch in 2016 when Redbubble created a shirt that simply read: “I’d Rather Be Listening to Grammy-Award Winning 1999 Hit Smooth By Santana Feat. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty.” The shirt drew the attention of Rob Thomas, who retweeted a picture of a fan wearing it. “Smooth” even made an appearance at the 2016 Summer Olympics, and led Vox to wonder just why the hell this was happening. No definitive conclusion was ever reached-- “Smooth” is just a great song everyone remembers, loves, and decided to resuscitate as a meme.

“The Boys Are Back in Town”

Since Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town was released in 1976, people have generally agreed that it’s a great classic rock song. In 2016, however, Twitter suddenly came to the consensus that it was the best song of all time. Like many great internet goofs, this is largely the fault of Weird Twitter hero @dril, who on November 29th, 2015 tweeted “its fucked up how there are like 1000 christmas songs but only 1 song aboutr the boys being back in town.”

This set in motion a wild surge of jokes in which the mere reference to Thin Lizzy’s hit was a recipe for comedy gold. That, and the discovery of a single-serving Twitter account devoted to posting the entirety of “The Boys Are Back in Town” in word form in a never-ending loop led one Twitter user to to tweet a scenario where he describes Twitter to his mother as “it’s a website where we disagree about everything except that referencing ‘the boys are back in town’ is funny.”

GiIvaSunner / SiIvaGunner

GiIvaSunner is 2016’s undeniable king of the bait-and-switch. His first high-quality rips work on such a good premise: video-game music that suddenly becomes the theme from The Flinstones. It’s somehow funny every time.

But GiIvaSunner does more than just upload bait-and-switches and certified bangers. He also uses his account to create ARG’s. He develops different characters in the world of his high quality rips, like Mr. Rental. GiIvaSunner, who later changed to SiIvaGunner, puts a stunning amount of detail that’s supposedly just for music and laughs. He had an incredible 2016 before deciding to end his channel in September--that is, before he started uploading again. The future may have more high quality rips for us yet.

“All Star”

Someday, we may see the end of Shrek memes, but by god, “All Star” will never die. In 200 years when an asteroid hits the earth and ushers in a second ice age, with our frostbitten fingers we will make videos where footage of the asteroid’s impact fits perfectly in time with “some-BODYONCETOLD ME…” Did you know that in 2016, searches for “Smash Mouth All Star” are higher than they’ve ever been? We have yet to see the peak of “All Star” memes and it’s been 17 years since the song was first released.

Perhaps the absurdity of 2016 led people back to “All Star” in the same way a child would a security blanket. Perhaps Smash Mouth’s optimism in the face of global warming in the song’s second verse led people to latch on to it as a joyous distraction as the world ostensibly goes to hell. Whatever the reason, 2016 had its fair share of entries into the “All Star” lore. Dozens upon dozens of new “All Star” remixes entered our lives this year, many of which work surprisingly well. Then some guy (Jon Sudano) stopped making remixes altogether and just sang the song over dozens of pop instrumentals. “All Star” is rapidly proving itself one of the most adaptable songs ever, the Shakespeare’s Hamlet of trash 90s pop rock. And it will always be there for us as the ice we skate gets thinner and thinner.

The Life of Pablo

Oh yeah, Kanye West. Boy, did that guy have a year. From fashion industry meltdowns to Trump endorsements to butt-play rumors, Kanye West arguably had himself his wackiest year yet. In the center of his media nexus was The Life of Pablo, a sprawling, sometimes transcendent but very inconsistent album that kept the internet buzzing in the way everything West does keeps the internet buzzing. Here’s what the majority agreed on: opener “Ultralight Beam” is incredibly dope. The beginning of “Father Stretch My Hands pt. 2” is awesome. “Wolves” desperately needs to be fixed. It should’ve been called “Swish.” Also, that cover is terrible.

You’d think that supposedly one of the most visionary artists of our generation wouldn’t go full Graphic Design is My Passion for his album cover, but that’s Kanye. The Life of Pablo cover is deeply ripe for parody, a fact not lost on meme makers who quickly photoshopped a bunch of text overlapping some more text and pasted a poorly-integrated picture onto an orange background. It was the start of a bizarre year for Kanye, one that eventually found him in the hospital due to exhaustion. It seems like Kanye West needs a break, and perhaps we could all use a break from him.

J. Cole Went Platinum With No Features

Nothing gets the internet going like the catchphrases of internet numbskulls. Think It’s about ethics in gaming journalism or Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams. In hip-hop, that phrase is J. Cole went platinum with no features, a refrain of overzealous J. Cole fans who are deeply impressed with the fact their favorite rapper went platinum with his third studio album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, without the help of guest artists.

First off, J. Cole is, let’s say, a divisive figure in hip-hop. He’s a love-him-or-hate-him kind of artist. When J. Cole fans brag about his success without the help of guest artists, they’re trying to prove that he’s intrinsically talented enough to sell records on his own. Does that make him a good rapper? Many don’t seem to think so, and the zealotry of his fans illustrated a good reason why. “J. Cole went platinum with no features” is that line said by that guy who thinks Suicide Squad was good because Jared Leto’s Joker had a comic-accurate back tattoo or that Han shot first. It’s fandom taken to its irritating extremes, and it got the mockery it deserved in 2016.

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

early everything about 2016 was Bad, except for sports, which were Extremely Good. It was a year of broken curses, stunning upsets, the impossible becoming possible, and hell freezing over in various other ways. In 2016, sports memes were regularly referenced by the White House. Sports snark came deeply into its own in 2016, particularly at Deadspin, which is now the strongest Gawker affiliate thanks to a fake sports star, one Hulk Hogan. All of my favorite sports teams sucked hard, but even that was okay, because there were some prime memes to get me through. Here’s a look back at some of the best sports goofs that got us through 2016.

The Warriors Blew a 3-1 Lead

The 2015-2016 Golden State Warriors were arguably the greatest team in NBA history. They beat the Chicago Bulls record for the most wins in a single season, finishing the year at an astonishing 73-9. They had the league’s first unanimous MVP in Stephen Curry, who shattered records as easily as he hit 3-point shots from 30+ feet away. They reached the NBA Finals and won 3 of the first 4 games against the Cleveland Cavaliers. They needed to win one more game, and two of the final three games would be on their home court. And they blew it.

Thus launched the summer’s sports iteration of “stay woke.” “The Warriors Blew a 3-1 Lead” became the refrain of phony conspiracy theories, a punchline to remind sports fans how the supposed greatest team ever couldn’t win just one more game.

It was a way of Cleveland and Cavaliers fans to celebrate the city’s first major championship in decades, rubbing it in the face of bandwagon fans who only liked The Warriors because of their quest to be the greatest team in NBA history. But karma is a fickle mistress, and sure enough, during the World Series, it would be Cleveland’s turn to blow a 3-1 lead. Which brings us to…

The Last Time The Cubs Won The World Series

Holy crap, the Cubs won the World Series! For the first time in 108 years, the Chicago Cubs are world series champions after beating the Cleveland Indians in a Game 7 that will go down in history as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest game in Major League Baseball history. Arguably the most heartwarming thing to come out of 2016 were videos of elderly Cubs fans overjoyed that their team finally won it all.

But of course, there were memes. Playful jokes mocking the Cubs’ drought have been popular, but they reached a fever pitch during the world series, particularly after Neil DeGrasse Tyson began tweeting various facts about 1908. On Twitter, a great sporting event mixed with ire for Tyson created a great moment where everyone was tweeting a bunch of random crap about the last time the cubs won the World Series. It was a fun way to spend a stressful evening the week before the 2016 United States Presidential Election -- a fact not lost on some.

Crying Michael Jordan

The crying face of the greatest basketball player of all time made a strong case to be considered the greatest meme of all-time in 2016. Crying Michael Jordan has had one of the longest meme cycles in recent memory, only recently peaking when the freaking President addressed it while giving Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Why has Crying Jordan survived? One reason is its obvious versatility as a sad reaction image, but the success of Crying Jordan is also due to the photoshoppers who used it in increasingly clever and subtle ways. It became sports’ answer to Loss Edits, a template for artists to build off of in brilliant ways. That creativity kept Crying Jordan fresh for much longer than it had any right to be. In some ways, it was the meme that defined 2016. While outwardly America have been the This Is Fine dog, inside, it had become Crying Jordan.

Angry Michael Phelps

The 2016 Summer Olympics didn’t give us very much in the way of memes-- though everyone seemed to enjoy ragging on Rio -- but the one enduring image the Rio Olympics gave us was that of Angry Michael Phelps, sitting hooded and scowling while South African competitor Chad Le Clos juked and jive just a few feet away.

It reminded many of McKayla Maroney, another scowling Olympian, but whereas Maroney’s face was the product of disappointment, Phelps’ face looked like the product of pure, unbridled rage. Many compared it to the look on Anakin Skywalker’s face right before he went and slaughtered a bunch of children. That it came from an American golden boy (marijuana charges not withstanding) and arguably the greatest athlete of all time made for a prime meme and a good sensible chuckle… right up until he referenced it in a commercial with the Bazinga guy.

The New Day

Wrestling in 2016 was the way wrestling alwas is: a whole lotta bad with a few moments of sweet, mind-blowing greatness sprinkled on top. In the former category, there was a slog of a Wrestlemania, a never-ending, never-succeeding push to get Roman Reigns popular with fans, the popular developmental brand NXT getting drained of all its talent, and 90% of Monday Night Raw episodes. In the latter, there was GOLDBERG, Shinsuke Nakamura, “The Man With Two Hands” James Ellsworth, and 90% of Smackdown Live episodes.

But perhaps the most consistent thing about wrestling this year was The New Day. The tag team of Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, and Big E held the tag team belts for the entire year and as of the time I’m writing this, look poised to hold the belts longer than any team in history. This is obviously a pretty impressive feat but it wouldn’t be noteworthy for KnowYourMeme.com were it not for the unabashed nerdiness of The New Day. These guys entered Wrestlemania XXXII dressed as characters from Dragon Ball. They regularly reference memes of the week in their promos-- just a few weeks ago, they referenced the UNameIt Challenge to an audience that didn’t understand what the hell they were talking about. Xavier Woods grew a very successful Let’s Play channel in 2016 called UpUpDownDown. When Pokemon GO was huge, Woods proudly told a wrestling arena that he was Team Valor.

The New Day embody a changing pro-wrestling fandom, one that moves away from the sexism and racism that defined the Attitude Era and embraces the diversity of the internet, the dorks who who read up on what’s going behind the scenes and play a lot of video games and make memes. Their shtick may finally be getting tired, but for all of 2016, The New Day was the most consistently, inclusively fun in the whole company. New. Day Rocks.

Bartolo Colon

At the start of the 2016 season, the New York Mets had 4 of the best young pitchers in baseball in their starting pitching rotation, and Bartolo Colon, a 90 year old pitcher who weighs 800 pounds. By the end of the season, the entire pitching staff was on the disabled list except for Colon, who somehow had an incredible season throwing pretty much only 89 MPH fastballs down the middle of the plate. While that alone is remarkable, that is not why he’s on this list. This is:

On May 8th, Bartolo Colon, he of Bartolo Colon At Bat memes, he who stands in the batters box if he hits a ground ball, did the impossible: he hit a home run. As he rumbled around the bases (for a loooong time), the shock of it all set in. Had the Cubs not won the World Series, this would be the most unbelievable thing that happened in baseball in 2016. In many ways, 2016 proved that Hell has frozen over. Bartolo Colon was the first to demonstrate that.

Sidelined Chris Martin

Oh, Chris. You almost feel bad for the Coldplay lead singer. At Super Bowl 50, Chris Martin’s band, arguably the biggest rock band in the world, got tapped to perform the biggest concert of the year: the Super Bowl halftime show. It should have been one of the proudest moments of Martin’s career. Instead, the National Football League tapped Beyonce and Bruno Mars to also perform at the show, and the result was the undeniable upstaging of Chris Martin.

Look at that picture. Martin barely fits in the frame. Once Beyonce came out with a blistering performance of her latest single, “Formation,” the meme was ripe for the making. Coldplay had warmed up the crowd with a performance of their milquetoast, midtempo ballad, “Paradise,” hardly a fiery crowd-pleaser. Then Bruno Mars came out, did Uptown Funk, followed by Beyonce, and it was over. Coldplay got embarrassed. The shot of the three performers in the frame, Chris trying his best to look like he was having fun while his show got utterly hijacked, was the icing on the cake.

Crying Messi

Even the greatest athletes screw up sometime. And then they get turned into memes. Such was the fate of Lionel Messi, one of the all-time greatest soccer players, after he missed his penalty kick in the shootout of the 2016 Copa America final against Chile. It was a sad cap to Messi’s international football career, as his miss helped Chile win their first international tournament ever, but for the internet, Messi’s face that left the most lasting impression.

Messi is living proof of a new adage for the internet era: you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a meme. His failure led to great schadenfreude, which was only exacerbated a couple weeks later when Messi and his father were found guilty of tax evasion. But that was less memorable than the captions, gags, and of course, Crying Jordans the internet made in farewell to one of the game’s greatest players from the international stage.

Confused Nick Young

Nick Young is a solid NBA basketball player, averaging about 18 points a game with the Los Angeles Lakers, but perhaps his greatest talent is looking confused. And what a confused face he has: incredulous, bemused, and conspiratorial. His is a face that asks you, “Are you seeing this shit?”

Chances are you saw Confused Nick Young reacting to ridiculous scenarios involving relationships, parents, politics, and more. It’s the Jim Halpert stare of Black Twitter, a relatable look of disbelief that captures that says more than a dozen witty captions ever could.

Stare Kid

Sometimes when God leaves you wide open in the corner, you gotta shoot your shot. That’s what Sammy DiDonato, Nebraskan college baseball game-attendee, did on June 24th when he and an ESPN camera locked eyes for a long, uncomfortable minute. While most fans upon seeing a television camera focused on them do an awkward wave and smile, DiDonato opted for… well…

DiDonato’s weirdly sensual eye flirt with the camera is one of the reasons to love sports. Wait, let me rephrase that: sports are at their most fun when things as minute and routine as crowd-reaction shots go in unexpected ways. A pubescent kid in the crowd’s commitment to being funny during a game no one will remember made for one of the silliest goofs of the year. That’s just good wholesome fun.

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 2016 as we know it.

he spread of false information online has became one of the year’s biggest hot-button issues in the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, with many blaming “fake news” sites for tilting the odds in favor of President-elect Donald Trump. While some have called on companies like Facebook and Google to censor content from these questionable online sources, others have called for initiatives promoting media literacy and critical thinking among the electorate. But these sites aren’t the only ones responsible for spreading unsubstantiated rumors across the web.

Immediately following the election, reports that “thousands” of voters wrote-in Harambe for president began circulating on Twitter, sparking outrage among Clinton supporters mourning their candidate’s loss. The rumor seemed largely based off a handful of trolling social media posts, featuring photographs of paper ballots with “Harambe” placed in the write-in candidate field. While it’s certainly possible that some actually voted for the deceased gorilla, no official data has been released to support the claim.

Following the death of Fidel Castro, a rumor that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was actually the former Cuban dictator’s illegitimate son was born on 4chan’s /pol/ board. After circulating outside of 4chan among critics of the liberal politician, many of whom took issue his controversial statement regarding Castro’s death, Snopes was forced to publish an article debunking the hilarious theory.

In entertainment rumors, Lindsay Lohan found herself at the center of a bizarre conspiracy theory alleging that the actress was being manipulated to spread propaganda in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, based off video clips in which she praised the Turkish government for freedoms they provide to women. On YouTube, fans of vlogger Marina Joyce came up with an elaborate conspiracy theory that she had been kidnapped after spending way too much time analyzing her make-up tutorial and fashion videos, eventually leading the police to investigate the matter.

Even The Guardian appears to have been massively trolled this year by printing an anonymous confessional, in which a man claims to have narrowly avoided becoming a racist after exposing himself to internet personalities Sam Harris and Milo Yiannopoulos. Twitter satirist Godfrey Elfwick later took responsibility for the work, providing images of an earlier draft as evidence.

Let’s take a look back at some of the other viral rumors and hoaxes that spread online this year, both serious and satirical in nature.

Bernie Sanders Glowsticks

An infographic urging supporters of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary to create homemade glowsticks by mixing ingredients to make chlorine bombs.

• Duration: March 2016 – May 2016

• How It Started: An infographic aimed at tricking supporters of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders into making chlorine bombs by providing false instructions for making homemade luminescent light sticks began circulating on Tumblr, 4chan and Facebook.

• How It Unraveled: Snopes published an article titled “Bernie’s Blow Sticks” explaining how the viral image contained dangerous instructions for making chlorine-based explosives.

NAMBLA Donation Hoax

A false rumor that Donald Trump refused to disclose his tax returns because it would reveal charitable donations to the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

• Duration: July 2016 – August 2016

• How It Started: In response to a post on the /r/politics subreddit about Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns, a Redditor jokingly speculated that the Republican presidential candidate was attempting to conceal donations made to NAMBLA.

• How It Unraveled: Snopes published an article listing the rumor as “False” on August 10th, 2016.

Vote From Home

Fake Hillary Clinton campaign images spread the false rumor that United States citizens could place their vote for the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate via text message or social media.

• Duration: June 2016 – November 2016

• How It Started: Photoshopped images urging Clinton supporters to vote for the candidate by posting “Hillary” along with the hashtag “#PresidentialElection” on their Facebook and Twitter accounts began circulating in various pro-Trump communities in June.

• How It Unraveled: Physicist Robert McNees launched a campaign against the hoax prior to the election in early November, leading Twitter to ban several accounts spreading the fake campaign ads.

Taylor Swift Is a Satanist Clone

A satirical conspiracy claiming that singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is a clone of the former Church of Satan spokesperson Zeena Schreck.

• Duration: May 2013 – June 2016

• How It Started: In May 2013, BuzzFeed highlighted several screenshots of Schreck taken from various television interviews conducted while she was the spokesperson for the Church of Satan in an article jokingly titled “Proof That Taylor Swift is Actually a Satanist.” This year, the mock conspiracy theory saw a significant online resurgence on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram.

Great White Shark Photo

A digitally edited image of a great white shark erupting from the ocean falsely circulated as an award-winning photograph from National Geographic.

• Duration: December 2016

• How It Started: An image of a great white shark jumping out of the water originally posted by Russian 3D graphic artist Alexyz3d on Shutterstock began circulating online with the erroneous caption that it was taken by fictional National Geographic reporter Bob Burton.

• How It Unraveled: Twitter user @foomandoonian revealed that the photographs had originated on Shutterstock and that there was no photographer named “Bob Burton” at National Geographic.

Fake Election News Sites

Websites containing fake news stories published numerous articles related to the election, many of which circulated among Trump supporters on Facebook.

• Duration: All of 2016

• How It Started: Throughout 2016, residents of the Macedonian town of Veles launched 140 United States politics sites, including WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co and USADailyPolitics.com. The sites published a high volume of fabricated news stories, some of which were widely circulated by supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Facebook.

• How It Unraveled: In early November, BuzzFeed published an article titled “How Teens in the Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News”, which included interviews with founders of several Macedonian fake news sites who revealed they launched the sites to make money from the advertising revenue.

“Sam Hyde is the Shooter”

During initial reports regarding violent attacks that occurred over the year, posts falsely identifying the attacker as Sam Hyde circulated on social media.

• Duration: 2015 – Now

• How It Started: Starting in 2015, internet trolls began falsely identifying comedian Sam Hyde as the gunman responsible for shootings across the United States.

• How It Unraveled: Following reports that Hyde was responsible for the June 2016 UCLA shooting, Forbes published an article titled “How 4chan Tricked The Internet Into Believing This Comedian is a Mass Shooter.”

Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer

A mock conspiracy theory alleging that 2016 Republican presidential primary candidate Ted Cruz was the unidentified serial killed nickanmed the “Zodiac Killer.”

• Duration: March 2013 – April 2016

• How It Started: In March 2013, the @RedPillAmerica Twitter feed joked that Cruz was delivering a speech titled “This Is The Zodiac Speaking.” Over the next several years, similar jokes circulated on Twitter and Facebook, gaining a significant surge in popularity during the 2016 Republican primary election.

• How It Unraveled: Many news sites reported on the rumor as a satirical internet meme in February 2016, including NPR and The Verge.

Shakira Law

Images warning about Muslim extremists attempting to bring “Shakira Law” to the United States.

• Duration: November 2016 – December 2016

• How It Started: An image of United States President Barack Obama standing next to DJ Khaled erroneously identifying the rapper as the “leader of ISIS” attempting to “implement Shakira Law in America” began circulating on Facebook, an intentional misspelling of “Sharia” Islamic law. The following month, a image of a donut with Orkish script from the Lord of the Rings trilogy began circulating with a caption referring to it as an “Islamic donut” with Arabic script calling for “Shakira Law in America.”

• How It Unraveled: Several news sites published articles identifying the viral images as parodies, including NME and Snopes.

Pizzagate

A conspiracy theory regarding a secret society of pedophiles operating out of the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant based on leaked messages from John Podesta’s email account.

• Duration: November 2016 – Now

• How It Started: After Wikileaks published 20,000 messages taken from John Podesta’s compromised email account, 4chan users began posting threads speculating about coded messages in the emails regarding an underground pedophile ring. Rumors about the restaurant Comet Ping Pong’s involvement in the fabricated conspiracy subsequently circulated on both 4chan and Reddit, with innocuous pictures taken from the owner’s Instagram account provided as evidence.

• How It Unraveled: After the conspiracy theory continued to pick up steam following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 United States presidential election, the proprietor of Comet Ping Pong was repeatedly harassed and threatened by those who believed he was running an underground pedophile ring. In December, Snopes published an article listing Pizzagate as “False,” noting that they were unable to substantiate any of the claims made by proponents of the theory. Most recently, a man was arrested after firing a gun inside Comet Ping Pong, claiming he was there to investigate the Pizzagate rumors.

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 the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

rony in 2016 was the universe’s answer to an extremely chaotic set of circumstances. As the world got weirder, so did the memes. There was new random shit being meme’d daily, which created the need for a meme stock market. Weird Facebook grew into a thriving subcommunity of pages filled with bizarre aesthetics and depressed texts, which Mark Zuckerberg started attacking for reasons unknown. Youtube poops came back. People just read the entire script to Bee Movie, for reasons they didn’t understand. It was as though every sad emotion could be shared with the aesthetic and voice of a Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon and that was just how the internet worked this year. It was madness, a chaotic war of meme magic and meme lords. A time traveling meme even showed up in the end. The ironic memes of 2016 were a return to the sort of anti-humor that characterized the early internet, only with a lot more darkness behind them. But we also got wholesome memes, Dat Boi, visions of a more wholesome, positive new day. The meme war may be over, but the battle for meme souls still rages.

Layers of Irony

(Extremely Tim & Eric voice) Layers of Irony… what a concept. Made famous by one Meme Man comic, “Layers of Irony” came to define 2016 meme culture. You don’t understand a meme going around? Well then, you’re just not on enough layers of irony, my dude. From the deepest levels came some of the most bizarre, short-lived, but weirdly hilarious memes without punchlines or context. They simply appeared, and you had to be in the know. Or not; part of the fun of the ironic meme surge was just going along for the ride. What are we talking about today? Long Boy? Okay, sure. BIGBOYZONE.

It’s absurd yet it makes perfect sense. In the original comic’s fourth panel, when Meme Man’s eyes light up as he says “SUCC,” it is understood that he has seen irony levels you and I could never dream of reaching. He is within the deepest layer of irony, manipulating us little babies by giving us new memes we are too stupid to understand. And we are grateful, for, like nirvana, the deepest layer of irony is impossible to achieve, yet is the most noble of goals.

Dat Boi

Here he is. It is the frog on the unicycle. It is dat boi who says “o shit waddap.”

Dat Boi was truly the moment which demonstrated that memes have changed. No longer does a meme need to be a pop culture reference or a relatable joke. Dat Boi proved a meme could be successful as a self-contained entity, shared for nothing other than some strange sense of obligation. And sure enough, soon he rode through social media, brightening the days of those he passed. “O shit waddap,” they said. “It’s dat boi!” He’s like that one car everyone in your neighborhood knows because it looks super weird, or the guy who wanders around dressed like a wizard every day. Dat Boi was just there, no context or meaning behind him, just a jovial little dude on a unicycle who became one of the memes of the year. Now that’s a beat we can all O Shit Waddap to.

The Meme Renaissance of Me_IRL

Picture it: October, 2016. It’s been a week since the last good meme had quenched the Reddit’s everpresent thirst. Forced memes had been trickling through the Me_IRL subreddit, but they could not sustain the populace. People starved. Children wept as their mothers cradled them, praying that God may bless them with a new meme. And then, he came. A savior. A bear. In a Big Blue House.

On October 4th, 2016, redditor Zonemasta8 submitted a post titled [BREAKINGNEWS] Bear in the big house meme speculated to be meme of the month during the prolonged meme drought to /r/memeeconomy speculating that Bear In The Big Blue House memes could be the possible solution the the Great Meme Drought of October. And he was. Zonemasta8’s post made the Reddit front page that day. But no one could anticipate what would happen next. Soon, the meme economy grew unstable. Memes lived and died in the span of hours. People spent their life savings on Trebuchets memes, only to watch the stock plummet like a 90kg projectile thrown over 300 meters. It was a wild, unpredictable time, but it revived the meme economy by flooding the market. Many memes that may have lived wonderful lives died in that time. Bionicle. Watch Those Wrist Rockets. Today, we honor their sacrifice.

/r/MemeEconomy

With so many memes flooding the market, it can be difficult to tell which are worthy of your time and which are simply flashes in the pan. Luckily, a subreddit community devoted to tracking memes came to help. /r/MemeEconomy became a thriving subreddit in which users debate the long-term sustainability of memes, ultimately asking the age-old question: sell or buy?

Sure, there isn’t actual money involved, but that doesn’t make the work done at /r/MemeEconomy any less important. Rather than cash, users of the subreddit trade using Good Boy Points (GBP), and GBP is literally invaluable. For example, one may have thought that the recent rise in How Many Upvotes for Our Boys in Blue? memes may have made it a valuable property, but aficionados at /r/MemeEconomy knew that the shelf life of the meme would be short lived. Those in the subreddit who advocated selling shares of the meme likely made a killing.

In all seriousness, the meteoric rise of /r/MemeEconomy demonstrates that memes are something people want to take seriously--while not actually being all that serious about them. That a subreddit which works on the premise of a meme stock market took off in 2016 illustrates that people follow memes extremely closely and likely, if they really wanted to, would buy and sell shares if there was real money involved. That’s wild.

Meme Lord

The idea of a Meme Lord grew to prominence in 2016 as memes became a cultural force in 2016. To know memes was to know a language of the internet everyone else struggled to understand. Suddenly, knowing memes garnered cultural credibility. And followers of so-called meme lords responded in kind with devotion and praise to those who deliver daily keks.

The idea of a meme lord underscores the importance memes took on in 2016. It also helps illustrate the seemingly random happenings of the meme universe, making it easy to believe that, like Gods, the meme lords are working in mysterious ways. It’s an imaginary title only few can achieve. Even I, who work all day on the memes, cannot yet claim the title of Meme Lord. For There can only be one Lord of the Meme. And he does not share power.

Meme Magic

If you were to tell me in January that 2016 would see a surge in a thing called Meme Magic, I would have laughed in your face, but one election later and suddenly I believe in the Cult of Kek.

The evidence is undeniable. Did you know The Cult of Kek values the number 7? And that the 77777777th post on 4chan said “Trump Will Win”? Do you think this is mere coincidence?

Or maybe people like to invent fun ironic conspiracies to keep themselves entertained in this wild and crazy world. Either way, the magic of kek inspired the internet this year, and considering what transpired, meme magic is as good an explanation for 2016 as anything else I’ve heard.

Wholesome Memes

Memes undoubtedly became more than just vehicles for jokes in 2016. For many, they became practically a legitimate form of communication. Nothing demonstrated this phenomenon more than Wholesome Memes, a trend where familiar meme templates used genuine, supportive text instead of jokes.

Wholesome Memes achieve the goal of relating positive and intimate emotions while remaining safely behind a layer of irony, which is extremely useful for the emotionally stunted mememakers of the internet. From an outside perspective, the memes provide a much-needed breather from snark, irony, and jokes that punch down, the general modus operandi for memes. It feels weird to add memes whose very point is sincerity to a list of “ironic memes,” but a look at the reactions to some wholesome memes will reveal just how many people can’t wrap their head around a meme that is genuinely supportive. Love them or hate them, you have to admit it’s nice to see some good-natured memes now and again.

Meme Wars

This year brought the greatest meme war of the modern era. The 2016 meme war had genuine, real life consequences. Think about Pepe the Frog, The Deplorables, the alt-right. It was ugly and bloody, and it may have actually helped elect Donald Trump. There will never be another like it.

The Meme War of 2016 proved that people want to participate in politics, even if that participation is as silly as editing swastikas onto a cartoon frog. Memes grew into weapons of counterculture, the trade of trolls who suddenly had the eyes of the mainstream media. The campaign for Hillary Goddamn Clinton wrote a post condemning Pepe after a 4chan guy shouted the name of Matt Furie’s frog at her for the lulz. The lulz shook America like they never have before. Our grandparents regale us with stories of when they stormed the beaches at Normandy. We will regale our children with stories of whether we were on the side of Pepe or Kermit.

This Meme Is From the Future

The year of ironic memes, shitposts, and random popular images concluded with one final hurrah: This Meme Is From the Future. A post by Redditor DanknessIn_MemesOut on Me_IRL lampooned the year in irony by posting a photo of an old man falling with the caption “This meme is from the future. You don’t get the reference yet.”

The joke is a simple wink to the randomness of the year’s memes, but that didn’t stop it from taking on a lore of its own. Soon the old man was understood to be from the year of 42069 (because of course he is), where he was the meme from December of that year and traveled back to our time. It then inspired a number of variations as folks reveled in the randomness of the future. As a meme, it bizarrely summed up the year in irony. The meme needed no context. Memes this year could have come from any time, with a reference point totally optional. The future looks bright and dank.

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