In The End

About

"In The End" is a rock song by the band Linkin Park, which gained popularity because of its well-known and repetitive chorus: "I tried so hard, and got so far, in the end it doesn't even matter." Despite the original popularity of the song, it is often mocked ironically. The song is also popular in anime music videos (AMVs), gaining a secondary popularity within that subculture. In 2022, the song regained popularity with In The Virtual End memes

Origin

"In the End" was released as the fourth single on Linkin Park's first album Hybrid Theory^[2], on October 9th, 2001. With much critical acclaim, the song reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was the number one song of 2002 according to the rock radio station Z100. The music video has more than 147 million views on YouTube since its posting on YouTube on October 26th, 2009.^[3]

(It starts with one) One thing, I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind, I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time (all I know)
Time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away, (it's so unreal)

Spread

"In the End" has been used in anime music videos since at least 2007, when it was used in a compilation video for Naruto. Searching for "In the End" and AMVs returns over 715,000 results, and the song has been used in music videos for popular anime like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon.

A popular instance where the song was mocked originated on 4chan where an anonymous user posted a thread in 2012 about how his friend had almost 30,000 plays of "In the End" on his iTunes. The friend being mentioned then happened upon the OP's thread, and bumped the post to say that it was him who liked the song, and provided proof.^[5]

The post, which has been named a "Best of 4chan", has been accused of being fake in multiple threads on reddit; however, a screen capture of the conversation has received over 1,260,000 views on Imgur.

Related Memes

In the Virtual End

"In The Virtual End" is a Machinima music video which recreates the music video for In the End by Linkin Park with Half-Life characters Eli Vance and Dr. Kleiner. In May 2022, the video achieved popularity as an Anime Memes Replaced With X meme format in the /r/OKbuddyHalfLife subreddit, later achieving mainstream popularity and being used as a bait-and-switch media.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External Refereces