What’s the worst meme of the decade?

[Xerxes IX]

Dat Boi. To me, it was the first meme that started the modern meme trend of a meme lasting for a week, getting ran into the fucking ground by unfunny fags, and being abandoned. Also it was never funny in the first place.

Twitterites were saying Dat Boi was actually a good meme because it's inoffensive and finally an unproblematic frog unlike nazi Pepe, so I'm inclined to think it's shit just on that merit.

Together with Gamergate and the rise of SJWs, this laid the foundation for the gosh awfull 2010s as a cultural decade, including politicalization of like everything and the mainstreaming and commercialization of internet and "nerd" culture.

Harlem Shake was the patient zero for all those cancerous viral "challenges" on Youtube, Vine, and Tiktok. To prove your point apparenrtly Hillary Clinton even made a mannequin challenge video, which was the 2016 equivalent of Harlem Shake.

 

[kūhaku]

I don't even know half of the memes listed itt. And the ones I do know I enjoy using ironically, hell I forget that people offsite actually use them legitimately.

Memes in general are just shit and never should have gone beyond specific threads of imageboards or left personal friend groups.

Doubleposting because this is a good point.

I know memes in general are alright to share, in some cases a lot of people being in on the joke can make it funny but not most of the time.

I talk about reddit a lot and this analogy will probably go past some people but I take this point as basically the entirety of the “dankmemes” sub. The concept of a meme “format” is pretty fucking stupid already, you’re just putting a reaction image with a hypothetical situation. But the notion that memes can be “stolen,” memes can “die” (especially when they are the ones who kill them), and that meme formats can be good or bad just makes my blood boil.

I can’t fucking stand people who somehow claim memes are some sacred medium where you have to use popular formats or whatever to please strangers online. Memes are infinitely better when you share a joke with a friend and you both laugh because either you both get it or it’s an inside joke.

I think the creation of meme “pages,” like 9gag, reddit subs, iFunny, etc, are probably what lead to this mindset being so prevalent. Memes have become more about getting likes than actually being funny. Some people just don’t have any other way of self validation than approval from strangers over an image joke.

 

[Floop]

Doubleposting because this is a good point.

I know memes in general are alright to share, in some cases a lot of people being in on the joke can make it funny but not most of the time.

I talk about reddit a lot and this analogy will probably go past some people but I take this point as basically the entirety of the “dankmemes” sub. The concept of a meme “format” is pretty fucking stupid already, you’re just putting a reaction image with a hypothetical situation. But the notion that memes can be “stolen,” memes can “die” (especially when they are the ones who kill them), and that meme formats can be good or bad just makes my blood boil.

I can’t fucking stand people who somehow claim memes are some sacred medium where you have to use popular formats or whatever to please strangers online. Memes are infinitely better when you share a joke with a friend and you both laugh because either you both get it or it’s an inside joke.

I think the creation of meme “pages,” like 9gag, reddit subs, iFunny, etc, are probably what lead to this mindset being so prevalent. Memes have become more about getting likes than actually being funny. Some people just don’t have any other way of self validation than approval from strangers over an image joke.

That’s why the shit post bot 5000 twitter account is fucking hilarious, it just takes a random template and slaps a random image on it and it’s fucking great.

ShitpostBot 5000 (@ShitpostBot5000) | Twitter

The latest Tweets from ShitpostBot 5000 (@ShitpostBot5000). 🤖 Bot on a mission to save the meme world with its sentience.‌‌‌‌ ‌‌Facebook & Patreon: https://t.co/8mxRM3Yc4Y https://t.co/zJGckcDnif

twitter.com

 

[Mushroom Soup]

WINNING, Tiger Blood and all the rest of that Charlie Sheen shit that got popular years ago.

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

milkshake duck. all memes have a half-life where they decay into crap. but only a few start out as forced garbage, and none have been as transparently artificial as milkshake duck.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

Harlem Shake was the patient zero for all those cancerous viral "challenges" on Youtube, Vine, and Tiktok. To prove your point apparenrtly Hillary Clinton even made a mannequin challenge video, which was the 2016 equivalent of Harlem Shake.

IIRC the white helmets did a mannequin challenge vid too. Rumor had it they were interrupted staging an attack response and they/their handlers went "Quick, what's the big hip challenge maymay in the west?!"

 

[Floop]

milkshake duck. all memes have a half-life where they decay into crap. but only a few start out as forced garbage, and none have been as transparently artificial as milkshake duck.

I just looked it up, and it’s the most basic forgettable irrelevant garbage I’ve ever seen. Did that even last a couple days?

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

I just looked it up, and it’s the most basic forgettable irrelevant garbage I’ve ever seen. Did that even last a couple days?

in the sense of organic viral interest, no. it was stillborn outside of people on twitter with blue checkmarks. didn't stop oxford dictionary from putting it up as a word of the year.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

in the sense of organic viral interest, no. it was stillborn outside of people on twitter with blue checkmarks. didn't stop oxford dictionary from putting it up as a word of the year.

Word of the year is almost always worthless, irrelevant, forced bullshit nobody's ever heard of. That article about milkshake duck mentions oxford picking "youthquake" over "milkshake duck".

 

[Floop]

didn't stop oxford dictionary from putting it up as a word of the year.

HOW IS IT A WORD.

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

HOW IS IT A WORD.

fiat dictionary authority and really dumb hiring practices probably.

 

[Idiocy Abroad]

milkshake duck. all memes have a half-life where they decay into crap. but only a few start out as forced garbage, and none have been as transparently artificial as milkshake duck.

I've heard the term in passing but I've never read the actual article until now. That is quite possibly the gayest thing I've read on Wikipedia. Shit like this is why we need to reset the internet and just start over from scratch. I'm tired of people taking it so seriously.

If there's one thing I hope for in the next decade, it's that the "meme" of having to hate a thing because the creator did something bad one time fucks off. It always just makes me wonder what kind of skeletons the accusers have hiding in their closets that they'll eventually get cancelled for themselves, because God knows they aren't perfect.

 

[Floop]

Shit like this is why we need to reset the internet and just start over from scratch.

How would that work?

 

[Idiocy Abroad]

How would that work?

Solar flares.

Realistically though, there's nothing that can actually be done, just a bit of impotent sperging on my end. In the end, I have to hope the general attitude of people changes with time to be a bit more lax again.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Just Wojak and its ten billion derivatives in general.

Hillary did have a point in Pepe being evil. Just not the "right-wing mascot" kind of evil. Wojack too- even 4Chan hates these guys and it's amazing they still keep doing these low(er) quality variants

OK Boomer's also running its course, and so's all the labels in general. Like, does anyone care who's a "Zoomer", "Boomer" or "NPC"? what happened to just calling people "old"?

 

[Maskull]

The very concept of a meme as it is currently understood in popular consciousness is a meme in the traditional sense of which has developed into the rotten inorganic online pop culture now so prevalent.

 

[kūhaku]

Hillary did have a point in Pepe being evil. Just not the "right-wing mascot" kind of evil. Wojack too- even 4Chan hates these guys and it's amazing they still keep doing these low(er) quality variants

OK Boomer's also running its course, and so's all the labels in general. Like, does anyone care who's a "Zoomer", "Boomer" or "NPC"? what happened to just calling people "old"?

It's a shame that the boomer meme got appropriated. Zoomer, 30 year old Boomer, Doomer, Bloomer, they were all pretty funny gags and caricatures of the people they represented.

some songs copyright striked but video is still solid. especially when the boomer joins the doomer for ghost in the shell

 

[Dom Cruise]

Freeze peach by far.

To think of the left who for decades fought for free speech before turning around and throwing it under the bus and mocking it? It's staggeringly stupid.

 

[Floop]

Freeze peach by far.

To think of the left who for decades fought for free speech before turning around and throwing it under the bus and mocking it? It's staggeringly stupid.

You only say that because you voted for drumpf and think mean things we don’t like! #DomCruiseisoverparty

 

[Syaoran Li]

Honestly, if I had to pick a "Top 5" of the worst memes of the decade, these would be my picks.

1. "Freeze Peach"
2. Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism
3. Bronies (It's hard to believe that it was originally meant as an ironic joke)
4. Eating Tide Pods
5. OK Boomer

A good counterpart question would be what are the best memes of the decade?

My personal picks would be Steamed Hams (and similar Simpsons memes like Sugarposting), Virgin vs. Chad, and some of the YouTube memes like "But it's played in an empty mall" remixes of old songs from the 80's and 90's.

Boomer Wojak and the spin-offs of it was sort of cool at first, which is why it took a little longer for it to die, but now it's just gotten ridiculous.