Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

No I don't mean the deadpool. I was thinking… what memes could be described as dead eg: those that are'nt used anymore in any significant amount? quite a few fall into this probably, though only the really old memes come to mind.

So old memes, that used to be popular that are not popular any more.

IDK any.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ate-my-balls

Prehaps this?
Don't know if the dancing baby thing would count.

Woll Smoth?

I've seen a few examples of it but very few.

What about the montauk Monster or Crichton Leprechaun? There's a few in their that were probably famous for a month or two then died out. Can anyone think of any examples?

I wouldn't say Woll Smoth is dead. He isn't used as much anymore, but I definitely see him around.

so your asking where they go when there dead?
for some reason Lancelot seems fitting o_O

rickroll

I definetly would'nt class rickroll as dead.

How about we start a list?

the game

I was thinking that maybe the Internets too young to have dying memes already.

Miss Teen USA South Carolina? I Like Turtles?

The thing is, even if everyone who first initiated the meme stop participating in it, a lot of memes continue on to some degree.

Trout Slap isn't even quite dead yet.

Searches for it have been mostly dead for over a year: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=trout%20slap&cmpt=q

To be honest, I'm confused about why there was such an increase in 2007 for such an old one.

Someone on Huffington Post just used trout-slap earlier today:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/geopolitical-pre-quakes-c_b_596521.html

Isn't this an old meme, not sure if documented, dont even know the name lol.

all your base?
come on…

Yeah I was thinking more of the ones that happened and then kind of faded away quickly.

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY is definitely dead.

Varg kinda died before he started.

And pretty much every cancer meme older than 2 weeks is dead.

other than the christian bale rant i got nothing
youtube poop is waning

I'll start a list.
Ate My Balls
Christian Bale Rant
Tinaecmusic

These are the ones I think are dead for sure.

I'll remove memes from this list If I see them in a large number.

People still use every single meme mentioned in this thread so far. Being past their peak doesn't mean they're dead. Most memes settle into a state of equilibrium, no longer growing but still used to some degree. The fact that each of these memes has been mentioned basically brings them back.

You got a point their. Well okay rather than dead memes maybe inactive ons or something? I'm not suggesting we get rid of them from the site or anything.

GFW -- I hear you on this. I'm also very interested in the "date of decline", or more quantitatively, "the date this became less popular than X", where X is some kind of not-that-popular benchmark

Point in case: March 2008 -- All Your Base becomes less popular than mudkips

(obvious flaw: we need something older/more consistent than mudkips)

How do you put a google trends chart into your post?

Hmmmm I'd say Sparta remixes are dying. Some people still persist making them but they never get any attention anymore, even if they're good.

^ but they still are watched and created and at least get some attention. As long as people are willing to make remixes, then it is still alive.

@GFW put !s around image URLs

@Jamie Dubs

I like to use "40 Cakes" as a minimum threshold of search interest. The whole meme about how Lex Luthor took 40 cakes (and that's terrible) generates just enough search volume to show a trend on Google Insights, but not enough to even show up in Google Trends. It's also microscopic next to Boxxy, and has about 1/6th the search volume of Advice Dog.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=40%20cakes%2C%22advice%20dog%22&cmpt=q

We don't know of any truly dead memes, if we did, they wouldn't be dead.

@chrismen -- great benchmark. I love saying things like "0.16 advice dogs" :) In all my research I've never been able to find a good standard unit for measuring popularity, which is how "famo" came about.

Unfortunately I don't think famo exactly describes what we're talking about -- maybe "cakes" is a better unit? Advice Dog is 6 cakes :)

Seeing how Boxxy flatlines cakes it might be necessary to find a baseline for a low, medium, and high popularity benchmark. e.g. Boxxy is the high-water:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=epic%20beard%20man%2Cpedobear%2Cboxxy%2Ckeyboard%20cat&cmpt=q

Compare it to porn, if it even shows up, than it must be pretty epic, thats considering 80% of the pictures on the internet are of naked woman.

And no I was not joking.

Chuck Norris Jokes.

@Sweatie Killer: I've tried that before, and porn greatly overshadows the rest, but it may just be the memes used in the comparison.

@marimba

Yeah but for advice dog, theres alot of that,yeah…

Some time in the next few weeksI'm gonna try memes on google insights and see if their are any which have greatly diminished in use or ones that havent even appaeared recently.