2018: A Year in Meme Review

Tide Pods These laundry cleaners took the Internet by storm in early January, earning them the number one spot on this year's meme list. #TidePodChallenge swept the nation, resulting in likely thousands of people - mainly teens - being sent to the hospital for consuming Tide Pods (or, technically, letting them melt on their tongue). With the running joke of actually eating Tide Pods in mind, ...

Selfie Super Bowl Kid During Justin Timberlake's halftime performance at the Super Bowl in February, one teen in the audience caught the attention of the many watching at home. On his phone when Timberlake was in the crowd, his attention quickly changed to the singer as he moved closer. The teen made sure he acted fast and snapped a selfie of him and singer, which was both cool yet very awk...

Evil Patrick Ah, another Spongebob meme to add to the collection. This low-quality screengrab from an old Spongebob Squarepants episode spread all over the Internet in March, and had many hilarious captions placed with it.                       Spongebob Out of Breath This meme comes from the same episode as ...

Walmart Yodeling Kid The Walmart Yodeling Kid, formally known as Mason Ramsey, was a viral sensation in April of this year. The original video was of him singing "Lovesick Blues" in a local Walmart in an extremely out-of-place cowboy hat and boots. The entire situation was just so random that it was funny, and the Internet saw the opportunity to make this child even more famous in the form ...

Anime Character Pointing at a Butterfly The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird was a 90's anime series that has made its rounds on the Internet for the past few years, however in May it came alive once again. The meme depicts a character pointing at a butterfly and asking, "Is this a pigeon?" Many funny captions and photoshopped varieties circulated the Internet and quickly became popular memes. ...

IHOB When the famous breakfast chain, IHOP, announced that it was switching its name to IHOB - International House of Burgers - the Internet was astonished. However, people took this unforeseen opportunity to make a variety of memes surrounding the name change.               Car Salesman An image of a car salesman slapping the roof of a car with the line "This ___ can....

This Is So Sad, Alexa Play Despacito The "This is so sad" genre of meme originated in early 2018, mainly on Reddit chains. The meme became more popular once it appeared on Tumblr, with the post reading "this is so sad, alexa play despacito," as if it were a command to the Amazon Echo. This line took off, with a variety of songs replacing "Despacito." The line is meant to be read mockingly, which i...

Bibble Singing Taken from the animated film, Barbie: Mermadia, a low-quality image of the character Bibble singing in a pool was incredibly popular in August. It was used to reminisce on childhood memories or just reference moments from our childhoods, allowing for many people to relate to a meme for once.                 ...

Bongo Cat Bongo Cat became a meme due to the variety of songs that could be paired with the white, animated, adorable creature. The original video is of the animated cat tapping its paws on a table to the beat of a Mario song. Remixes were made with Bongo Cat playing a variety of instruments and tapping to many different songs. https://www.instagram.com/p/BqX85E1AAyi/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BrYfN_9A1Kn/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BpbmEO_izHy/ Moth Memes It's safe to say that moth memes truly took the I...

Presidential Alert Donald Trump sent out the first Presidential Alert that reached the approximately 225 million cell phone users across the United States in October. Everyone's phones vibrated and made noise as the test message went up. Though some people, inevitably, took the opportunity to photoshop the alert to say some pretty funny things.         ...

Not a Cell Phone in Sight The phrase "Not a cell phone in sight, just living in the moment" caught on as one the more popular memes of 2018. It's accompanied by odd or old pictures, some of which could have no context at all, and is honestly pretty funny. It was seen paired with anything, from historical events to scenes from cartoons.             &...

So What If I'm The Monster YouTuber Gabbie Hanna did a lyric breakdown with Genius earlier this month for her song "Monster." Nobody expected her to completely yell a high note, and the unexpectedness of the moment was what made it go viral (in addition to Gabbie Hanna being known to not be the best singer). That moment in the interview was followed by many remixes and effects put on her singing,...