Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual Top Ten Review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined the Internet culture in 2015 as we know it.
Not gonna lie: 2015 in sport featured a lot of nasty stuff. There were loads of nasty scandals involving sex, like Hulk Hogan's ongoing sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker; money, like the FIFA bribery cases; and of course, deflated balls. But sports continued to bleed into the meme culture in fun new ways, with the spectacle of events like the Super Bowl allowing for strange new characters like Left Shark to enter the lexicon. The everlasting resource of high-octane personalities that are drawn to the sports world to compete are also known for generating snazzy catchphrases, funny expressions, and all the other types of emotions necessary for the dankest of memes. The cultural bleed caused us to raise our coverage of sports-related memes, especially as macros of basketball players and their children began to spread through Black Twitter and its Reddit aggregator /r/blackpeopletwitter, and the interlocked world of sports, popular music, awards shows, and memes continued to spread.
| About | There were two sharks at Katie Perry's Super Bowl halftime show, but only the left one got all the attention for it's off-beat dancing and nonchalant expression. What came next was a social media onslaught. First, Snoop Dogg tweeted a joke claiming that in fact, he was the shark. Then, the macros began.
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| Origin | During the performance of Katy Perry's song "Teenage Dream," during Super Bowl XLIX on February 1st, 2015, one of the backup dancers dressed as a shark and dancing to the left side of the singer was seen screwing up a routine while on stage. Shortly after the conclusion of the halftime show, the awkwardly dancing "left shark" quickly emerged as a trending topic on Twitter and elsewhere. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Nationwide Dead Kid, Super Bowl XLIX, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift Feud |
| About | No one knows what a Piccolo is, so the Villanova Crying Piccolo Player was also known as the Villanova Crying Flute Player and/or March Sadness. The photoshop fad was based on a video clip of a college marching band mate playing the flute in tears that was displayed on Jumbotron during a NCAA men's basketball tournament match between Villanova University and North Carolina State University in late March 2015. |
| Origin | After Villanova University's loss to North Carolina State in the annual March Madness NCAA basketball tournament, Roxanne (last name unknown) began to cry. She then looked up at the Jumbotron and saw herself featured on the screen crying. “I’m a senior in the band, so I knew that was my very last game. It’s just so easy to get emotional especially being a senior, that just changed the game for me, knowing it was my last game,” Roxanne said to the Angelo Cataldi of CBS Philadelphia. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Pierre the Pelican, Crying Michael Jordan, Male Tears |
| About | Were the balls under-inflated? The debate and investigation into cheating allegations against the New England Patriots, raged for most of the year, and ended up with a guilty verdict and a 4-game suspension for star quarterback Tom Brady, which was then overturned. But nature of the drawn-out scandal, including the fact that it was about balls, left no stone of immature humor unturned. A sub-meme also bloomed during the hearings themselves, when a strange courtroom sketch depicted the notoriously handsome Brady as a strange, crow-like figure. |
| Origin | On January 18th, 2015, the New England Patriots secured their place at the annual NFL championship game, along with the defending champions Seattle Seahawks. On the following day, the Indiana news site WTHR reported that a source inside the NFL revealed the Patriots were being investigated for intentionally deflating footballs during the game to gain a competitive advantage over the Colts. The first parody commercial was uploaded two days later; in the meantime, the photoshops, macros, and Twitter jokes started rolling in. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Tom Brady's Courtroom Sketch, Odell Beckham Jr's Hair, The Whip |
| About | Ronda Rousey leapt from relative obscurity to world fame this year with her ruthless, quick style and long undefeated streak in Women's Mixed Martial Arts fighting. That streak ended in November, but by far the most popular fight of Rousey's on social media this year was the blink-and-you-missed-it match against Brazilian Bethe Correia, who she beat with armbar submission in just 23 seconds. |
| Origin | On August 1st, 2015, Rousey defeated Brazilian MMA fighter Bethe Correia by knockout 34 seconds into the first round at UFC 190 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. That day, the UFC on Fox YouTube channel uploaded a highlight of the fight, which gained over 4.8 million views and 1,000 comments in 48 hours. The fight was so fast that a popular stop-motion animation of the fight was created and uploaded in less than 24 hours. |
| Example | |
| Related Memes | CM Punk, Twitch Plays Pokemon, Joe Rogan |
| About | The young daughter of Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry lapped up as much attention as she could as her dad was winning the NBA Championship. Steph allowed Riley to hang out during the Post-Game Interviews during which she repeatedly grabbed the microphone and took control of the narrative. She appeared bored, she spoke into the microphone, and once, she sang a few bars of Drake. The results? Image macro gold. |
| Origin | On May 19th, 2015, Steph brought Riley to the stage for his post-game press conference, holding her on his lap. Riley interrupted the conference several times by waving, speaking into the microphone, and running away under the table. This distracted the press, creating a different mood in the press room than normally occurs at these conferences. NBA uploaded the video to their official accounts and spotlighted Riley’s appearance with their social media accounts. The video eventually received 3 million views, and the NBA knew they had a miniature star on their hands. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Post-Game Interviews, Basketball, "If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late Cover Parodies" |
| About | This is Know Your Meme, not Know Your Sports Trivia Bruh, so we understand that our demographic skews. . .well, nerdy. It's ok, we've got them covered with Sportsball, a meme for those who refuse to engage in the wide, wide world of sports that have balls. Basketball, football, baseball, the OTHER football – they are all just sportsballs to us, full of sportsing sportsguys who love to sports with sportsballs. |
| Origin | On March 3rd, 2007, Urban Dictionary user Balcerzak submitted an entry for "Sportsball," defining the term as:
bq. A generic term for any form of sport involving a ball, and especially those with "ball" in their name. Often derogatory.
Since then, the term has been used in video parodies, web comics, and Reddit comment boards worldwide. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Smol, Animu and Mango, Adulting |
| About | Nick Young is a fashion plate, sneakerhead, and established player for the Los Angeles Lakers, but that's not how Twitter primarily knows him – they know him as the guy making a funny face in a grainy video, surrounded by fun 1990s nostalgia question marks. This photo (actually a still from a short documentary about Young and his family) has become a premier reaction image for WTF on Black Twitter. |
| Origin | The image originally comes from the YouTube series Thru The Lens which depicts a day in the life of Nick Young.
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| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Bruh, "New York" on a Bed, The Zola Story |
| About | One of the most controversial events to occur last year was Olympic runner (and Kardashian clan step-dad) Bruce Jenner's transition into Caitlyn. Officially released with a blockbuster cover of the fashion magazine Vogue, Jenner's transition coming-out inspired congratulations and controversy worldwide. Many were purportedly irked when Jenner won an ESPY award over the summer, but the whole medal-repeal controversy turned out to be 4chan trolling, and the premiere of Jenner's reality TV show was a smash anyways. However, some public figures were wary, both of the transition and of the motivation behind it. |
| Origin | Jenner had expressed transgender feelings since at least the 1980s, but she did not come out to the American public until April of 2015 in a 20/20 special interview called Bruce. In that special, Caitlyn told the public she would be coming out as a woman soon. On June 1st, 2015, Jenner and Vanity Fair released an photograph of the magazine cover on a newly created Twitter, @Caitlyn_Jenner; this Twitter post received over 200,000 retweets and 220,000 favorites.
The image was taken by famous celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz and was accompanied by several other photographs and an in-depth article, titled "Introducing Caitlyn Jenner" about Jenner's experience transitioning. Upon its release, the cover photograph attracted much attention due to Jenner's new look and her achievement of being the first transgender woman on the cover of Vanity Fair. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Kylie Jenner Challenge, Transgender Transition Timelines, Kim Kardashian's Paper Magazine Cover |
| About | When one Viner recorded his little brother saying "Lebron James" in a silly, nasal voice, he didn't imagine that he was starting one of the year's most popular trends on the video app. |
| Origin | The video clip was recorded by Viner DARius and uploaded to Vine on June 27th, 2014, featuring his little brother saying the name of the NBA athlete in front of their house. As of December 2015, the video has garnered almost 47 million loops, and countless remixes.
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| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Shower Time Diesel Jeans, LeJuan James, Why the Fuck You Lyin |
| About | The theme song of the world's most popular WWE wrestler, especially in its most upsettingly loud, distorted format, began being placed where ever you least expected it; at the ends of Spongebob Squarepants GIFs, appended on to strange Vine clips, integrated into rap battles. Why did this particular theme song turn into the Internet's favorite "loud video warning?" We may never know the true answer, but we do know that it's truly hilarious. |
| Origin | The soundtrack comes from John Cena's actual WWE introduction, first used in 2005, while the visuals in most versions come from the 2012 edition of his introduction video; the two were then combined with a bombastic introduction from a radio host. Between April and July, 2015, over 11,000 Vines and 18,000 YouTubes were made, appending the clip onto almost random videos or integrating it into strange situations. An entire subreddit of Unexpected John Cena clips sprung up, creating a community of over 42,000 John Cena jumpscare fans. |
| Examples | |
| Related Memes | Cena Wins Lol, Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan |
Colonel Sandor
My feelings upon discovering no Richard Sherman Superbowl Salt:
Nightfury Treann
I think we all know who's the real winner here in this category.
chowzburgerz
You know loves sports and sports memes? This guy over here! Oh man, thanks for the memeories, Ari and I hope I can see my true sports dream of a Rangers World Series title come true.