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LordCowCow

Meme Of The Decade?

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The past decade?
That's hard to say, a lot has happened in the memesphere in the past decade.

My money goes to Loss, though, due to not only how long Loss has been a meme, but also just how it has evolved over the past decade. I don't know if it actually sums the decade well, but that's what I'm going with. There is not a single meme that has impact the way I look at 4 panel comics like loss has.

Edited by REP

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not super sure why i was pinged but ok

Anyway, best of the decade? That's a tough ask. To kind of echo what Rep said, what even were memes ten years ago? Double Rainbow? The first appearance of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party? The Game (you just lost)? Do people even remember these things (more importantly, did people know about them before I brought them up?)

Like, I understand why "Best of Decade" lists are appealing. They're a closer ten times as impactful as "Best of the Year" lists, putting a lid on ten years of culture and tying it all up in a bow. It makes sense for movies, right? I'm not going to say movies haven't evolved over the past ten years, but, like, you watch something like The Master and it's like "Okay, outside of Philip Seymour Hoffman being dead, this movie could be made today." Meanwhile, there have been popular memes from even a week ago that have been forgotten now. That "plant a bunch of trees" campaign? Poof. Gone from the collective consciousness.

We're moving towards an internet where the only memes that survive are the most versatile. I'm referring to notable templates like Drake and Expanding Brain, these things that spawn their own derivatives, yet still require a kernel of understanding of their basest concepts. And yet, if I'm calling these the best, I still feel like I'm discounting multitudes of other memes, some of which actually made a difference. The subset of youtube videos "X, but every time Y happens, Z" slowly morphed into We Are Number One, which actually raised cancer awareness and helped someone live much longer than they had been expected to. Various "Do silly thing for charity" challenges, popularized by the Ice Bucket for ALS challenge, genuinely raised awareness for those causes.

But to go down that route also gets into this "How does one even define 'best?'" territory and I'm not sure I'm comfortable or philosophically equipped to deal with tackling that particular conversation. So instead, I'm going to just pick one. What's my quote-unquote "best?"

Well, like I alluded to earlier, I'm interested in versatile subsets of memes, and if I'm picking a versatile set, I'd like to go with something so versatile that it can be used in multiple mediums. Things like the aforementioned Expanding Brain are great, but they really can only be used online, and in a space that allows images. Not all places have that. Real life, frequently, doesn't have that. Text, though, can be said aloud, and so can spread through the air just as well as any subreddit or facebook group.

I'm referring, of course, to the evolution of casual dismissal in language, stemming all the way back to tl;dr and all the way to modern day's "ok boomer." They can be used to call out nonsense ("Sir, this is an Arby's"). They can be used to provide summary (again "tl;dr" in its modern parlance). They can even be used to express mocking emotion ("This is so sad. Alexa, play..."). And, in perhaps my personal favorite use, they can be used to self-deprecatingly admit they've gone on too long and might as well wrap things up.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall:

 

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173.png

Don't mind me. Just posting this so people who remember won't forget. Not nominating it or anything.

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