About

KnowYourMeme Sunset refers to the discontinuation and sunsetting of KnowYourMeme's old UI, intending to push users to using the new user interface (UI). This action, seen as forcing a partially-finished product on the site's users, has been very controversial and has caused many users to leave the site in protest.

History

Around April of 2024, a UI update was pushed to KnowYourMeme with little to no advance notice. This UI was very unpopular with the userbase, with both the new and old layouts having a large amount of bugs. A large amount of users still preferred to use the old layout via use of the "Old Site" button.

Origin

On May 12, 2025 KnowYourMeme staff member Zach posted a thread^[1] to the KnowYourMeme forums that the old site layout was going to be fully shut down to completely focus on the new UI and to be favoured more by Google Search. This sparked a heavy backlash from the userbase, with Zach's post having 133 downvotes as of August 18, 2025 and making a large number of site users to deactivate or delete their accounts in protest.

Spread

Zach's thread began to be filled with complaints about the new website, with many users saying they were going to deactivate or delete their accounts in protest.
On May 21, 2025, user RamdomGuy2013 posted an image called "Sunset", being a collage of prominent users on an island watching the sun set over the website, which as of August 19, 2025 has 103 likes, over 6,400 views and 157 comments.^[2]
RamdomGuy3013 also posted a thread titled "KnowYourMeme Sunset", complaining of the sunsetting of the old UI and as of August 19, 2025 has over 7,500 views. ^[3]
These all garnered attention from the KnowYourMeme community, with a number of veteran and legacy users seeing this as the last straw to them, sharing their favourite memories from the website and deactivating or deleting their accounts in protest.

Many users saw this matching the pattern of enshittification, with a new, advertiser-friendly layout being forced on users despite having unpatched bugs.

External References

^[1] KnowYourMeme Forums – Old Site Being Sunset

^[2] KnowYourMeme –

^[3] KnowYourMeme Forums – KnowYourMeme Sunset