About

Moldy is a slang term used as a negative adjective towards memes, tweets and images. A Moldy Meme is a meme with visible quality reduction due to being redownloaded and reposted hundreds or more times, as well as a meme that's so frequently seen online that it is no longer perceived as funny. This term differs from deep-fried memes, which are deliberately altered to reduce their quality.

Origin

The Facebook page Old Moldy Memes has been posting memes since 2016 labeled as "moldy," the first known use of the term in a derogatory manner towards such memes. The earliest meme uploaded to the page was posted on September 8th, 2016 (seen below), depicting someone pouring ketchup onto their mac and cheese.^[1]

The subreddit /r/MoldyMemes defines moldy memes as the following:^[2]

Memes that have been reposted so many times they have been "naturally" deep-fried or "molded" due to compression.

Spread

Over time, people began to call out other meme creators as well as themselves for posting moldy memes. For example, this meme (seen below) posted to /r/teenagers^[3] on April 26th, 2021, was captioned with, "POV: You Are Looking at a Moldy Meme," receiving 60 upvotes and four comments in four months.

Moldy Memes Subreddit

Created on June 5th, 2018, /r/MoldyMemes catalogs the worst memes that have been visually altered due to age and repost frequency. As of August 2021, it has approximately 52,500 members. The top post of all time on the subreddit is a meme (seen below) uploaded by u/karma_police from September 2020. It received over 4,900 upvotes and 43 comments in six months.^[4]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References