Timeline of Ironic Memes
A Picardía-themed mural seen under an overpass; location unknown.
n today's internet memescape, we seem to be living in the golden age of ironic humor, where absurd Facebook pages, circlejerk subreddits and meta jokes dominate the highly volatile meme economy.
When given a moment's thought, it actually makes a lot of sense. As memes have become more and more mainstream, we’ve had to find new ways of demonstrating our meme literacy to separate ourselves from the awful "normies." To show the true depth of your understanding of internet memes, you must be able to shitpost them into infinity with ironic and meta humor that only real memers would be able to comprehend. And memes tend to dramatically drop in value as a cultural currency when they are accessible to too many people. Memes are no exception to inflationary market pressures.
Some of the prototypical ironic memes were founded on an appreciation for the so bad it's good genre of social media entertainment, including classics like Duane!, The Room, Garbage Day, the Power Glove and Troll 2, just to name a few. This niche was popularized by events like the Found Footage Festival and sites like Everything is Terrible, who relentlessly foraged through VHS tape collections to find the most bizarre videos to meet the growing demand for this sort of content.
To better understand how memes became what they are today, we took at look back at some of the key moments in internet history to build a rough timeline of how ironic memes spread far and wide across the web.
2008
- August: The ironic fandom of Cory in the House begins with the remix video "Top 27 Anime Boobs" on YouTube.
- September: @Dril debuts on Twitter with the tweet "No."
- December: The /r/circlejerk community launches on Reddit.
2009
- April: The ironic fandom of Smash Mouth's All Star begins with a Super Mario-themed parody of the music video on YouTube.
- July: Andrew Hussie posts the first Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic, popularizing the catchphrase "I told you about stairs bro".
- August: The satirical blog Obama Is Literally Hitler launches on Tumblr.
2010
- June: A slowed down remix of the Olsen Twins' song "Gimmie Pizza" goes viral on YouTube.
2011
- February: @Horse_ebooks debuts on Twitter with the tweet "How to Teach a Horse to Sit, Give a Kiss and Give a Hug."
- March: MLG montage parodies take off on YouTube. The "I cri evrytiem" copypasta surfaces on Tumblr.
- April: Trollface is intentionally misidentified as "Smiling Man" on 4chan, inspiring a slew of other incorrectly named memes and internet characters.
- August: "I'm In That Weird Part of YouTube" becomes a popular comment meme.
2012
- January: The "beta uprising" begins on 4chan with ironic rallies among the userbase of /r9k/. "2/10 Would Not Bang" gets adopted as an ironic comment meme among the users of /b/ on 4chan.
- June: The Facebook group "Going to MacDonalds for a salad roll is like going to a brothel for a hug" launches.
- July: "420 Blaze It" becomes an ironic catchphrase on Tumblr.
- October: The /r/me_irl subreddit launches on Reddit. "Coaxed Into a Snafu" goes viral on Facebook and spawns a series of poorly drawn rage comic and other popular meme characters. "Expand Dong" is posted on 4chan's /v/ board.
- November: The Brogre fandom around Shrek is born on Facebook.
2013
- February: "Tips fedora" expression begins spreading on 4chan.
- April: The /s4s/ ("shit 4chan says") board launhes on 4chan, signaling the dawn of the "shitposting" trend.
- June: The "フレッドYOLO" page launches on Facebook.
2014
- January: Air Horn Remixes go viral with the launch of /r/airhornremix on Reddit.
- February: The expression "Nice Meme" begins proliferating in Reddit’s circlejerk communities. People begin ironically posting lyrics from the 2003 alternative rock song "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence on 4chan’s /v/ board. Nice May May Man is created on /r/circlejerk.
- March: Nihilist Memes Facebook page launched.
- April: “Special Meme Fresh” Facebook page adopts the Meme Man as their profile picture. Neil Cicirega posts mashup of the song "Smooth" by Rob Santana featuring Rob Thomas.
- May: "I play KORN to my DMT plants smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff" Facebook page is launched. Tumblr user woodmeat publishes a post with the message "she succ me thru my boxers", popularizing "succ" as an ironic slang term.
- July: Gnome Child is popularized as an ironic meme on the /r/2007scape Runescape enthusiast subreddit.
- September: Gnome child “Born just in time to browse dank memes” image posted by Redditor xEphr0m, subsequently popularizing the expression "dank memes".
- October: The first Rare Pepes appear on /r9k/.
- November: An edited "I wish I could talk to ponies" comic popularizes the ironic slogan "jet fuel can’t melt steel beams".
- December: The first appearance of the infamous "REEEE" screech on 4chan’s /r9k/.
2015
- January: A picture of Pepe the Frog holding a glass with the caption "Well Meme’d My Friend" begins circulating on 4chan. Nihilist Arby's Twitter feed launched by writer Brendan Kelly.
- March: 4chan users coin the term "meme magic" to explain the parallels between Baneposting and the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash.
- July: The Barnie Sandlers Facebook page is created.
- August: First known "wholesome meme" posted on the Fempire Reddit clone site.
- October: “Special Meme Fresh” releases "Layers of Irony" Meme Man comic.
- November: the first mention of the ancient Egypitan diety Kek on 4chan.
2016
- March: The Choccy Milk Facebook page is created.
- April: The “Fresh Memes About the Mojave Desert and Other Delectable Cuisines” Facebook page posted the first unicycle-riding frog "Dat Boi" image macro. The "Succ my meme" Facebook page launched.
- May: The first Increasingly Verbose Meme is posted on Imgur.
- June: Weird Twitter begins posting ironic photoshops of Harambe the gorilla.
- July: Comedian Brandon Wardell tweets out the phrase “dicks out for harambe.” The first Nutshack theme replacement remix uploaded by YouTuber Ringabel.
- September: Imgur user TheRealOle uploads a gallery of "anti-memes".
- October: the first "Bee Movie But" replacement remix is uploaded by YouTuber wankerflaps.
- November: "We Are Number One" replacement remixes begin circulating on YouTube.
Did we miss anything noteworthy? Just drop us a line in the comments to be considered for inclusion in the timeline!
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Quantum Meme
I find the mix of the mainstream and 'memelords' have just ended up being normal people lagging behind in a YouTube era, but remaining in the contemporary age post 2010.
Furthermore, those who've been on the ride all through the terrible YTP memes (humour) and even survived the great pony era at the beginning of the decade perhaps feel jaded and create memes to combat the depression involved with a type of post-obscurity meme era.
Quantum Meme
(Satire)
CalvinTheBold
What about all of the ironic musical memes (Lisa Frank 420, SiivaGunner, Reposted in the Wrong Neigbourhood)?
Qnomei
Pretty much lines up with this image I found.
Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
Ironic memes didn't really start until 2014, and IMO post-ironic is still just ironic in the end.
Dionaea
Two ironies don't make an unironic
Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
That's what I'm saying.
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Darkhanov
At the same time that a great memetic tragedy is coming… people is seeing how mememagic is changing the world
It is mememagic perhaps one of the harbringers of this tragedy?
Bilbo Swaggins
I think that title mostly belongs to normies
Bilbo Swaggins
Maybe I'm biased but I feel this timeline needs to at least reference The meme renaissance
Smol Nozomi
I don't really like the term when it comes to "Ironic Memes"
It's either you like a meme or you don't! Don't hide the fact you like the Bee Movie videos or The Nutshack theme.
TheDwarvenGuy
This is like reading some sort of "Countdown to disaster" timeline, except the disaster is just 2017.
Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
What about 2016?
TheDwarvenGuy
That's the warmup disaster.
Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
What about 2018?
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Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
Meme Timeline:
1990s'-2005: Early/Classic/Innocent/Pre-YouTube Meme Era (Dancing Baby, Hamster Dance, the Star Wars Kid, and some Newgrounds/4Chan stuff)
2006-2008: YouTube Poop/Spadinner/YTP Era (CDi Zelda, Hotel Mario, DiC Mario/Sonic cartoons, Dr. Rabbit, George Volcano from Volvic Revive, Mario Head from Mario Teaches Typing, and others.)
2008-2010: Garry's Mod/Rubberfruit/Team Fortress 2 Era (The Idiots of Garry's Mod, GMod Idiot Box, Half-Life: Full-Life Consequences, Dr. Hax, Left 2 Dead Louis' PEELZ, TF2 GMod monsters like Painis Cupcake and Vagineer, various other TF2 memes like pootis, gottam, and SEE, and Rubberfruit videos in general)
2011-2013: The Impact Font/"Age of Rage"/Epic Fail/Pony Era (Rage Faces/Comics, Advice Animals, impact font captioned images, Lolcats, Demotivational Posters, "FAIL", unironic use of the word 'epic', and MLP:FiM/Bronies)
2014-Present: The Dank/Ironic/Twitter/Shitpost/"I have crippling depression." Era (Ironic memes, MLG Montages, "Why"/"Absolutely Disgusting'/"200% MAD"/Expand Dong, anything involving the DK Rap, JonTron, Vinesauce, penguinz0/Cr1tiKal, videogamedunkey, iDubbbzTV, Filthy Frank, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, comic sans, stock images, motion blur, glowing eyes, any combination of the previous four, pretty much anything out of the meme/shitpost side of Tumblr, Shrek/Bee Movie, and anything produced by SiIvaGunner)
TheManudo00
Damn i miss the YTPoop and the TF2 Era those were the good days.i remember back in 2009 everyone was mad at DomFear because he never released the Lazor Collection 5
Bill-Stan, Gaijin Supreme
Same here…Man, can you believe that Dominic Fear is still making Lazor Collections?
Jack the Dipper
A for effort, but a lot of this stuff is arbitrarily compartmentalized into narrow time frames, and others are just out of place altogether. For example, there's no way YTP and then GMod both held a monopoly on memes for 5 total years straight.
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arzion50000
Shit man, most of those memes have died out by now, only existing as hilarious one-time references nowadays. Is there an actual meme that has survived the test of time?
lil fella
The only mainstream meme that I can consider to still be relevant after nearly a decade is Pepe. Many old memes are still relevant on 4chan, but Pepe has the advantage of being relevant in the mainstream media.
Nii-san
Loss and Expand Dong are timeless so far.
Nedhitis
Which is funny, since it was about to die before all the media drama about it. I remember people calling it a "dead, outdated dank meme still forced by 4chan" around the Dat Boi times, and we even had this image:
But then, Trump happened, and suddenly, it became relevant once again. I suppose this is a prime example of meme magic at play.
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