KYM Review: Breakthrough Meme Formats Of 2023

Each year, chronically online meme creators find new and elaborate ways to make content, throwing out old formats and adopting the latest and greatest technology that the internet has to offer.

Last year's breakthrough meme formats were often revolved around the accessibility of artificial intelligence, which led to an initial slew of AI-generated memes that have only cemented themselves further this year. At the same time, TikTok's rise continues to break barriers while other platforms, like the newly renamed X, have maintained the prowess of their meme-making communities.

The formats that define this year have surfaced across the web, spanning multiple platforms and meme trends that could not have existed before January. In fact, if you showed any of these meme formats to a Victorian child (a 2022 person), they'd probably explode.

Without further ado, let's showcase the breakthrough meme formats of 2023, defining this year in internet tomfoolery and creativity.

AI Voice

Artificial intelligence arguably got a lot scarier this year. Now more than ever, robots are coming for our jobs … and our voices.

In 2023, AI-generated voices produced some of the most inventive and increasingly modern memes. Nowadays, we don't need voice actors or Cameos to get a celebrity or character to say something off-color. Instead, one can clone Joe Biden and Donald Trump's voices with tools like ElevenLabs and simply make them play Fortnite.

AI song covers also have endless potential, producing Drake songs without the middle man or Mordecai singing Neutral Milk Hotel.

It's an insane medium in which anyone can say anything, which (yeah) might lead to misinformation problems going forward. But for now, let's just enjoy TF2 characters saying, "Skibidi Toilet or Creeper" while it's still childish.

pic.twitter.com/WY1mnERRdl

— heavy team fortres 2 (@heavyfortres) August 25, 2023

-Posting

The suffix "-posting" comes from the word Shitposting, but in 2023, "-posting" has taken on a life of its own, leading to nonsensical, exploitable trends like Alienposting. As if we were all from outer space, memes (for a moment this year) were hilariously catered to extraterrestrial life, recaptioned with "zeep glorp" jibberish and green-tinted skin.

The alien fever dream led to a series of variant "-posting" trends, namely Pirateposting that added anti-landlubber sentiments and aesthetics meant for the high seas to every meme, GIF and video in Davey Jones' locker.

In the later part of the year, Jollyposting became a new wave that builds on its predecessors. Each trend is low-brow and crude in a hilarious way, akin to the most absurd tendencies of Zoomer humor.

Hood Irony

Hood Irony is a genre of ironic memes that's been around since at least 2017, originally surfacing in the underbellies of Instagram, iFunny and Reddit. The oversaturation of WorldStarHipHop, AAVE and RapTV infographics led to the avant-garde "hood" aesthetic that used its signifiers in a new age of 21st-century humor.

Despite starting in the late 2010s, 2023 saw the largest uptick in mainstream Hood Irony content out of any year thus far, cementing itself in the fragment of TikTok's "For You" page as seemingly everyone was exposed to greenscreen silhouettes and SpongeBob selling candy in Memphis on their feeds.

Chaotic Hood Irony sounds dominated the meme landscape, leading to the hilarious mass hysteria that many likened to a lobotomy, for some reason. The popularization of Hood Irony is ultimately one more step into the void that has become known as post-ironic brain rot.

Papyrus, Rio De Janiero Filter Instagram Screenshots

As Hood Lobotomy videos trended on TikTok, a different genre of Hood Irony memes trended as images on Instagram and elsewhere, defined by ridiculously cropped and tilted screenshots that inserted Papyrus font and the dreaded Rio De Janeiro filter.

The trend embodied an aesthetic of poorly reposted memes, highlighting the absurdity of the repost culture by intentionally making the screenshot terrible. The vibey movement in "cool kid" Instagram circles eventually bled into mainstream awareness to the point where people started seeing that purple and blue gradient everywhere.

Corecore

The enigmatic video genre of Corecore is definitely one of the defining movements of this year, combining and subverting the entirety of "-core" aesthetics into one, unhinged, all-encompassing mess.

Although the genre started as peak "brain rot" at the end of last year, it continued into 2023 and became increasingly inspirational and influential, making odd guest appearances in pop culture like its namedrop during the infamous Congressional hearing for TikTok.

Corecore also inspired variant video genres with similar vibes, namely Pinkcore and 30core in recent months. All of the above acted as methods for editors to flex their skills and musicians to flex their music, leading to a plethora of attention from mainstream news outlets who attested (in a kind of cringy way) that it was a true Gen Z artform.

AI Video

In the years to come, AI voice memes will be nothing without AI-generated videos. With the click of a button and the typing of a few words, it appears that average meme creators with no video skills will soon be able to make anything do anything. Similar to how DALL-E got increasingly accurate over the past year, the same will happen with ModelScope and other AI-video tools.

We already saw flashes to the potential of AI video this year with uncanny yet mesmerizing trends like those Balenciaga videos with Harry Potter characters. We also saw the first ever fully AI-generated livestreams like Nothing, Forever (the Seinfeld clone) and ai_sponge (aka SpongeBob's deranged copycat).

As stated, AI video is only going to get better. Creatively, as meme creators and enjoyers, we're on the brink of entertainment being entirely randomly generated.

Nothinglikeyallcore

Last year, the internet witnessed the rise of TikTok's photo slideshows. The strange method of posting proved fruitful for the platform, even getting replicated by Instagram (which seemingly always gets worried when TikTok invents something new and then ultimately copies it).

The most groundbreaking slideshow trend this year is known by the garbled phrase Nothinglikeyallcore in which slideshow posters chose one meme to over-edit to a nauseating degree, whereby at the end, the source image was so far from the animation that was left.

The trend centered on a few memes, namely I'm Nothing Like Y'all (which showed a goldfish jumping out of a fishbowl) and Paracetamol (which was a crusty "WhatsApp screenshot making fun of a doctor's signature). TikTokers loved these memes and the weird fever dream that their editing induced.

Fake Podcasts

Does anyone remember when podcasts were purely audio? Nowadays, every podcast needs to have a camera in the room. Whatever happened to that old saying, "You have a face for radio?"

Because podcast clips have become so prevalent on vertical-scroll, short-form video platforms, some people seem to automatically trust anyone who has a hanging microphone in their face, so much so that we believed a man relieved himself seven times a day or that these two guys actually cared about Skibidi Toilet.

Not until this year did we witness fake podcasts on the timeline, warping our perception of what's two dudes or dudettes vibing on a topic and what's a pre-meditated psyop. Luckily, people are already parodying the idea and it's proving to be a lucrative fourth-wall break when done properly.

Gen Z Slang Overload

Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang terms are definitely the most confusing on the web right now for many people. However, when they're combined into a piece of Slang Overload, they create a beautiful instance of Zoomerification that'd make any Rizzler stick out their gyatt.

Rizz, Ohio, gyatt, Skibidi … the list of seemingly nonsensical buzzwords goes on and on.

In many memes this year, the sludge was combined into a defining trend that surfaced via song covers and the actual names of U.S. Naval ships.

Don't get us wrong, these words do mean something, but it's a lot funnier when no one knows what "Fanum tax" means and all of a sudden it's been inserted into your favorite '80s Christmas song. Seriously, will we ever run out of Rizz Nicknames?

NPC Streaming

Probably the most mind-boggling and dystopian format of the year is none other than TikTok's cursed LIVE trend known as NPC Streaming. People of all ages were curious and skeptical of the non-playable characters who seemed to be making a lot of money for objectively nothing.

The craze started with Pinkydoll whose "Ice cream so good!" catchphrase (and many other originals) captivated Twitter and the internet at large, causing many to wonder if the kids are alright.

NPC Streaming was far from over, though, as iconic figures such as I Need More Boolets came out of the woodwork. Each NPC streamer with their own schtick established themselves as the most desperate hustlers on the web. But, you know, "Make a buck," or whatever.

Looking for more of this year's best viral phenomena and memes? Be sure to check out our other 2023 meme roundups below:

• The Top 10 Memes Of 2023 — Coming soon…
• KYM Staff Picks Of 2023 — Coming soon…
• A Year On Twitter With Elon Musk
• Top Gaming Memes Of 2023 — Coming soon…
• Wackiest Stories Of 2023
• Trolls, Rumors and Hoaxes Of 2023 — Coming soon…
• Top Viral Videos of the Year — Coming soon…
• Top Slang Terms Of 2023
• Breakthrough Meme Formats Of 2023
• Most Impactful Fandoms Of 2023
• Top Anime Memes Of 2023 — Coming soon…
• Top Lewd Memes Of 2023