The Year In Review

• A Golden Age of the Meme Culture: Say what you will about the current state of the memescape, but 2016 will soon be remembered as the year when memes broke through another great barrier and stepped into a new realm where no memes have gone before: The Beltway of Washington D.C. About six years ago, we began hearing references to internet memes on network TV shows. In the next few years, we started seeing memes plastered on advertisement, films, and occasionally, headline news. In 2016, we saw President Obama dropping the mic during his speech and the First Lady doing the Mannequin Challenge with star-studded guests in the Blue Room of the White House. If that doesn't impress, relish the fact that for the first time ever, "memes" was looked up on Google Search more frequently than Jesus and God. So, yeah, memes are sort of a big deal.

• The Dawn of a Post-Factual Era: This year, we saw the Internet getting bought, and getting got, on a scale of efforts and impact that we have never been seen before. Misinformation and disinformation ran amok and spread without a pause, while classified information leaked like a sieve from servers that were thought to be secure, largely driven by endless bouts of clash between the conservatives and liberals on the social media, critical breach and exploits of high-profile email servers by mysterious and highly skilled hackers, and of course, a booming industry of fake U.S. election news manufacturers for-hire in Eastern Europe. All this culminated with the Oxford Dictionaries' choice of "post-truth" as the word of the year earlier this month.

• A Regressive Trend in Quality-of-Meme: In 2016, the self-referential trend of the meme culture (or meta-memeosis as previously referred to in last year’s report) continued to run its course; the steadfast and high pressure winds of shitposting not only conventionalized such practice as a norm in the creative process of memes, but they also directly contributed to the regressive trend in quality-of-meme, aesthetics and substance, by lowering the entry barrier under the pretext of being ironic. But as the wise saying goes, "it’s still shitposting even if you are being ironic."

• Politicization of the Meme Culture: This year’s United States presidential election certainly wasn’t the first “social media election” that we’ve studied, but without a doubt, it was by far the most interesting and eventful political spectacle we have observed online in our lifetime. In the heat of the political showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, quite a few memes were openly endorsed and condemned by the two major political parties, most notably Pepe the Frog and “This Is Fine” Dog, while others were enlisted by web-savvy partisans to craft a cult of personality for their candidates in what became known as the Great Meme War of 2016.

• The Wave of the Early Aughts Nostalgia: It is only logical that our nostalgia of the past also ages with passage of time. This year, Smash Mouth's late 90s hit "All Star" and Santana's Grammy-winning "Smooth" spearheaded the wave of 90s nostalgia, while other one-hit-wonders and hits from the early 2000s began popping up on the social media.

The Meme of the Year

The Know Your Meme Reader's Choice Meme of 2016 Goes To…

"We Are Number One" (35% of Total Votes)

For the full results of the event, check out the poll page.

Top Memes of 2016

But of course, there was so much more than "We Are Number One" that dotted and shaped the memescape in 2016.

#10: "This Is Fine"

"This Is Fine" is a two-pane image of an anthropomorphic dog trying to assure himself that everything is fine, despite sitting in a room that is engulfed in flames. Taken from an issue of the webcomic series Gunshow illustrated by K.C. Green and published in early January 2013, the cartoon is typically used as a reaction image to convey a sense of self-denial or acceptance in the face of a hopeless situation.

#9: Word Replacement Remixes

Word Replacement Remixes refer to a series of YouTube Poop-style videos wherein all the words said in a video clip are replaced with another, usually a different word or a scene from another video, which results in drastic increase or decrease in the running time of the video. While the practice has been around since the mid-to-late 2000s, we saw a remarkable resurgence of such remixes on YouTube in 2016, spawning a handful of viral hits featuring The Nutshack Theme and The Bee Movie, among others.

#8: The Dab

The Dab is a style of hip hop dance that involves dropping one’s head with one arm raised and resting the face inside the elbow of the other arm, which essentially resembles the gesture of a polite attempt at muffling a loud sneeze. Originating from the hip hop scene in Atlanta, Georgia, the dance became mainstream popular in August 2015 after numerous professional football players adopted the move as a celebratory gesture, and continued to ride out its momentum well into the first half of 2016.

#7: Describe Yourself in 3 Characters

Describe Yourself In 3 Fictional Characters is an online forum game in which participants select fictional characters from popular media that they believe demonstrate various aspects of their personality. While the core concept of the game had been previously iterated on the social media since as early as 2014, this particular version skyrocketed in popularity on Twitter in late September 2016.

#6: "When The Sun Hits That Ridge Just Right"

When The Sun Hits That Ridge Just Right (also referred to as Pacha Edits) is a photoshop meme based on several exploitable images of Pacha, one of the main characters featured in Disney's animated buddy comedy film series The Emperor's New Groove, most notably a still shot of the character signaling an OK gesture with his left hand in satisfaction. Since making its debut on 4chan in late January 2016, the still shots of Pacha have spawned hundreds of photoshopped derivatives on numerous forums within the imageboard community, often accompanied by snowclone variants based on the quote.

#5: "Don’t Talk to Me or My Son Ever Again"

“Don’t Talk To Me Or My Son Ever Again” is a catchphrase associated with images featuring an iconic fictional character and its miniature offspring, the latter of which is produced by modifying the former character in image-editing applications like Photoshop. Originally introduced through a fan-made parody image of the Cowboy Bebop character Spike Spiegel in November 2014, the meme has seen a significant resurgence on Tumblr and Twitter following an influx of derivative “father-and-son” character images in late 2015.

#4: SpongeGar

SpongeGar is a nickname given to Spongebob Squarepants’ prehistoric ancestors as portrayed in the animated television series Spongebob Squarepants. Since May, still image of the character Primate Sponge wearing an angry expression has been used as a reaction image on the /mu/ (music) board on 4chan and Black Twitter.

#3: Harambe

Harambe was a 17-year-old Western lowland silverback gorilla who was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into his enclosure in late May 2016. The incident was wildly criticized online by many who blamed the child’s parents for the gorilla’s untimely death.

#2: Pepe

Pepe the Frog is an anthropomorphic frog character from the comic series Boy’s Club by Matt Furie. On 4chan, various illustrations of the frog creature have been used as reaction faces, including Feels Good Man, Sad Frog, Angry Pepe, Smug Frog and Well Meme'd.

#1: Dat Boi

Dat Boi (a colloquial pronunciation of “that boy”) is a nickname given to a 3D character model of a green frog riding a unicycle, typically accompanied by catchphrases like “here comes dat boi!” and “o shit waddup,” that went viral on social media in early 2016.

By Topics and Categories

Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined the Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

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