Meme Checkpoint

About

Meme Checkpoint refers to the type of social media posts that encourage users to share the latest meme they've saved to their phone. A popular form of engagement bait and sharing memes online, Meme Checkpoints saw popularity on Twitter and Facebook starting April 2018, and have often been posted by meme pages and accounts.

Origin

While the earliest found "meme checkpoint" post was shared by Facebook^[1] page Aborted Dreams on April 3rd, 2018, it's likely the image was posted elsewhere prior to that. The image, which depicts a female police officer talking to a driver and is captioned "This is a meme checkpoint. Show me the most recent meme in your phone" received over 1,900 reactions, 3,000 shares and 4,000 comments, most of them memes, in five years (image shown below).

Spread

On April 5th, 2018, Twitter^[2] user @jlist started the earliest notable "meme checkpoint" thread on Twitter, posting an image of two anime girl police officers using the same caption. The post (shown below, left) received over 80 retweets and 520 likes in five years. On April 13th, 2018, Facebook^[3] page The Nerd Community posted a Rick and Morty version that earned over 730 reactions, 630 shares and 2,700 comments in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

The "meme checkpoint" format achieved significant popularity with meme accounts on Twitter, being used as engagement bait and a place to exchange memes. Images used in the format often features humorous images of police officers talking to people, and popular characters edited with the Hand Holding a Gun exploitable.

For example, on March 3rd, 2020, Twitter^[4] meme account @cake_hoarder made a "meme checkpoint" post that received over 200 retweets and 4,300 likes in three years (shown below, left). On September 5th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @LucidFox made a "meme checkpoint" post that gained over 640 retweets and 6,500 likes in three years (shown below, right)>

The format maintained presence on format through the early 2020s; in addition to "most recent meme" and "best meme" versions, thematic versions of the meme calling to share memes about a particular media also gained popularity during that period.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References