Memes / Real Life

"It was a symbol of courage, pride, encouragement, and very definitely a morale booster."

Memes aren't limited to the Internet, either. Just take a look at these gems that have spawned outside the confines of the computer lab.

Sports is memetic enough to gain its own section.

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Please add entries in the following format:

• The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme.[[/labelnote]] ^ExplanationLike this.

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Sub-pages:

• Sports
  • Formula One
  • Formula One Drivers

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Other memes:

• The term "Dust Bowl" derived from this line in an Associated Press newspaper article titled "If It Rains...":
  "Three little words achingly familiar on the Western farmer's tongue, rule life in the dust bowl of the continent — if it rains."
• Antoine Dodson's "Hide your kids hide your wives hide your husbands cuz they rapin everybody out here" ^ExplanationA news report of Antoine Dodson's sister's attempted rape that went viral. Was Auto Tuned into the song Bedroom Intruder.
• Older Than Radio: Charles Mackay's 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds includes a chapter on catchphrases that amount to Internet memes without the Internet or even computers.
• If you need proof that this can be done out in the physical world, just remember that Andre The Giant has a posse, and Kilroy was here.
  • In addition it the "Kilroy" with "Kilroy was here" (see page image), sometimes it would say "Wot, no bacon?" (or any other heavily rationed food item, like sugar), thus well predating the Internet bacon obsession.
  • Kokopelli. ^ExplanationA doodle of a humpbacked flute player with strange protrusions on his head (possibly feathers, antennae, or wild hair). He has gained fame and popularity similar to the aforementioned Kilroy's, and appears on countless products like T-shirts and keychains. Interestingly, Kokopelli was originally a fertility god of the American Southwest, and his picture originally appeared in Native American petroglyphs and pictographs. (And in the original art, he had a Gag Penis.)
• The "... rules OK" graffitis and their variations. They apparently started as Glasgow gang tags in The '30s.
  • MANLOVE RULES OK
  • GREGG RULZ OK
• The UK equivalent of "Post No Bills" signs are signs reading "Bill stickers will be prosecuted". Which, naturally, inspired graffiti artists to respond with "Bill Stickers is an innocent man" and the like.
  • William Stickers, the failed Communist ghost post-life citizen in Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Dead, is named in reference to this.
  • While we're on the subject, Free Hat!
  • Also, this◊.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien responded with a series of Bill Stickers adventures told to his children, natch. Bill was a huge rascal who got away with all sorts of misdeeds, while being pursued by his nemesis, law enforcement officer Major Road (from another commonly seen sign, "Major Road Ahead").^note C. S. Lewis was in a secret 'gang' that fought urbanisation in and around Oxford and raised money to save historical sites. One of the other participants was Margaret Gladstone, who called herself Bill Stickers. Tolkien probably knew and approved.
• The card game The Spoils is rife with references to Internet memes and popular culture. Cards include A Series of Tubes◊, 0p3r4710n 1337 H4x0rz◊, and various other memes and internet references, including NEDM, Chuck Norris jokes, 1337 and computer games.
• The Game^ExplanationA mind game of unknown origin that revolves around ironic process theory: the only rule is that you lose as soon as you start thinking about it, which in turn means that trying to actively not think about it forces you to think about it more. Because of its self-defeating nature and its status as a prime target for trickery, it became a popular subject for jokes online that revolved around forcing netizens to think about it, either through slipping in a reference to "the game" or suddenly stating that "you just lost the game" (or some variant thereof).
• In Soviet Russia, meme mutates YOU! ^ExplanationA statement that everything is backwards in Soviet Russia. See Ass Kicks You for one end result.
  • No smilink. Is Soviet Union.
    • There is no sex in the USSR.
• Pan-Greek Exams 1997. ^{what the exams are} The video in question is an extract from a news interview where a reporter interviews a student who just wrote for the History part of the pan-Greek High-school/University entrance exams (there's a point system based on your score that determines which universities you can attend). The whole interview became a Fountain of Memes, from the student being interviewed repeatedly trying to leave because he's in a hurry to the extremely hyped guy in the background who acts like listening to that interview was the best thing that ever happened to him, to the interviewed student presenting completely valid criticism of the whole system. Highlights include:
  • Ultimate devastation ^ExplanationThe student's one word description (it's just one word in Greek) of how well the test went. Better yet the reported immedietely suggests to "start with the ultimate devastation here".
  • Really well-read parrots ^Explanation Part of the student's - long - rant was that the subjects required a whole lot of memorization so only the really well-read parrots (aka people with Photographic Memory) could write them. It's now used as a criticism of the modern education system as a whole.
  • Anti-SOS ^ExplanationA now commonly used phrase to describe when the questions on the test are not in the list of the "things you absolutely MUST know and are likely to be tested on".
  • "Were you taught this in coaching school?" ^Explanation One of the questions asked by the reporter. In Greece, coaching schools are EXTREMELY common during high-school years (and spreading to middle school and even primary school as well) to the point that not attending one is considered odd and a massive hit to one's chances of success. The extreme prevalaince of coaching schools is considered a massive failing of the public school system, so the question is treated as a bit of Black Humor in how regular public school was so easily dismissable even back then.
  • Now he is a lawyer in Switzerland. ^ExplanationEach and every year during the month of the exams, not only do the media outlest reupload the clip, they always add that he's now a lawyer in Switzerland. Every. Single. Time.
• Drunk people in Mexico somehow became the greatest Internet fad in 2008. You can absolutely bet any Mexican youth with an internet connection will at least recognize the following names: "Dios Eolo" ("God Aeolus"), a drunk man who claims to have superpowers; "¡Me amarraron como puerrrrrco!" ("I was tied like a piiiiiiiig!") also know as "el canaca", a drunk man who insists on being able to drive under the influence; "Tengo Miedo" ("I'm Afraid"), a sober guy afraid of the alcohol meter; and "Qué pasó, muchacho?" ("What's up, boy?"), an awesomely drunk guy who wants to buy booze after 1:00 AM, when stores are not allowed to sell alcoholic drinks, famous for saying "¡Ni merga!" (kinda like "Fook no!") and the newest one "FUA! fuerza universal aplicada (is kinda like cosmos or ki)".
  • Before them, there was Edgar, a poor fat kid who was trown to a river from the tree-trunk bridge he was walking on, while pleading not to be trown So popular, if you search "Edgar" in Google in any spanish version, the video its the first result.
    • "Me amarraron como puerco" was killed by a drunk driver :(
• The Fauxtivational Poster. You know those motivational posters in offices and counsellors offices that expect you to be motivated solely through use of a pretty photograph and a trite saying ("Hope: It's the Tulip of Life that matters, not the Onion of Failure")? The existence of site such as this and this have allowed parodies of these posters - which, although less earnest, are usually a lot more effective - to spring up all over the web.
• Since about 2001, you can't open a computer magazine without seeing the phrase, "(This/Next) year will be the year of Desktop Linux."
  • Well it is growing.
• The terrorist Mas Selamat escaped from Singaporean captivity on 27 Feb 2008 through a toilet window. Amid the discussion, a netizen mockingly 'shopped his head onto a Prison Break poster, creating Toilet Break.
  • Also from Singapore, the 'Boomz' meme, which is remarkably similer to Miss South Carolina below, except this one involves Singapore's Miss World finalist, in a TV interview rather than the actual competition, and the question is more on fashions than geography... just see it for yourself.
  • The incident when a boy in NS made his maid carry his field pack, causing things like this to show up on forums:[1] In addition, comic strips have spun up on newspapers parodying this.
• We are not amused.
• One from well before the days of the Internet: Vlad the Impaler, whose rather brutal reign inspired quite a few legends. There are numerous stories about various crimes in questionable circumstances brought before Vlad. Moreover, how the story ends usually depends on whether the teller views Vlad as a strict but just ruler who enjoyed the Secret Test of Character, or a Card-Carrying Villain who didn't care. Whether or not any of these actually happened is circumstantial at best. Of course, that's not even getting into other legends the man inspired.
• Clapton is God.
• In Spain, the Spanish Phrase "¿Por qué no te callas?" ("Why don't you shut up?") became a MEGA meme after the King of Spain yelled it at Hugo Chávez after the latter called the Spanish PM a fascist, even after his mike was cut.
• "Don't taze me, bro!"
• (worth a thousand pictures?): 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
• "I don't really understand the hateful outrage. I don't understand, 'Die in a fire'."
• The dingoes ate my baby.
  • You know that's a true story? Lady lost her kid.
• Faxlore: Internet memes from before the Internet.
• Aretha Franklin's Inauguration hat.◊ It has been photoshopped onto hundreds upon hundreds of unsuspecting pictures already.
• Why don't you fucking understand?!^ExplanationChristian Bale's rant at a crew member on the set of Terminator Salvation went viral after leaking to the public for its blatant display of unprofessional behavior, with many jokingly quoting from the rant in expressing frustration with other people.
  • We are done professionally.
  • Kick your fuckin' ass!
  • Ooohhh, goooood... for you!... And how was it?
  • Ah, da-da da-da! Like this in the background, what the fuck is it with you?!
  • DO I GO AROUND FUCKING TRASHING YOUR LIGHTS?! NO! THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU TRASHING MY SCENE!!
    • I think I've had just about enough of you. You're TERMINATED. *kills* That's one less Dick in this movie.
    • McG, you got something to say to this prick?
  • This hilarious remix.
• I'll say sorry, but I'm not taking off my glasses.
• The training of these poor creatures... to turn themselves into fighting machines is simply barbaric. Barbaric. Barbaric!... Barbaric!
• in Australia: "It was like CHK CHK BOOM!"
  • For those who aren't Australian, this is referring to a woman who claimed she witnessed a shooting in Kings Cross. She later revealed that she made the whole thing up.
• There's a debatably-true story about the origin of the word 'quiz' which suggests that it originated when someone, for a bet, or maybe an experiment, chalked it on a bunch of walls around Dublin to get people talking about it. It worked, and the word caught on, eventually acquiring meaning.
• During winter, there are cries of "SWINE FLU!" (or today, "CORONAVIRUS!") whenever anyone mentions that they have a cold.
• What Are Those?^Explanationa series of parody and remix videos based on a short clip of a man who asks a police officer about his work boots in a startled manner. Upon its surfacing on Instagram and Vine in 2015, the video clip quickly went viral and amassed millions of views on the social media, with various videos showing one person the question (Usually shouting it and pointing to the shoes of another - which are often horrendous.
• "Don't all the nuts roll downward to Florida?"^ExplanationWhile the quote itself is from an episode of The X-Files, it's part of a larger meme surrounding the American state of Florida, which is considered a cornucopia of utter bizarreness in its own country. In truth, Florida doesn't actually have more weirdos per capita than any other state with a similarly large and diverse population. They're just more willing to talk about it. In most other states, the details of crimes and legal proceedings are either classified or not available right away, whereas Florida is quite proud of its transparency laws, also known as "sunshine laws", which give reporters easier access to police reports and court documents. So whereas an Ohio headline would read "Maple Heights woman arrested after assaulting sister," a Florida headline gets to go the extra mile and say "Manatee [county] woman punched sister during fight over vibrator." Of course, the manner in which these laws are enforced can themselves create some weird "only in Florida" stories, sometimes even creating A Rare Sentence in the process; see, for instance, the time when a father and son who were both Miami-Dade County commissioners had to file a public notice just to have a private chat because they'd be discussing public transit issues, or when the governor was legally required to invite journalists to cover his wedding.
  • Eventually, the meme itself evolved to a form where every incident of weird, bizarre, and/or totally outlandish events in Florida is directly attributed to the eponymous "Florida Man"^Explanation Given the fact that such headlines are usually worded in the manner of "Florida Man Does X,", as a result, the character is thought of as a terrible superhero, an underachieving supervillain, and/or a combination of both and is considered the Anthropomorphic Personification of Chaotic Stupid as well as the Avatar of Crystal Meth. There even exists a Florida Man subreddit chronicling his adventures
  • Florida Man: the World's Worst Superhero.^Explanation the meme was initially spread through the Twitter account "@_FloridaMan", which posited that Florida Man was a single individual, and that the headlines were his failed attempts at heroic deeds.
  • Trump has become Florida Man.^ExplanationOn October 31, 2019, then-U.S. President Donald Trump changed his place of residence from New York to Florida, prompting jokes that he had taken up Florida Man's mantle.
• Al Gore invented the internet.
  • "Sometimes, global warming means global cooling."
• From Sweden we get: Vem vare' som kasta?! (Who threw that?!)
• "Oh, the humanity!"
  • Oh the huge manatee!◊
  • Oh The Hugh Grantity!!◊
• Dublin universities (especially UCD) – Pat Paterson's exploits and abilities appeared on every toilet door - he was Chuck Norris before the Chuck Norris meme existed. Apparently he was a real person, an Agricultural Science student who was very uncomfortable with fame. The meme got old around 2006, but isn't quite dead.
• It should be known that Sean Turner kicks haemophiliacs. If you can think of anything that you shouldn't do, Sean Turner did it.
• The letter I, followed by a heart, and then a piece of cheese, has been seen everywhere.
• Darth Benedict. Also known as Emperor Pope-atine/Pope Palpatine. ^Explanation From certain angles, Pope Benedict XVI or his successor Pope Francis look like evil emperor Darth Sidious from Star Wars.
• Broccoli Kitten LOVES Broccoli.
• At the 2009 VMA awards, Taylor Swift's speech—
  • "Yo, TV Tropes, I'm real happy for you, I'mma let ya finish, but Wikipedia has one of the best meme lists of all time!" *shrugs*
  • —was rudely interrupted by Kanye.
• Karl Pilkington has a head like a FUCKING orange.
• Miss South Carolina Teen USA 2007 Caitlin Upton.
• Diet Coke + Mentos = This.
• David DeVore Jr. after dentist.
  • "Is this real life?"
    • Is this just fantasy?
    • No, it's all a dream...OR IS IT?
    • "Is this going to be forever?"
• Where the hell is Matt?
• Will it blend?
• WE GON' FIND YOU!
• OW! CHARLIE BIT MY FINGER!
• LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!
  • Also, the later "FREE BRITNEY". Which quickly took a turn for the dark when the abuse and exploitation Britney Spears suffered under the conservatorship of her father were revealed in court in 2021.
• Ceci n'est pas une meme.
  • Ceci n'est même pas une meme?
• Peniscoptor.
• You can buy anything at Harrods. Seriously. If you wanted to buy an elephant, they'd ship it to you (for the right price, of course).
• "...and furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed!"^ExplanationNo matter what kind of speech he was giving, Marcus Portius Cato (234-149 BC) always concluded with that, because he was pushing for the third Punic War. There was another guy on the opposing side who would conclude with "Carthage must be saved!"
• "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Everybody has heard it, although most people don't know it was coined (by Lady Caroline Lamb) to describe Lord Byron. (Literary historians say she was much more deserving of this accolade.)
• Ever since the Chilean right-wing newspaper "El Mercurio" was caught blatantly lying about the university protests and occupations of 1967 ^note in which they said that the Communist Party was behind the strike in... the VERY conservative and right-wing Catholic University of Chile, every Chilean person knows that "EL MERCURIO MIENTE!" ("EL MERCURIO LIES").
  • Also President Sebastián Piñera became a meme thanks to a photo where he leaps across a puddle with the panache of an action movie star, and the fact he is a dislexic Corrupt Corporate Executive. ^note here's a compilation: http://fyactionpini.tumblr.com/.
    • In fact, he borders into Fountain of Memes for Chilean internet users. A good example is Piñera's supposed bad luck streak, which makes Chilean netizens scream "PIÑERA ES YETA!" ("Piñera is a jinx!")
• WHOOP WHOOP Pull up. WHOOP WHOOP Pull up. ^ExplanationThe cockpit alarm many airplanes have when they are dropping altitude too fast, or are too low for safe flight.
  • Later mutated into "Pull up, terrain ahead!" after the 2010 Polish presidential plane crash in Smolensk, usually in reference to various conspiracy theories involving the crash.
• I'M PRESSIN' CHARGES!!!!!
• "This is a test. This is only a test..."^ExplanationThe Emergency Alert System test warning
  • They now use the Emergency Alert System noise for Amber Alerts on your smartphone, if you have the app installed.
• A few years ago in Australia, the Yellow Pages showed an ad where an unfortunate employee forgot to place the company's ad in the Yellow Pages. The owner screaming "NOT! HAPPY! JAN!" became a meme for someone who's really pissed — it even became a popular protest sign against then-Prime Minister John Howard, "Not Happy, John".
• The recent eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which covered the European skies with thick ash that grounded planes, had spawned the phrase I HATE ICELAND!!!
  • From a Scot.
• The phenomenon of the Czech genius Jára Cimrman. He received a number of votes at the Greatest Czech contest, and had an asteroid (and almost a mountain) named after him.
  • He is also entirely fictitious, a subject and purported author of a number of plays at the Czech Jára Cimrman Theater; but as the above demonstrates, playing along with the joke of his actual existence is very much a part of the phenomenon.
• "Always blow on the pie."
  • "Safer communities together."
• "Dr. Jackson's Magic Weather Machine", a joke at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that the school wasn't touched by Hurricane Sandy because the president has a device to keep the bad weather away.
• "Do Americans really call ... ...'s?" Enter something normal like, "basketball", for the latter and something humorous for the former, like "loopty-swoops". It's based off a few people asking about the American versions of English words in that manner. A variation is "lol at Americans calling ... ...."
• Disney Theme Parks:
  • They're going to add a loop!
  • The WDWMagic community has The Ladder, whose presence at any construction site is a good sign for the upcoming attraction or, in its initial appearance during Mission Space's construction, being the epic ride itself.
  • "What time is the 3 o'clock parade?" was enough of a meme that it ascended; there are T-shirts with that phrase on them, being asked by (appropriately) Goofy or Dopey.
  • Every time the monorail starts or stops, park attendees are warned "Please stand clear of the doors. Por favor manténganse alejado de las puertas." This has become so memetic that Disney sells T-shirts with the Spanish version of the phrase.
• Yo dawg, I heard you like memes, so we put memes in your memes so you can mutate while you mutate.
• You ain't got no pancake mix!
  • There's no pancake mix in there!
• Hey man I'm fucking Trent
• "You are so dumb! You are really dumb, FOR REAL."
• From Miss Universe 2010: This is a MAJOR MAJOR MEME!
• The HAZMATs are here, to steal all our coffee.
• Cheer up Keanu!
• When memes collide.
• "My name is Mud.", popularly attributed to Dr. Samuel Mudd. At least in American English, the phrase is synonymous with calling yourself a screwup; considering Dr. Mudd was the doctor who tended to the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth (who infamously assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in 1865), crediting him with the phrase is rather appropriate.
• "I wish I could talk in Technicolor..."
• Urban Legends are often the product of memetic mutation. Many of them are the result of true events being retold, and occasionally modified to change things like the location an event took place, the company involved in a business-related legend, or the time period of a time-dependent legend. Thus they get sent around in a form that's utterly detached from reality.
• If you ain't living life the Charlie Sheen way, you're not WINNING.
  • Tiger Blood Milkshakes.
  • I am on a drug, it's called "Charlie Sheen"!
• The 2011 Royal Wedding produced two gems: there's Frowning Flower Girl, and Princess Catherine's sister Pippa, who has a butt so fine that it warrants a fan page on Facebook.
  • Princess Maxima's insane hat
• There were also jokes about the fact that the royal wedding and the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden happened around the same time, mostly comparing that week to a Disney movie since the prince got married and the bad guy got killed. For example, an existing image that juxtaposed Will and Kate with Prince Charming and Cinderella, and two princesses in funny hats with the stepsisters, was reposted, now adding one of bin Laden and Jafar.
• The Winnebago concepts and engineering departments have developed a multi-functional bathroom, privacy I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I'M READING!
• A badly-photoshopped picture from the official government website of Huili County (Sichuan, China) gave rise to numerous parodies.
• Mario Batali is a baking troll.
• Straight from Jamaica: "Nobody canna cross it!". ^ExplanationBased on an actual news report about the lack of a proper river-bridge in a rural community named Roberts Field, St. Andrew; the quote comes from Clifton Brown (since nicknamed "Cliff Twang"), a resident who was interviewed by the reporter and spoke in a "posh" American twang in order to try and make a good impression; pieces of the news report and Brown's statements were spliced together into a music video by creator Kevin "DJ Powa" Hamilton. An edited clip of the original news report can be found here.
• Pluto's not a planet.
  • Yes, it is.
    • A Dwarf planet, yes.
• When the Alice stories were being written, a popular meme around London was "WHO are YOU?". Now, of course, it's immortalizing as the dialog of the smoking Caterpillar.
  • We aren't quite sure if it has any connection to the song by The Who.
• Adding the phrase "big, gay" in front of things. Examples:
  • Big Gay Al
  • The Big Gay Out
  • The Big Gay Sketch Show
  • The Big Gay Musical
  • The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck
  • My Big Gay Italian Wedding
  • Big Gay Heart
  • Big Gay Wedding
  • THE BIG GAY DANCE!
  • "People think you're gay now, Finn. Do you know what that makes me? Your big, gay beard!
• Hipsters are a pretty obscure source of memes. You probably haven't heard of them.
  • I only (do something) ironically.
  • I liked TV Tropes before it was cool. ^ExplanationA catchphrase commonly attributed to hipsters, related to the perception of them disliking "mainstream" things. Also explains the two memes above.
• Pepper Spray Cop. ^ExplanationDuring an Occupy protest at University of California Davis, the police reacted by spraying a crowd of seated protestors on a sidewalk with pepper spray. A still from video or still photograph of one of the cops became Pepper Spray Cop.
• In Denmark, a few years ago, a cop got caught on camera calling an anti-Israel protester a "perker", which is a nasty racial slur for immigrants of Arab or African descent. The police chief's defense of her cop quickly became memetic - she stated that the cop had said "perle", not "perker". "Perle", of course, means "pearl". This led to immigrants snarky calling themselves "pearls". It seems to have mostly died down in mainstream Danish media, but it's still common immigrant slang.
• "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for all?" ^explanationThis is a common way of describing what a Barred Owl's call sounds like.
• Honey Badger don't give a shit. ^explanationThe Honey Badger (AKA "Ratel") has gained something of a Memetic Badass reputation due to its fearless nature.
• Are you choking? Are you pregnant? ^ExplanationA Military meme, due to a training video on the Heimlich maneuver in Basic Training stating that this is the first thing you ask someone before performing said procedure. Since the delivery in the video was full of Narm, the military is mostly male, and it can be seen as a fat joke, it became an immediate classic.
• "This is a pen." ^ExplanationTraditionally, this was the first English sentence Japanese students were taught, the second being "That is a book." Its sheer Narm and uselessness in Real Life means students are now taught other, more natural English sentences, but the meme stuck.^{Another meme with this phrase:}Percy Jackson. That is all.
  • There's also the Brazilian version "The book is on the table." which has appeared in actual advertisements.
  • In Italy, il gatto è sul tavolo. "The cat is on the table." Why a cat should be on a table is left as an exercise to the reader.
  • The notorious first English sentence taught in Assimil's L'anglais sans peine is "My tailor is rich" (probably because it happens to closely resemble its French translation, "Mon tailleur est riche," in vocabulary and sentence structure). This was referenced in Asterix in Britain and in Stephen Clarke's comedy novel A Year in the Merde.
  • The counterpart phrase for English speakers learning beginning French is "Où est la plume de ma tante?" ("Where is the pen of my aunt?") or "La plume de ma tante est sur la table" ("my aunt's pen is on the table").
• In Italy: "Vada a bordo, cazzo!" ^ExplanationItalian Coast Guard Officer to the Captain of the Costa Concordia after it capsized, when the latter left the ship even though there were still passengers on board. "Get on board, for dick's sake!"
  • Also: "Vabbuo'" ^Explanation"Whatever" in Neapolitan dialect, uttered by said captain in response to claims that he should be on board.
• "Aren't you Thankful?" The video-game company Blizzard.^ExplanationThe way they've been treating their fans the last couple years has been...terrible at best; especially in regards to their release and questionable patching of Diablo III. On the Battle.Net forums, one such Blizzard employee wrote in their post, "Aren't you thankful?" in an attempt to calm the internet backlash that's been ravaging their Diablo 3 forums. It has now since become a fanbase trolling between fans who disagree on the forums.
  • "5$" ^ExplanationThere's even an ongoing rumor that Blizzard will actually pay their fans FIVE dollars to write something good about Blizzard in their Diablo 3 forum. Simply writing "5$" as a reply to any thread that defends Blizzard on their forums, even if it was a genuine defend-post, has become a growing joke towards those that attempt to defend Blizzard.
• OH JESUS CHRIST, FENTON! ^ExplanationA viral video of a man chasing after his runaway dog. Now popular enough to warrant its own merch.
• Fresco Jesus ^ExplanationA woman in her eighties attempted to renovate a 19th century fresco in a Spanish church. The resulting picture was described as resembling "a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic". The face has since been photoshopped into other paintings.
• On a science related note, the E. coli exchanges genes^note plasmids with the other E. coli to protect the rest of them and it spreads quickly. Talk about a real memetic mutation. ^note mainly because it is one.
• After the infamous "Series of Tubes" comment regarding the internet, "tubes" has become a popular euphemism for bandwidth bottlenecks, such as downloads of large and popular files being on a clogged "tube".
• "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again." ^ExplanationIn the U.S., if you leave a phone off the hook long enough, you usually get this recording.
• No Toad Sexing! ^ExplanationRumor has it that "No Toad Sexing!" is scrawled all over MIT Urban Dictionary - toad sexing.
• Of the more morbid variety, you get the 9-11 memes that spawned after the initial attacks and the image shops from 4chan appearing many years later.
• This video of a passenger's rudeness to security personnel in a train station became an instant meme in the Philippines right after it was posted on YouTube. The word AMALAYER ^note Engrish for "I'm a liar?"[sic] has since been an ongoing trending topic on the Internet at the time of this writing.
  • Just remember, this kind of shit is enough to get anyone arrested anywhere else in the world. It's More Fun In the Philippines, indeed.
  • And here's the US Army version.
• You going to jail now! ^ExplanationA bus driver shouts this sentence before he uppercuts a woman who hits him in the face.
• "Ah, here! Leave it out!"
• The engagement proclamation video released by Swedish princess Madeleine and her fiancé Chris in 2012 quickly became a meme in Sweden. The video itself features the princess talking very stilted, revealing that Chris proposed "in early Feb... October", Chris declaring that he's learning Swedish but it's difficult (which he says in English but repeats in struggling Swedish), and ends with the princess saying "Tihi" ("Tihi" is how a giggle is written in Swedish comic books. Madeleine is probably the first Swede to actually say it with a straight face).
  • In addition to the Swedish couples who have posted videos declaring their own engagements while heavily parodying the princess' video, it has also been parodied by a number of comedians and by SVT, the Swedish public broadcasting channel, by having 2013's hosts of the Swedish Eurovision semi-finals announce that they are hosting in a glorious parody of the video.
• In Finland, Olli Hokkanen (now known as Kola-Olli) continues to enjoy a stint of popularity after appearing on national television in 2006 attempting to set the world record for drinking 1.5 litres of Coca Cola as quickly as possible...and giving up after the third glass. Since then he has made numerous appearances in Finnish media, and his attempt has inspired the Olli Hokkanen Open website, which hosts videos of its members' attempts at setting records for drinking various soft drinks as quickly as possible and keeps track of the quickest times.
• George P. Burdell was an elaborate prank by a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology (better known as Georgia Tech) who was accidentally sent two enrollment forms. He managed to earn all undergraduate degrees the university could offer, served in the army, got married, and was part of MAD Magazine's board of directors, all while not existing.
• That method of drawing "S" with straight lines that's popular in elementary schools, you know the one. It's been around since the '60s and no one knows its true origins, though it's popularly nicknamed "Superman S" and "Stussy S".
• "Git-r-done!"^ExplanationCatchphrase of stand-up comedian Larry the Cable Guy.
• At the 86th Academy Awards in 2014, John Travolta, in presenting Idina Menzel's performance of "Let It Go" from Frozen, butchered her name as "Adele Dazeem," which led Slate.com to create the Adele Dazeem Name Generator so that you can "Travoltify" your name.
• Another Oscars night meme was in 2022, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making a joke at the expense of Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. More often than not, noting how the title of Rock's show Everybody Hates Chris just lent itself to the situation!
• Special Feeling^ExplanationOn February 8th, 2014, Japan was hit by one of the worst winter storms in Japan's weather history. During the emergency warnings in the Japanese TV stations, a Japanese crew interviewed a young couple in front of Tokyo's Shibuya Station. Upon asking how they feel, the man replied, "being in the snow with my lover like this immerses me in a special feeling. I like it." Needless to say, his lover shown in the photo appeared in embarrassment with a Facepalm. A Twitter account responded with a comment, "SHUT UP FUCKING FOUR-EYES!" (which coincidentally is a reference to Levi from Attack on Titan) and thus spawn numerous image macros in Japan.
• 20 GOTO 10^ExplanationPart of a simple two-line BASIC program that executes Line 10, usually a PRINT statement, over and over without end. Many beginning BASIC programmers did this to annoy people. This is demonstrated in the opening of Look Around You. A now-closed art gallery in San Francisco took its name from this.
• British gaming magazine NGamer had several memes before they had to close down in the early 2010's, including references to Ninja Gaiden's Ninja Cat as a Memetic Badass and 'WORTH SEVEN POUNDS' (their adamant claim about the value of one of the gifts they gave out for free with the magazine, namely a plastic Wii Wheel peripheral).
• "Houston, we have a problem." ^ExplanationJim Lovell calmly informs Mission Control that the Apollo 13 mission has Gone Horribly Wrong.
• The Man who Slipped on the Ice. ^Explanation On the Irish RTÉ 9 O'clock news during a cold winter, a report about the icy conditions included, for some reason, a shot of a man slipping and falling over. It became a meme at unprecedented speed.
• "Sadness in his eyes." ^ExplanationInadvertently spawned by newsreader Kay Burley when, in the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, she tweeted a picture of a sad-looking dog photographed at the scene, with the caption "Sadness in his eyes." Naturally, people started photoshopping the dog into various scenarios, usually with the caption "Sadness in his eyes."
• Y'all Qaeda is out there wagin' Yeehawd. ^ExplanationOn January 3rd, 2016, a militia took over a wildlife preserve in Oregon out of anger over the imprisonment of two ranchers for setting fire to land owned by the United States government. Twitter took to mocking the police forces' Head-in-the-Sand Management of the situation by combining redneck stock phrases with names of Jihadist groups.
• Sii come Bill / Be Like Bill.^ExplanationStarted out of an Italian Facebook page as a one-shot Web Comic entitled "Sii come Bill" depicting a Nice Guy doing good things.
  • Be Like Emily.^ExplanationThe female version of the above meme, used in the same vein as Be Like Bill.
  • Se Como Jose.^ExplanationThe Spanish version.
  • Tularan si Juan.^ExplanationThe Filipino version, mostly on Facebook.
• California drought.^ExplanationIn The New '10s, California experienced the worst drought in its recorded history, which continued to this day though in 2017 it was greatly reduced by a series of heavy rain and snow storms (the first rainy season in years).
  • Draconian levels of water conservation.^ExplanationIt's not uncommon for Californians to joke that one should forego even mundane activities that involve using water such as flushing the toilet, showering, and washing hands because "we're in a drought!"
  • Getting any rain at all.^ExplanationBecause of the drought, California residents will often express immense joy at seeing any level of rainfall. A flash flood would be seen as more of a divine blessing than a problem. There were plenty in 2017.
• "This reboot looks terrible."^ExplanationA picture of a group of people, usually topical, accompanied by the caption "This reboot of [completely unrelated popular franchise] looks terrible."
• Milk sandwiches. ^Explanation A common joke around Wintertime, particularly common in areas that aren't used to harsh Winter conditions. In the event of a large expected snowfall, many people have been known to flock to their local supermarkets to raid the shelves for bread and milk, just in case they end up snowed in (even if it only ends up snowing about an inch). While bread and milk are both seen as essential provisions, the idea of going out of your way to stock up on only those two things is seen by many people as absurd, since—of course—you can't actually cook many dishes with just bread and milk. This has led to the joke that "milk sandwiches" are a traditional staple of Snow Day, and that you can't possibly survive an inch of snow without milk sandwiches.
• (activity). More fun in the Philippines^ExplanationThe Philippines' tourism slogan.
• Suntukan sa Ace Hardware^ExplanationLiterally "Brawl at Ace Hardware". A user on Facebook made an (joke?) event page with that name advertising a fistfight to take place at an ACE Hardware store of all places on April 15, 2016, which quickly went viral and gathered thousands of "Interested" users before the event page was taken down.
• Ellen Baker, English teacher extraordinaire.^ExplanationWhen Japanese schools updated their English textbooks, someone posted pictures of them on Japanese twitter, who became endeared with the book's Animesque moe-ish artstyle. In particular, the teacher, Ellen Baker, received much fan art and image edits. Then the Western side of Twitter caught wind of it and was bewildered, but also kind of endeared. The mutation spread, and now she has her own Twitter account. If you're interested.
• "Objects in mirror are _____ than they appear." ^ExplanationA snowclone based on the "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" warning on car rear-view mirrors. Has been parodied in a number of TV shows, including The Simpsons and others.
• Black Lives Matter^Explanation It is a movement created by three Brooklyn women during the protests following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2013, which intends to "affirm the lives of black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all black lives along the gender spectrum." It also tends to be exploited and altered such as Black Workers Matter, Black Labradors Matter, Hamster Lives Matter, X Lives Matter, etc.
• Xy McXface.^ExplanationA 2016 poll to name a British polar reseach ship had Boaty McBoatface as the most popular suggestion (it was instead named after Sir David Attenborough). Variations were suggested for other things, such as Schoolie McSchoolface for a Texas elementary school.
• "Netflix and chill", an Unusual Euphemism for inviting someone over for sex. Often seen as "I thought you said 'Netflix and chill'!" or "20 minutes into 'Netflix and chill'". Got ascended when Netflix's own Twitter account referenced it in a tweet.
• THE FITNESSGRAM PACER TEST IS A MULTISTAGE AEROBIC CAPACITY TEST... ^Explanation The Fitnessgram Pacer is a widely dreaded fitness test that American public school students commonly do in gym class do to test their cardio-endurance, and it's become a meme because of its difficulty and how different students react to it.
• No Room For Jack ^ExplanationAfter it was announced that the iPhone 7 would be ditching the analog audio jack, the Internet pointed out that this wasn't the first time that a Jack was removed from something rectangular. Cue numerous photoshops, from Rose lying on an iPhone while Jack drowns◊ to a before/after macro◊ where Leonardo DiCaprio is removed from the famous scene of Jack and Rose hanging off of the Titanic's bow.
• SUOMI MAINITTU, TORILLA TAVATAAN^ExplanationLiterally "Finland mentioned, let's meet at the market", a response by Finns when something related to Finland is mentioned.
• Fuck 2016^ExplanationIn response to the amount of deaths, Donald Trump's unexpected election to the U.S Presidency, and other tragedies that happened in 2016
  • Fuck 2020^ExplanationAs 2020 became a Serial Escalation of 2016, with a viral pandemic, Police Brutality, protests, riots, and more celebrity deaths. Eurodance act Scooter even recorded a song under this exact title.
• Must be willing to relocate to San Francisco.^ExplanationThe tech boom of the mid-2010's sees many prospective employees of tech startups being faced with requirements to move to San Francisco or at least some part of the San Francisco Bay Area if they wish to work for their respective companies. For many, this is impractical as 1. not everyone wants to or is able move to a different part of the country or the world just for work, and 2. San Francisco's housing costs are infamously some of the highest in the country, with $4,600 per month for a standard two-bedroom apartment being considered average.
• List of burn centers in (country)^ExplanationWhenever someone launches a particularly spectacular Take That! or Stealth Insult, someone else may respond by linking a Wikipedia article listing burn centers, usually those in the United States. Apparently, Wikipedia vandals have tried creating articles about "told centers" or "rekt centers" to be used for the same purpose.
• TRIGGERED! ^ExplanationA woman named Melody Hensley claimed to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from comments made about her on Twitter. The meme itself refers to someone overreacting to something innocuous. Chanty Binx is also heavily associated with this meme due to her tendency to break into loud rants at the drop of a hat. This is a very touchy subject.
• Still a better doctor than Andrew Wakefield ^ExplanationDue to Andrew Wakefield's claims that vaccines cause autism and the study being debunked as fraudulent and unethical, in addition to being for personal profit, he was stripped of his medical licence. His later consistent insistence that he was correct, coupled with his support from Conspiracy Theorists and his release of a movie on the subject has spawned many memes with the phrase "Still a better doctor than Andrew Wakefield" over pictures of various poor fictional doctors, such as Dr. Nick Riviera, or even anything with the word doctor in it, such as Dr. Pepper.
• If I looking for frog, him name is hopkin green frog. ^Explanation In 2003, hand-written flyers inquiring the whereabouts of a frog were found in Seattle, and were subsequently photographed and uploaded to the internet. Something about the way the frog was drawn and the idiosyncratic use of language caught on, and photo-shopped images revolving around the search for Hopkin started spreading around. Hopkin was never found, but eventually someone got in contact with the father of "Terry" - It turned out that Hopkin was a McDonald's Happy Meal toy rather than a real frog, Terry was a sixteen year old with autism, and his father wished that he not be reunited with Hopkin, because Terry had forgotten all about it at that point and returning the frog to him would just bring back bad memories. As the know your meme page points out, this is sort of a fitting non-resolution to the meme: Since it's just a toy, the frog will never die, and since the original owner doesn't remember him and it's thought to be for the best that it's kept that way, he can never be returned; Therefor "the quest to find Hopkin Green Frog will never ever end".
• You had one job! ^ExplanationResponse to a picture showing an annoying error in design of an item, such as a misspelling or mislabeling... or worse
• Avocado toast. ^ExplanationAustralian millionaire Tim Gurner made a dodgy claim that if millennials spent less money on frivolous stuff, they could afford a mortgage. While the broad point of "make sure you're spending your money wisely" is sound, the example he used was, of all things, spending $19 on avocado toast. The collective internet immediately seized on the ridiculousness of the claim that young people would spend that much money on a relatively cheap and easy to make food item, as well as completely ignoring the ridiculously high mortgage rates nowadays that wouldn't simply be fixed by avoiding going out for dinner. It's now used as an illustration of how older people tend to shame millennials for silly reasons.
• "It looks like you're _____. Would you like help with that?" ^ExplanationA line so often spoken by Clippit the Paperclip, AKA Microsoft Office Assistant. Clippy was notoriously obnoxious about butting in and trying to "help" with all sorts of things, and its catchphrase quickly attracted a fountain of parodies.
• Piotr Natanek, a Polish priest that became a one-man Moral Guardians Cowboy BeBop at His Computer Fountain of Memes:
  • "Know that something's happening."^ExplanationFrom a rambling sermon where he claimed that Satan lurks everywhere, even in nail polish, New Media Are Evil and so on.
  • "Diabolo... Dagones Drank..."
• The incompetent German Train-services and trains that are always late.
  • Which is actually not true at all, they are internationally one of the best ones, but somehow the German public got it into their heads that german trains are very unreliable and usually late.
• The photobombing bus.^ExplanationThe Weather Channel's feed covering the implosion of Atlanta's Georgia Dome in November 2017 was obscured by a MARTA bus right as the explosion was happening
• "I'm good luv, enjoy."^ExplanationRapper Future says this to a woman who he expected to have a one night stand with, only for her to refuse. He now has people saying it many times on the internet.
• Round 1 Escalators^ExplanationAt the US branches of Round 1, a chain of amusement centers based in Japan, the escalators are known for being broken or otherwise non-operational, and it's not uncommon for both escalators to be out of service at the same time. It's considered a miracle from the heavens when both escalators at a given location are actually running.
• Permit Patty ^ExplanationA woman who attempted called the cops on a young black child for selling bottled water on the stoop of her apartment complex. She claims the little girl was making too much noise and didn't have a permit to be selling bottled water in the state of California. The internet dubbed her Permit Patty, publicly shamed her, and claimed the woman was being racist. There also have been many similar events afterwards where there are white people calling the cops on black people doing mundane things, all with predictable results. Another meme, "See something, say something" — which is supposed to be about potential terrorism, not civil violations — may be where this started.
• "I think it is the shoulder thing that goes up"^Explanation During the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, one of the many features banned was a barrel shroud. When asked what a barrel shroud is during a TV interview, Carolyn McCarthy responded with this phrase. Gun enthusiasts laughed their asses off at this and to this day still have no idea what she really meant, but frequent comparisons have been the Predator's shoulder mounted plasma caster. (If you are curious what a barrel shroud actually is, it's a safety feature that ensures a shooter doesn't burn their hand while firing a gun.)
• Chainsaw Bayonet ^Explanation After the Sutherland Springs Shooting, USA Today released a video showing what attachments could be put on an AR-15, supposedly the gun used in the shooting. They infamously had this among the list of possible modifications. Gun nuts around the internet quickly turned this into a snowclone with other alleged modifications, including dogs or even another AR-15.
• Oops! All [item] ^Explanation"Oops! All Berries" is a variation of the "Cap'n Crunch" cereal, where the "Crunch Berries" from the cereal of the same name are the only pieces, with none of the yellow pieces from regular Cap'n Crunch. The name lends itself well to snowclone memes and edits of the box, and the phrase is often used whenever someone thinks there's too much of a given noun in anything from real life to video games, where "Berries" is replaced with whatever there's too much of. For example, a Super Smash Bros. version entitled "Oops!◊ All Fire Emblem", or an Animal Crossing version entitled "Oops!◊ All Sea Bass".
• The Notre-Dame de Paris fire of April 2019. ^ExplanationWith many references to the hunchback and even the spider burn girl
• Woman yelling at a cat.^ExplanationA morphing of a photo of Taylor Armstrong pointing and crying (from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) with a photo of a confused cat sitting at the dinner table (Smudge the Cat). Each photo gained mild popularity on its own but the combination of the two with different interpretations of a single scene gained massive popularity.
• Geh/Why are you gay?^Explanation From a hilarious and awkward interview on a Ugandan morning show where the interviewer asks a gay rights activist "Why are you gay?". Photoshopped macros of the interviewer went viral and used as reaction posts on anything that's considered remotely gay.
• OK Boomer^Explanationpopularized as a reaction to a video on TikTok of an unidentified older man, in which he declared that "millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome: They don't ever want to grow up; they think that the utopian ideals that they have in their youth are somehow going to translate into adulthood." The video inspired the phrase "OK Boomer" for when younger generations ignore the opinions of their elders on the basis of those opinions being old.
• "Large boulder the size of a small boulder" ^ExplanationIn January 2020, a Twitter post from the San Miguel County Sheriff's office in Colorado about a boulder blocking the highway went viral due to poor wording - it was supposed to be "the size of a small car".
• The COVID-19 Pandemic
  • Coronavirus and Corona Extra ^ExplanationThe novel coronavirus outbreak that started in Wuhan, China, which later blossomed in the country and spread via human transfer to most countries (especially Iran, South Korea and Italy), was virally linked to the Corona Extra beer line.
    • The Delta (Airlines) Variant ^ExplanationJust like the jokes floating around in 2020 about Corona Extra, viral images and jokes were linking the Delta variant of the virus to the airline.
  • Corona-Chan ^ExplanationThe internet decided the epidemic couldn't do without its own anime waifu, an Anime Chinese Girl in a red qipao with bat wings and virus hair decorations.
    • DO NOT FUCK THE VIRUS! ^ExplanationFrom Gigguk's Coronavirus Anime Survival Guide
  • The toilet paper apocalypse ^ExplanationAs the coronavirus spread in 2020, people started panic buying various sanitary and hygiene products due to fears that supplies could be affected, with toilet paper being the most sought-after. (With the stay at home orders, including all the schools closing, people reasoned they would need more toilet paper at home; that's one way it started. Another was the number of people who were buying supplies for relatives (often seniors) who had compromised immunity.) Stores struggled to keep up with the high demand, often running out of stock in the process. As a result, it wasn't uncommon to see people hoarding massive◊ amounts◊ of◊ supplies and to see◊ empty◊ shelves◊ constantly◊. Many jokes were made about this, some reminiscent of the 1973 toilet paper shortage that came about as the result of a Johnny Carson gag.
  • This is what we trained for. ^ExplanationAs the likelihood of shutdowns and people being forced to stay in their homes in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus increased, video gamers, anime fans and others whose hobbies mainly revolve around sitting at home in front of a TV or computer claimed that their lifestyle had prepared them for such circumstances.
  • Beverage Bug ^ExplanationYouTube frequently demonetized or deleted videos about the Coronavirus, leading many YouTubers to avoid saying "Coronavirus" out loud and instead use euphemisms like "crown virus", "C-Virus", or "Beer virus". The euphemism "Beverage Bug" won out because of its Added Alliterative Appeal.
  • Winnie The Flu ^ExplanationDue to the virus originating in China, and the Chinese Communist Party backlash against comparing president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh, some people came up with the term to mock China's pressure on the WHO.
  • Work from home ^ExplanationAnyone whose job allowed them to tele-commute was advised to work from home. Anyone who couldn't telecommute became the subject of jokes about trying to work from home.
  • Ohio zombies ^ExplanationOn April 14, 2020, a photo by Joshua A. Bickel was published depicting people protesting the shutdown in Ohio by gathering in front of the statehouse. The photo shows many of them are not following proper safety guidelines like staying 6 feet apart from each other or wearing masks, and it also shows some of them with their mouths wide open. The resulting image has caused many people to compare them to zombies.
  • COVIDIOTS ^ExplanationUsed to describe anyone who isn't following proper public safety measures during the pandemic. Most commonly used to describe protesters who want to reopen businesses in their region before it's deemed safe to do so, who typically flout measures like social distancing and wearing PPE, hold rallies and speeches after getting permits for a car parade, etc. Interviews show people declaring the virus a hoax, or believing it is real but confident that Jesus will protect them, etc.
    • Karen wants a haircut ^ExplanationThis woman carried a sign that, rather than expressing concern about becoming unemployed due to the pandemic or even boredom, read "I want a haircut!", turning her into a symbol of selfish middle-classers who want freedom not to work but to force other people to work for them.
    • I am a free I am not man a number ^ExplanationSay what you will about haircut Karen, at least you didn't have to read her sign in a weird way for it to make sense. This British protester against the restrictions◊ brought a sign intending to quote The Prisoner (1967). The message fell flat because the idiot got the quote wrong—he quoted it as "I am a free man, I am not a number" rather than "I am not a number; I am a free man!"—and botched the layout in a way that makes the sign nonsensical if you read it like you'd normally read English, leading to unintentional Word-Salad Humor. Oh, and he was arrested for violating social distancing laws.
  • COVID 19, <Insert Name here> 0^ExplanationVariant on the use of a score result to explain the score of a sports event - where the victor is COVID(-19) and the loser is whoever tested positive - by 19 points.
  • Coronavirus likes this^ExplanationA common image macro that gets placed in a Facebook comment of a status showing a person or group not social distancing or wearing a mask or speaking against the practices
  • 5G Vaccines^ExplanationBased on conspiracy theories involving the pandemic, 5G mobile networks and vaccines containing mind-control chips, people who have been vaccinated are joking that now they possess various computer-related powers like browsing Youtube without ads.
• 2020 in general, mostly because of the above COVID-19 pandemic and its social and economic consequences
  • 2020 can suck it^Explanation2020 has been in general a terrible year, thus this has been used in various contexts to describe smaller events like celebrity deaths. There are even souvenirs being sold with this quote and similar quotes.
  • Various memes about the Earth/God deciding to kill humanity in 2020.^ExplanationIn 2020, January saw the threat of global war due to an incident between the US and Iran, February had various ecological disasters (mostly, the fire in Australia), March and April had the COVID-19 pandemic, May started with concern over invasive Asian Giant Hornets and the Belarus protests, the Black Lives Matter protests started in June, the Alaskan Earthquake in July, the Beirut Explosion in August, other random ecological disasters in Asia, the California Wildfire, and Nigeria Flooding in September and October, the Philippine and Columbia flooding for November, the Puerto Rican earthquakes and North American wildfire in December. This lead to people joking about how 2020 has an apocalyptic event every month.
  • Murder Hornets^ExplanationIn April 2020, specimens of Vespa mandarinia, the Asian Giant Hornet, were found in Washington state. The wasps can grow up to two inches long and are responsible for a number of deaths every year in their native range, are capable of wiping out beehives, and have an extremely painful sting. As it coincided with the COVID-19 crisis in America, it led to jokes about the year undergoing Serial Escalation in awfulness.
  • My Plans in 2020^Explanationput "my plans" on a picture (or a part of the picture) that has seen its doom, and "2020" on a picture (or part of same picture) that is the cause of said doom. A couple examples are "My Plans" on a bird and "2020" on Randy Johnson - who hit a bird with a pitch; also "My Plans" and "2020" on a picture of O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson - guess who is "2020?"
    • This saw a resurgence in 2021, with "2020" being replaced by the more dangerous Delta variant of the coronavirus.
  • "What happened to the murder hornets?"^ExplanationThe Asian Giant Hornets were quickly ignored come late May and June, which saw an explosion of debates regarding police brutality and racism in America. As a result, many started making jokes about how fast people seemed to forget about them; for example, claiming that the hornets were just a Filler episode.
  • 2020 Redemption Arc^Explanation After Joe Biden won the 2020 election against Donald Trump, many people proclaim this on Twitter.
  • 2020 election ^ExplanationWhile mostly concerning the United States, the days making up the US election of 2020 were so stressful that virtually everything that happened became a new meme, especially if it was completely unrelated to the election itself.
    • Destiel (see Supernatural)
    • Racist Ted Bundy roleplayer ^ExplanationExactly What It Says on the Tin, an artist on Twitter who had previously drawn artwork with supreme Unfortunate Implications proceeded to roleplay as real-life serial killer Ted Bundy
  • Hindsight 2020^ExplanationThis phrase is common business lingo for employee reviews or lessons learned. At New Years 2021, this started appearing and really fits reality at the time due to the multiple crises that happened
  • Delete 2020?^ExplanationOn 12/31/2020 (New Year's eve) various image macros depicting this request surfaced very quickly using various forms ("Deleting this app will delete all of it's(sic) data" from Apple, the Presidential Alert, etc.). This pretty much summed up general public opinion about how bad 2020 was as a year.
  • 2020 is never gonna end^ExplanationWhen 2020 came to a close, a number of people decided to tempt fate by making jokes about how 2020 was never going to end, including jokes about 2020+, 2020 Prepare to Die edition and that the countdown to New Years would just keep going into negative numbers. Considering that the first week of 2021 saw missile strikes from Israel, earthquake in Croatia, and Trump supporters breaking into Congress in protest against Joe Biden's nomination, they may have been right
  • Unsubscribe from Seven Day Free Trial to 2021^ExplanationWhen 2021 began, SARS-CoV-2 mutated, Trump's supporters were setting to protest, which resulted in worse events in DC on January 6, led to a variations of this on January 7, 2021
  • 2021: "Hold My Beer"^ExplanationThe famous line that usually precedes a Bar Brawl pretty much became a meme as 2021 is truly challenging 2020 for the worst year ever with physical altercations, and the the result of 2021 so far is not so good - for the United States at least.
  • March 2020 vs March 2021^ExplanationVarious comparison pictures popped up in early march 2021 to illustrate the evolution of life after 1 year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 version is a young/healthy/sane person, the 2021 version is an old/unhealthy/insane person. Examples are Tom Hanks and his Cast Away movie character, Ryan Reynolds and his Deadpool post-mutation character, Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart as Rose in Titanic
  • COVID-19 zombies.^ExplanationMost Zombie Apocalypses in fiction are implicit viral pandemics, and COVID-19 is a viral pandemic. As the pandemic worsened, numerous people posted images and videos across various apps making jokes like "cue the zombies" and some even saying they wanted zombies. A movie was even made called Corona Zombies.
• Karen^ExplanationA pejorative for a middle-aged, often white, entitled woman prone to obnoxious behavior and pearl-clutching, often depicted with a "trendy" haircut. Naturally, it drew a lot of criticism.
  • Kevin/Chad^ExplanationThe male counterparts to Karen who share the same entitlement stereotypes while also being misogynist and/or racist.
• The moon is wet ^ExplanationIn late October 2020, NASA announced that they had discovered water (more specifically ice) on the moon. Not only was this seen as the latest in a long line of shocking events striking the general public in 2020, but most of the news outlets reporting on it decided to report the news as some variety of "She's wet"
• Monoliths ^ExplanationReports of an object standing in the Utah desert then disappearing got press, then viral reations in relation to 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Twisted Tea guy, aka "Mr. TeaKO" ^ExplanationIn an Elirya, Ohio liquor store, one customer was taped harassing another with racial slurs. The other customer responds to his taunts by threateningly brandishing a tall can of hard iced tea; when his harasser mockingly asks if he's going to "smack" him in the face with it, he does just that, and a fight ensues. Remixes setting the sound of him being hit with the can to music (such as the snare hit heavy intro of "Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews Band) became popular, and in general jokes were made about using Twisted Tea as an improbable weapon, or how the brand would capitalize on the incident
• Gamestonk ^ExplanationHedgefund manager Melvin Capital had shorted Gamestop stocks (an investment method that relies on betting that a stock will go down in value) extensively. A group of redditors on r/wallstreetbets caught wind of this and decided to game the system primarily through the trading app Robinhood, causing their stock values to skyrocket and costing Melvin Capital billions, while raising public consciousness in the ins and outs of the stock market and exposing some serious issues. There was extensive backlash when Robinhood eventually restricted the sale of Gamestop.
• Reddit crashes the stockmarket^ExplanationIn January 2021, redditors on subreddits like r/wallstreetbets noticed that a few major hedge funds had been shorting Gamestop stocks, essentially borrowing stock then reselling it for a profit, expecting the company stock to continue to plummet, hoping that they could then buy the stock back far cheaper, and earn a net profit. The clever redditors started spreading this information across several subreddits dedicated to investment and gaming, causing thousands of hobbyist investors to buy stock in gamestop. This caused the value of gamestop stock to skyrocket, with the added consequence that the hedge funds now had to buy back stocks at a massively inflated price. The sheer absurdity of reddit causing a major stock market change made this an easy meme. Despite the jokes and the reaction of the hedge funds themselves, the stock market is just fine, and the only result of this was a big payday for amateur investors, and a major loss for the hedge funds. This didn't prevent major investors from trying to ban hobbyist investors from doing something like this again, which got called out by the media and even figures like Elon Musk for the hypocricy.
• Sigma Male^explanationWhile Alpha and Beta males have been in the public consciousness for years, based on a flawed perception of wolf social structure (in real life there are no universal "alpha" in neither wolves nor humans, since no one could possibly stay on top of every social situation. The idea originally stemmed from a study which mistook wolf parents for the natural leaders of their packs, which the author later condemned), the idea of a Sigma male showed up recently. While many men saw themselves in the description (a Sigma male is essentially an alpha male without the extrovert tendencies), most people who don't laugh at how utterly ridiculous it was and drew comparisons to the fanfiction trope of Omegaverse. The meme mutated over time to the point of referring to a tongue-in-cheek testosterone poisoned character exaggerating the Übermensch/Self-Made Man archetypes to the point of parody.
• Intern-kun ^explanationA meme mostly seen in the western Anime and gacha game fanbases when a thing leaks earlier than that is intended for it to release, the players attribute it to an intern jumping the gun and posting the content early due to the stigma that interns are prone to making mistakes due to inexperience.
• Is the ship still stuck?^ExplanationIn March 2021, the massive container ship Ever Given was blown off course by winds and became wedged right across the Suez Canal, completely blocking it. A Twitter user who seems to have time to spare constructed a web site focusing on the incident and its implication on globalization due to cutting off a shortcut between Europe and the Far East. It shows the current state of the ship and how long it's been stuck. The site, and the incident itself, quickly went viral.
  • More Ship stuck in Suez Canal memes courtesy of the NY Times^ExplanationIncluding, but not limited to - a Shipping traffic report, the comparison, "steal his look" clothing based on the ship, replacing EVERGREEN with SWIFT (the truck company is the butt of all jokes online), placing it in a Bernie Sanders meme, etc. Also has been included pictures to indicated blocked gorges, notches, passes, roads, etc.
• Bezos' Dick Rocket ^ExplanationIn July of 2021, Jeff Bezos went on the first private spaceflight. Some found it incredible, most found it tremendously insulting considering the state of the world and how much money was wasted while Amazon employees are underpaid. But most agreed that Bezos' rocket looked a lot like a penis, prompting comparisons to the similarily phallic rocket in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
• Console Wars: Round Two ^ExplanationFollowing Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard and Sony's acquisition of Bungie, jokes of the console wars popping up again have started.
• A fair few came out of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine:
  • "I need ammunition, not a ride."^ExplanationUkrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's memorable response to an American evacuation offer, which has been used as a summation of Ukrainian courage and defiance.
  • "Russian warship, go fuck yourself!"^ExplanationDuring the invasion, a Russian warship in the Black Sea reached the tiny Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, where a mere thirteen Ukrainian border guards were stationed. When the Russian warship radioed instructions for them to lay down their arms and surrender, the Ukrainian guards, despite being outmanned and outgunned to a severe degree, gave them the above response. It was originally believed that the thirteen guards had died fighting (the Ukrainian navy eventually came out and reported that they were still alive, but had been captured by the Russians), and had become Inspirational Martyrs to the Ukrainian people, and their defiant declaration became a rallying cry for their countrymen — and their supporters throughout the world (and would continue to be used even after learning they were alive). The whole thing ended up on a postage stamp that caused long queues in various non-occupied Ukrainian cities to buy it.
    • Russian warship got itself fucked ^ExplanationOn the 13th of April, the Russian cruiser flagship Moskva, the bigger of the two ships to have attacked Snake Island, was struck by two Ukrainian missiles. It ended up sinking on the 14th after a failed towing operation due to poor weather. Hence, the "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner from Snake Island has partially happened.
    • The Moskva being promoted to submarine ^ExplanationReferring to its sinking.
  • The Ghost of Kyiv^ExplanationEarly into the invasion reports came out that a fighter pilot known only as "The Ghost of Kyiv" had shot down six Russian fighters on the first day of fighting, which if true would make him an Ace in a Day. Since then, conflicting reports of whether or not he was real have been peddled around (with even the previous Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, getting in on the action). At any rate, people around the world certainly hope that he's real.
  • We are very lucky that they are so fucking stupid. ^ExplanationA statement from a Ukrainian soldier at the start of the war that continues to see use due to the Russian military's incompetence.
  • Saint Javelin◊^ExplanationUkrainian forces lack the sheer number of vehicles, armored especially, that Russia has, but they have been supplied with numerous Anti-Armor portable weapons, the very effective FGM-148 Javelin missile in particular, which caused many losses for the Russian army and stalled several of their offensives. An Orthodox icon of Mary Magdalene holding a Javelin and christened "Saint Javelin" became a popular image of Ukraine's resistance against the invasion.
    • Similarly, Saint HIMARS for the later phase of the war that saw said weapons being used by Ukraine's army.
  • "Special military operation"^ExplanationA Newspeak-esque Deadly Euphemism used by the Russian leadership to qualify the invasion of Ukraine. It got satirized into Blatant Lies Implausible Deniability, such as calling a robbery "Special moving operation", or the ramming of the Russian embassy in Dublin as "Special parking operation".
  • Sunflower fertilizer^ExplanationThe sunflower is Ukraine's national flower. Early in the invasion, a video of a Ukrainian woman telling a Russian soldier to put sunflower seeds in his pocket so that they can grow and bloom when he dies went viral. This has led to people using sunflowers and their seeds as shorthand for Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, with the soldiers themselves sometimes referred to as "sunflower fertilizer".
  • Tractors hauling tanks^ExplanationObservers of the invasion realized very quickly that the Russians had horribly botched the logistics, and among the signs of that were Russian tanks running out of fuel on the roads of Ukraine and lying abandoned as their crews left them behind to continue forward on foot. Ukrainian farmers have been capitalizing on this by hooking up abandoned tanks to their tractors and hauling them back to their farms to do with them what they will (or really just hand them over to the Ukrainian army). Videos of Ukrainian farmers seizing Russian tanks have repeatedly gone viral on social media, with others making memes based on the occurrences, such as a picture of a tractor hauling a tank through a field of wheat under a blue sky, with the color pattern invoking the Ukrainian flag. There's even a subreddit dedicated to them!
    • And the meme got caught up by other countries. ^ExplanationAfter Russia put some of their forces on the Finnish border to warn Finland against joining NATO and video with it was posted in the Internet, Finns posted their own video... with tractors moving to the Russian border.
  • Related to the above, "Russia is Ukraine's #1 supplier of tanks"^ExplanationNumerous Russian tanks (and other kinds of war material) have been abandoned by their crews due to botched logistics (and Ukrainians harrassing the supply lines) preventing them from being supplied with fuel. The Ukrainian army naturally captures them and turns them against their former owner whenever possible, and now claims it has more tanks than it did just before the war began.
  • Russian Lend-Lease Program (another version of the above)^ExplanationDue to Russia abandoning so much equipment over the course of the war in Ukraine, it has been joked that the Russians are the either the second-largest supplier of Ukrainian equipment after the USA, or even the largest.
  • Chornobayivka^ExplanationThis small village between Kherson and Mykolayiv became memetic symbol of Russian army incompetence because its forces rebuilt their base there over and over again despite being destroyed multiple times by Ukrainian artillery. By the time the airport was finally recaptured and liberated in November of the same year, it had been bombed at least 39 times.
  • Bayraktar^ExplanationThe Bayraktar is a type of Turkish military drone used by the Ukrainian army. Its popularity led to a song, "Bayraktar", being written about the drone while throwing insults at the Russian army and the invasion. A number of people living in the occupied areas took to the streets to blast it out and sing it when facing Russian occupiers.
  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy slapping Vladimir Putin^ExplanationWill Smith slapping Chris Rock over his Jada Pinkett joke at the Academy Awards in March 2022, with their faces being swapped with those of the Ukrainian and Russian presidents.
  • "To macron" (verb)^ExplanationFrench President Emmanuel Macron claims to spend lots of time negotiating on the phone with Vladimir Putin, to no result. Ukrainians have christened a verb after him that means "claiming to worry about a situation but not doing anything to improve it". That Macron later called to "not humiliate Russia" and even suggested territorial claims of Russia over Ukraine should be considered predictably did not sit well with Ukrainians either. All that being said, France hasn't stopped sending weapons and vehicles to Ukraine.
  • Cope cages^ExplanationA nickname for the notoriously ineffectual Improvised Armor used by Russian tanks during the invasion.
  • Bilohorivka/"OH GOD I'M PONTOONING" ^Explanation On 8th May, Russian forces built a pontoon bridge over Siverskyi Donets river near the city of Bilohorivka and tried to cross it. The results were less than stellar, with Russia losing almost an entire battalion to Ukrainian artillery. This city has since then become the memento of inability of Russian forces to cross a river.
  • Lukashenko saying or doing something stupid ^ExplanationAlexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, who's largely seen as Putin's pawn (he hasn't committed troops but the Russians' offensive on Kyiv started from his country), contradicted his own speeches several times about the war, and was even filmed detailing the invasion plans to his staff several days before the invasion. There's also a version of this showing him like Felonius Gru having a Didn't Think This Through moment in his Evil Plan presentation.
  • The "TikTok Army" ^ExplanationChechnya's head Ramzan Kadyrov tends to brag a lot and has pretended to be in Ukraine several times while he was in fact not. His paramilitary men, the Kadyrovites, have attracted wide mockery for being units of poor combat value who let other Russian units do all the dangerous war stuff in their place and are best known for their antics on TikTok.
  • "Gesture of Good Will" ^ExplanationRussian forces were forced to give up Snake Island after repeated bombing from Ukrainian missiles and vehicles, but the Ministry of Defence tried to save face claiming pulling everyone from the island was "a gesture of good will". All when it was doubtful there was anyone even alive to pull out by then, as the island was still smoking when this statement was made. Needless to say, there was much mockery to go around, and "gesture of good will" quickly gained traction as a term for a big loss that's pointlessly and unconvincingly denied.
  • HIMARS O'Clock ^ExplanationUkrainian artillery crews operating the HIMARS missile artillery platform quickly became notorious for hitting valuable targets (particularly ammunition depots, which go off spectacularly when struck and of which twenty were blown up in a couple of days) deep within enemy lines one after the other, and doing so late at night when such attacks would be hardest to track. As such, when it's HIMARS O'Clock, the fireworks begin.
  • #NAFO ^Explanation"North-Atlantic Fella Organization", a group of Twitter users with Shiba Inu avatars dedicated to two things: Donating to the Ukrainian cause, and burying any and all sources of Russian propaganda/disinformation they can find under mountains of shitposts, debunks, and debunking shitposts. Tagging them in to pounce on a propaganda spreader is known as "invoking Article 5", to reflect NATO's own Article 5. Ukraine actually directly referenced the group, thanking them for their efforts in disrupting Russian propaganda.
    • "NAFO expansion is non-negotiable" ^ExplanationMocking Russian/pro-Russian claims that the invasion was motivated by NATO expansion.
    • "You pronounced this nonsense, not me." ^ExplanationRussian Ambassador (to Vienna) Mikhail Ulyanov has been known for spreading propaganda and disinformation, and when mocked about it in a sarcastic tweet by a NAFO member, he made the mistake of replying with the above quote, seemingly missing the sarcasm. His Twitter account has not known peace since: getting blocked by the ambassador became a rite of NAFO passage, and "pronouncing nonsense" became a handy euphemism for "spreading Russian media propaganda".
    • "WHERE DID ALL THESE FUCKING DOGS COME FROM!?" ^ExplanationRussian propaganda/disinformation-spreaders that hadn't known unified opposition until NAFO came about are known for taking their sudden arrival very poorly.
    • "What air defense doing?" ^ExplanationAn infamous Serbian tankie reacted with this initially when a Russian air base in Crimea got blown up by Ukrainian missile fire; while he immediately recanted and started pushing the idea it was "just" an accident from neglecting fire safety (as the Russian Ministry of Defense had tried to push), NAFO members immediately took it and ran with it to mock the Russian army for their abysmal anti-air performance.
    • "NAFO in a jar"^ExplanationNAFO Twitter users starting to put their Shiba Inu avatars in jars after Volodymyr Zelenskyy rewarded the official NAFO account with a trophy in a jar.
  • Variations of "Chernobyl again?!".^ExplanationAfter Russian forces took control of Zaproizhzia Nuclear Power Plant and started filling it and the surrounding area with mines, people started to wonder if a second Chernobyl-level nuclear disaster could be on the horizon. Things got much worse when reports came in that Russia made blatant threats to blow the power plant up, though these claims appear to be unsubstantiated.
  • The Russian army's smoking problem^ExplanationThe Russian Ministry of Defense appears convinced trying to pass off devastating explosions as accidents is less embarrassing than admitting any Ukrainian competence, even as the explosions and losses pile on; while it happened with the Moskva, the last straw was the explosion at Saki air base in Crimea being passed off as "neglecting fire safety". After that, people started heavily mocking Russia for having a severe problem with conscripts smoking in ammo dumps and other dangerous places, to the point of suspecting near-supernatural entities wandering around just smoking in the worst places possible. It doesn't help that Russia had a big problem with random ammo dump explosions even before the war.
  • ├ ├܄┼ / tt:t^{Explanation(NSFW)}An Ukrainian drone cam video was released where a Russian soldier can be seen being fellated by another, both oblivious to the danger. The drone then proceeds to drop its grenade, hitting and presumably killing both soldiers doing the act. The video went memetic and was applied the Loss treatment of being represented by abstract shapes or characters.
    • They were just praying!^ExplanationA dubious Russian rebuttal of the video, stating that the crouched soldier was actually deep in prayer.
  • Královec is Czechia.^ExplanationAfter Russia did a totally fair referenda on parts of Ukraine and annexed them based on the results, somebody from Czech republic joked that Czech republic made its own referendum in Kaliningrad (which was at one time a part of Czech Kingdom under the name of Královec) and that almost 98% of people living there voted for joining Czechia. People noticed that and ran with it.
  • Crimea Bridge^ExplanationEarly in the morning on October 8, 2022, an explosion occurred on the bridge connecting Crimea with Russia over the Kerch Strait, setting a train carrying fuel ablaze and knocking out a portion of the road. Social media (especially among Ukrainians) leaped on this almost instantly. The Ukraine Twitter account tweeted simply, "Sick burn", quoting Apocalypse Now with "burning bridge" instead of napalm, and more. Ukraine even released a series of stamps depicting the bridge burning the same day. It got even more intense when the Russian reaction broke, especially their calling it a war crime (protip: while destroying civilian infrastructure is indeed a war crime, a bridge providing military transport is legally a military target) and that they considered it "an act of war" (despite being at war in all but name for the past seven months). PR footage of Vladimir Putin driving a truck were edited with the footage of the suicide truck on the bridge then exploding and also became popular.
  • Upon the liberation of Kherson, news that Russians took a raccoon from the city's zoo with them went memetic, with some memes using Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy.
  • Suspiciously well-fed dog/the Bakhmutt ^Explanation The Georgian Legion published a brief video of an encounter with a massively overweight stray dog around the Bakhmut area. Since there's only one big source of food lying around in a meat grinder of a battle like Bakhmut, the dog and its unfortunate meals became the subject of some especially dark humor.
  • ERAposting/ERA Florks ^Explanation After a donated Leopard 2 tank was photographed after having Kontakt explosive reactive armor applied to it, SenpaiPingu on Reddit came out with a short Flork-inspired comic on how it occurred, and segments of the internet went wild, immediately slapping ERA on practically anything imaginable.
  • "Auxiliary Light On"^ExplanationMuch of the war's footage is grenade drops from jury-rigged drones right onto unfortunate Russian conscripts and soft targets as a whole. Many of these drones' drop mechanisms are rigged into the Auxiliary Light's circuit, and so the "Auxiliary Light On" message is often seen right before someone or something gets blown up. The message became memetic in the same way as the LiveLeak logo as something that pops up right before someone dies horribly.
  • Tire Armor^ExplanationAfter a number of SYPAQ suicide drones sent by Ukrainian partisans destroyed multiple heavy lifter aircraft in Russia's Pskov airbase, satellite imagery started to find surviving aircraft were suspiciously covered in car tires, as some manner of protection. Much like Cope Cages, these quickly became memetic as another symbol of Russian incompetence, with many other things photoshopped to be "armored" with tires.
  • The stoic Chief of Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, went memetic, particularly his face.
    • Also, his most memed quote: "It will get worse" (usually meant "for Russians").
    • "Climate activist"^ExplanationUkrainians have started destroying Russian oil refineries with long range kamikaze drones, which has stopped Russia's exports of oil (a big source of income to fuel the war) and impacted their domestic market, prompting jokes about reducing Russia's carbon footprint. Humorous comparisons were made to Greta Thunberg as well.
  • "Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is my ammunition?!" ^ExplanationYevgeny Prigozhin, leader of a notorious Russian private military company called Wagner Group, released a video where he detailed the difficulties his troops were having and implied that Sergei Shoigu (the Russian Minister of Defense) and Valery Gerasimov (the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces) of deliberately withholding much-needed ammunition from him. This quote in particular became memorable, especially because how of much Prigozhin looked like he was in a "pointing soyjak" meme while he was saying it.
• The much publicized defamation court case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in April-June 2022:
  • Amber Turd ^ExplanationHeard was accused of supposedly defecating on Depp's bed out of spite. This has led to widespread mockery of Heard and crap-related jokes with some even giving her the nickname "Amber Turd".
  • "You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow!" ^ExplanationDepp's famous line from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which became memetic again when he won the defamation lawsuit.
  • Deppford Wives ^ExplanationFan Nickname for Depp fans
• Pollution (Taylor’s Version) ^Explanation This article from the Tab that released in July 2022 revealed that Taylor Swift of all people was responsible for the largest amount of private jet based carbon emissions for the full year, amassing over 170 trips since the year began. The line in question was used in the article and went viral along with it, which wasn’t helped by Swift’s publicity team stating that she loaned out the jet to others in her spare time or by her fans creating a thread indicating that she actually DID care for the environment with the comment that she’d sold her second private jet prior to the article’s release. This has lead to videos of Swift laughing at environmental disasters, as well as social media users blaming heatwaves on her directly.
• Martin Scorsese's Goncharov, the greatest Mafia movie ever made.^ExplanationA Tumblr user posted a pic of a boot he ordered online, which replaced the label with a bizarre tag that began "The greatest Mafia movie ever made—Martin Scorsese presents Goncharov". Eventually it was deciphered as a garbled, probably machine-translated promotion for Gomorrah, which Scorsese did attach his name to with a "presents" credit for its US release, but with lots of other oddities, like "prodlction" [sic], and Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone getting his name rendered as "Matteo JWHJ0715", plus the mystery of why this was showing up on a boot label anyway. The joke is to treat Goncharov like it's a real Scorsese classic that actually exists, and to mock those who say they've never heard of it.
• "Wanna Stay Home?"^ExplanationAfter Southwest Airlines canceled 50% or more of their flights every day between December 22 and December 29 resulting in passengers either renting a car one-way home, booking with more expensive carriers or huddling in the airport/hotel and waiting for baggage - with baggage stacked on baggage claim carousels, this appeared on Reddit as a new parody ad based on their previous slogan and a ticket fare tier name. This got used in social media to respond to the airline and its airport hosts when news regarding the status of flights was posted.
• Hold my beer^ExplanationComes from the idea that a lot of dumb stunts start with “hold my beer and watch this”. Mutated into meaning someone attempting something that they were told couldn’t be done
• "The French"^ExplanationOn January 26, 2023, the Associated Press Stylebook Twitter account posted advice that "We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing 'the' labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses." The totally random use of "the French" as an example, with the amusing implication that the AP considers "French" to be a slur, led to lots of dragging, and jokey suggestions of more sensitive alternatives to "the French" like "people with Frenchness" or "people assigned French at birth". The French Embassy in America even got in on the fun by calling itself "the embassy of Frenchness in the US". The AP later deleted the tweet, but their explanation ("We deleted an earlier tweet because of an inappropriate reference to French people. We did not intend to offend") came off as Comically Missing the Point and made them look like The Comically Serious, unintentionally extending the joke, especially since people who hadn't seen the original tweet might now conclude that it contained a genuinely offensive, and perhaps even vulgar, anti-French slur.
• Chinese spy balloon^ExplanationA swarm of Twitter memes appeared right after the US Air Force shot down a stratosphere balloon that floated over the US and Canada and was over water off South Carolina, including the substitution of the original balloon with variant like a Beer Mug or a random politician. The meme also poked fun at the defense department for not shooting it down over land due to the risk to lives or property damage. The US claimed it was a spy balloon. The Chinese claimed it was a meteorological research balloon that was "blown off course"
• A clip of Miss Universe 2018 where Miss France Eva Colas basically cawed her country's name became memetic in 2023 ("2 seconds following me for 4 years…").
• "...if he trips while drunk and busts his stupid mug."^ExplanationA clip from a street poll in Poland, in which an angry old man says he'd be very happy if his rival fell on his face while drunk and hurt himself. The phrase "...and busts his stupid mug" entered common Polish parlance, with most people unaware of its origin.
• Business Janusz^ExplanationThe character of a Faux Affably Evil Bad Boss, usually depicted as a fat mustached man in a suit, who serves as a caricature of a typical miserly and arrogant Polish business owner. Usually accompanied by his beleaguered employee, Mr Areczek.
• Grażynka^ExplanationGood-natured if ditzy stereotypical 50-year-old woman, usually old-fashioned and a Gossipy Hen, dispensing outdated advice. Started as an image macro in the 2000s and evolved into a general term for Know-Nothing Know-It-All older women.
• Pity, poor Bradford.^ExplanationRumoured to be said by the Bolling Hall Ghost in order to dissuade the Earl of Newcastle from slaughtering the entire Bradford population after the Battle of Adwalton Moor. The earl was staying with Lord Fairfax and vowed he would begin the killing on the morrow- only to suddenly change his mind the following morning. Now Bradfordians say it whenever there is news of how bad the council is run, or how deprived the city is. It gets said a lot.
• Linux kernel 6.6.6. .^ExplanationThe version number of the kernel update, being Number of the Beast, has promped a lot of Satan-related memes about Linux since Ubuntu Satanic Edition.

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