The Top 50 Memes of the Decade: 50-41
This month, we asked you to help us narrow down the top memes of the 2010s in our Memes of the Decade community poll. Over the last 10 days, nearly 55,000 votes were cast as users passionately campaigned for their favorite viral phenomena, hoping they might secure their spot among the best memes circulated during this iconic era in internet history.
From now until Friday, join us as we run down the list showcasing which memes had what it takes to be ranked among the top 50 of the decade.
50. It Is Wednesday My Dudes
About the Meme: An image of a Budgett's frog captioned with the phrase "It is Wednesday my dudes" which is commonly posted every Wednesday in various meme enthusiast communities.
Peak Year: 2016
Highlights: The image has inspired numerous photoshops paired with variations of the original phrase.
49. Shooting Stars
About the Meme: A series of remix videos often featuring footage of characters falling in space while the 2008 pop song "Shooting Stars" by Bag Raiders plays in the background.
Peak Year: 2017
Highlights: A Rickroll-themed variation created by YouTuber Grandayy received more than 8.3 million views.
48. Moe Anthropomorphism
About the Meme: The creation of human-like characters based on non-human subjects, such as inanimate objects, animals, brands or concepts.
Peak Year: 2017
Highlights: Numerous "-chan" characters have inspired fan illustrations over the years, including ISIS-chan (2010), Ebola-chan (2014), Smug Wendy's (2017), Earth-chan (2017) and Tide POD-chan (2018).
47. Steven Crowder's "Change My Mind" Sign
About the Meme: A photoshop meme based on a picture of conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder seated behind a sign with the words "Male Privilige Is A Myth / Change My Mind" printed on the front.
Peak Year: 2018
Highlights: Numerous edits have replaced Crowder with various fictional characters, including Patrick Star from SpongeBob Squarepants, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes and J. Jonah Jameson from the Spider-Man franchise.
46. Gamers Rise Up
About the Meme: An image macro series featuring various depictions of the DC Comics supervillain Joker captioned with intentionally edgy or cringeworthy text.
Peak Year: 2018
Highlights: The meme was popularized on Facebook through the infamous Gang Weed page and on Reddit by members of /r/GamersRiseUp.
45. Nic Cage as Everyone
About the Meme: A photoshop meme in which the face of actor Nicolas Cage is superimposed on to other people's heads.
Peak Year: 2010
Highlights: While the original Nic Cage as Everyone single topic blog peaked in popularity in 2010, impressive Deepfake videos of the actor began circulating in early 2018.
44. Confused Math Lady
About the Meme: A reaction image based on a clip of the character Nazaré Tedesco in the Brazilian telenovela Senhora do Destino.
Peak Year: 2016
Highlights: The series spawned variations featuring animals, cartoons and other characters in place of the original woman.
43. Roll Safe
About the Meme: An image macro series featuring a screenshot of actor Kayode Ewumi grinning and pointing to his temple while portraying the character Reece Simpson (a.k.a. "Roll Safe") in the web series Hood Documentary.
Peak Year: 2017
Highlights: Photoshopped versions of the screen captured image featured jokes about the numerous other fictional characters, including Shrek, Luigi and Anakin Skywalker.
42. Is This a Pigeon
About the Meme: A photoshop meme and object-labeling series featuring a screencap of the character Yutaro Katori incorrectly identifying a butterfly as a pigeon in the 1990s Japanese anime series The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird.
Peak Year: 2018
Highlights: In late April 2018, the original image saw an enormous resurgence online with object-labeled variations.
41. Bowsette
About the Meme: A genderbent version of the Super Mario villain Bowser who has been given a Super Crown power-up from the game New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe.
Peak Year: 2018
Highlights: The character inspired the creation of other genderbent Super Crown characters, including Boosette and Chompette.
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samzilla567
I'm shocked Moe Anthropomorphism got so low on the list. The internet makes a new waifu of anything almost every single year.
Carri₪n
How many candidates were there in total?
Aramaki_1917
Roll Safe should've been a lot higher, maybe in the top 10.
usename_546
Maybe more like in the to 30, but definitely not down here. Same for "change my mind"
Nyarlathoth
Although I don't really like it personally, I expected Bowsette to be way higher. It was everywhere for a few months in 2018 and had many derivatives.
Rainbow Crash
Bowsette? Really? How is that even a meme? How relevant it was?
More like KnowYourNintendoViral. I bet there's even more Nintendo stuff above this which was irrelevant across the web.
RandomMan
It generated arguably one of the biggest artload for a single character in its peak on both the western and eastern web and generated various other characters inspired by the same concept (wearing the super crown).
Out of these 10 memes only the gamer joker can match its level of quantity.
Rainbow Crash
Fanart =/= memes
That's the problem KYM has in the last 8 years, it turned into a fanart site with memes in the side. A character isn't a meme. Baby Yoda isn't a meme, Baby Yoda doing something specific is a meme. Trump isn't a meme, him doing specific is a meme. Ponies again the same and it goes on like that. That's why we had specific memes among the candidates rather than "Donald Trump" as a meme. Covfefe was a meme candidate instead.
Yeah sure, people pumped art for a couple of weeks but it didn't turn into something that can be considered meme across the web like Pigeon, Roll Safe, Change My Mind etc.
So yeah when I check "top image galleries", 3/8 are Nintendo games. Then Nintendo fanart is elected as a 'meme'. Those have little relevancy when it comes to meme influence over the Net however. I literally saw nobody using Bowsette unless it's in Nintendo-related circles.
Rainbow Crash
It used to be I come to KYM to check the newest meme trends, in the recent years it's buried under a plethora of fanart. Trending images is like 50% Nintendo fanart. That's I stopped visiting daily, really need to dig down beneath all the Nintendo virals to find what's really relevant on the Web. And when I find it, oftentimes it has people complaining "ugh I had enough of this" as if the space was needed for further Nintendo fanart entries.
Pretty much the only relevant true meme from Nintendo was that angry villager on go kart thing. Bowsette etc? Fanart stuff, not meme, doesn't deserve to be in a top list like this.
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Kenetic Kups
If Baneposting isn’t number one I’m fucking cursing all of you
Triplem
If we manage to pull that one off, will you die?
Kenetic Kups
It will be extremely joyfull
memoro
a very narrow choice
Jack the Dipper
Show us how many votes they got! Some people may not care, but it won't detract anything to just list the numbers.
Torchpost
How many memes were there listed in the poll? Just wondering how heavily influenced this list would be by the selection, if something chosen for an option would be more likely to show up than a write-in.
Kekkles the Kek
>almost entirely 2016-2018
lame
Panuru
Hopefully people had longer memories when it came to the upper-tier ones.