The Creator Of 'I FORGOR💀' Reveals The Secret To The Meme's Success

Consider, if you will, the meme below. What does this meme mean to you? If you’re a boomer, or just an average meme fan, it probably doesn’t mean a whole lot. If you’re a zoomer on the other hand, well … it still probably doesn’t mean a whole lot on the surface, but at least you understand that's the point. At least you might get a sensible chuckle out of it.

The meme you just looked at is an ultimate nonsense amalgamation of at least three different memes in its text alone: BOGOS BINTED👽, What the Dog Doin'?, and I FORGOR💀. All these memes share the same purpose for the average zoomer: to troll and confuse the unknowing using nonsense but familiar language that forces itself into your brain while awarding those who understand or learn the meme with a sense of pride and satisfaction for being in on the joke. At least, that’s how the meme’s creator, Twitter user @ItsNotSeabass, described it when we reached out to get more insight on the success of the format.

“Everyone is so used to seeing a word spelled a certain way that when it is spelled wrong it just looks bizarre and sticks out. Because no one is used to it being spelled that way it is funny and the emoji in both 'I FORGOR💀' and 'BOGOS BINTED👽' just adds to the weirdness.”

I FORGOR💀 isn’t just one of the most explosive memes of 2021, it’s also one of the most nonsense ones alongside formats like BOGOS BINTED👽 and “What The Dog Doin?,” two equally massive memes in their own right that demand confusion the first time you see them. In I FORGOR💀’s case, the simple phrase – a misspelling of “I Forgot” – quickly became the internet’s way of letting everyone know they forgot something while simultaneously confusing as many unknowing viewers as possible. It became a punchline that could be slapped on nearly any meme to turn it into a shitpost, as well as the perfect way to troll people in the comments, allowing trolls to offer up a solution to a question and then bait-and-switch with “I FORGOR,” likely never having the answer to begin with.

“I did not expect it at all. Back in February my tweet gained a little bit of traction from some Instagram meme pages, but in June an edit was made that showed Walmart replying to me saying ‘Kill yourself.’ This screenshot was then posted on various platforms until eventually the edit was cut out entirely and just my original tweet was being posted. Soon people just started saying it.“

As the meme was exposed to and picked up by more and more people, it spread like wildfire until it littered nearly every comment section and post on meme pages around the web.

“The Instagram page @on_a_downward_spiral, with 400k followers at the time, made a few posts using the phrase in one day, sparking a domino effect which really helped it gain popularity. The first meme I saw using I FORGOR💀 was the 'how to get rich quick video.' It was made by one of my friends and posted to his Instagram page baby.hood.moments just four days after my tweet.”

Saying it and embracing it became a way of having a quick laugh and showing you belong in the meme community — that you keep up with the memes and know how to use them. But where did the phrase come from initially, and did SeaBass know what he was doing when he shared it?

“The [mis]spelling of I FORGOR💀 in the tweet was intentional. It's been an inside joke between some friends in a group chat for around a year now, that simply started by me saying 'I FORGOR' as a typo, and my friend replying with a skull emoji. I was inspired to post it by a tweet from @iamclous (which is a bot) where they say "shoutout to Walmart" and when Walmart replies ‘ok.’ I wanted to do something similar to Walmart, and once they replied I couldn't think of anything, so I said ‘I FORGOR💀.’

ItsNotSeabass' experience with I FORGOR💀’s viral success follows in the footsteps of dozens and dozens of other misspelled and nonsense memes dating back to the beginning of meme culture itself. Without getting into it too deeply, the Internet has been propping typos up on a pedestal since the days of 1337 speak and LOLcats.

This has only continued with memes like Doge, Cheems and BOGOS BINTED👽. It’s gotten to the point where we’re now intentionally misspelling and making up insane words for the sake of the meme, like thicc and yeet, words that have now become a staple of online and even IRL discourse in a lot of instances.

BOGOS BINTED👽 and I FORGOR💀 show the next extension of this with the addition of emojis at the end of the word. The emojis come with assumed emotions and connotations that add another layer to the meme. BOGOS’ alien emoji gives the word a very alien, surreal feel. The skull emoji after I FORGOR💀 adds a sense of doom or defeat to I FORGOR💀. Absurd phrases and words like this are more than just dumb zoomer memes, they’re an evolution of the way we speak online — for better or worse.

The I FORGOR💀 boom has passed, but meme pages are still posting and reposting new I FORGOR💀 memes every day. Like the Squidward meme we saw at the start of this piece, many of the newest I FORGOR💀 memes reference the absurdity of the phrase alongside other recent absurd zoomer meme phrases. The memes show how each new phrase supports the next, becoming commonplace among those who are chronically online and embedded in meme culture.

Memes like I FORGOR💀 and BOGOS BINTED👽 are built on some of the most practiced, proven meme concepts we have. They’re inside jokes turned outside jokes that evolve our online language, expand our trolling possibilities, and stick with us long after the boom has died down. It goes without saying that we’ll see a lot of memes in the same vein as these in the future.