Twitter & The Mainstreaming

2012 — 2017. Twitter eats the meme stack. The 140-character constraint forces compression. Quote-tweets become a reaction format. Screenshots of single tweets become their own medium, posted to Instagram and Tumblr and back to Twitter. The dril tweet, the weird Twitter voice, and the post-ironic ambient absurdism of accounts like @dril, @big_ben_clock, and @horse_ebooks rewire how a sentence can be funny online. The image-macro format mutates into the four-panel comparative: Drake Hotline Bling (approve / disapprove), Distracted Boyfriend (stock photo as social commentary), Expanding Brain, Roll Safe, Mocking SpongeBob, Evil Kermit. The format becomes a syntax: you can plug any pair of comparisons into Drake's two panels and the joke writes itself. Brands arrive. Wendy's goes feral on Twitter in 2017. Steak-umm philosophises. Adweek publishes case studies. The Oxford English Dictionary adds entries. Meme the noun graduates from forum slang to professional vocabulary. The decade's most-shared photographs are by amateurs, of strangers, captioned by other strangers.

Part of The Meme Oracle

33 moments in this segment.

  1. — Crying Jordan. Date: 11 September 2009 (photograph); March 2016 (peak) · Place: Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, Massachusetts · Figures: Michael Jordan, subject · Stephan Savoia, AP photographer · Tags: Sports, PhotoCutout, Reaction 01. The Induction Speech Stephan Savoia of the Associated Press photographs Michael Jordan crying during his Hall of Fame induction speech on 11 September 2009. The image is filed and forgotten. By 2012 it surfaces on sports forums as a cutout to caption any losing team's fans. By March 2016, around the NCAA tournament, Crying Jordan is the default photoshop applied to any human being who has just lost anything: Marco Rubio after Florida, Cam Newton after Super Bowl 50, every coach pulled off the floor, eventually Jordan himself when the Bulls lose. 02. The Face That Eats Outcomes ESPN runs an explainer in March 2016 quantifying Crying Jordan's takeover of sports Twitter as the dominant reaction format. Jordan himself comments only once, in 2016, that he finds it not bothering me. The image becomes the canonical demonstration that any sufficiently emotional photograph eventually becomes a face-swap mask. Sources • Stephan Savoia, AP photograph, 11 September 2009 • Justin Tinsley, The Undefeated/ESPN, 'How the Crying Jordan meme became the standard', 7 April 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Crying Jordan'
  2. — Grumpy Cat. Date: 22 September 2012 · Place: Morristown, Arizona; Reddit r/pics · Figures: Tardar Sauce, cat · Tabatha Bundesen, owner · Bryan Bundesen, brother who posts to Reddit · Tags: Cat, Reaction, Brand 01. Feline Dwarfism on r/pics On 22 September 2012 Bryan Bundesen posts a photo of his sister Tabatha's cat Tardar Sauce to Reddit's r/pics. The cat's permanent scowl is the product of feline dwarfism and an underbite. Commenters accuse him of Photoshop; he posts video proof the same day. Within forty-eight hours the image is on the front page of Reddit, captioned with two-line top-and-bottom Impact in the lolcat grammar. The face becomes a universal reaction macro for refusal. 02. The Brand By December 2012 Tabatha signs with talent agent Ben Lashes. Friskies makes Grumpy Cat its 'official spokescat' in 2013. A Lifetime Christmas movie airs November 2014 with Aubrey Plaza as the voice. Tardar Sauce dies 14 May 2019 of a urinary tract infection. Grumpy Cat is the moment the meme-as-property thesis becomes legible to brand managers. The cat earns an estimated one hundred million dollars in licensing; the family disputes the figure. Sources • Reddit r/pics, original Bryan Bundesen post, 22 September 2012 • Forbes, 'How Grumpy Cat Earned Her Owner $99.5 Million in Just 2 Years', 7 December 2014 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Grumpy Cat'
  3. — Big Bird vs Romney. Date: 3 October 2012 · Place: University of Denver; Twitter · Figures: Mitt Romney, Republican nominee · Big Bird, Sesame Street puppet · Caroll Spinney, performer · Jim Lehrer, moderator · Tags: Politics, Twitter, Debate 01. I Like Big Bird At the first 2012 presidential debate Mitt Romney tells moderator Jim Lehrer he will cut the federal PBS subsidy. I like PBS, I love Big Bird, Romney says, but I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. Within minutes @FiredBigBird is registered on Twitter. The account hits 25,000 followers in an hour. Tumblr fills with Big Bird in a soup line. The Obama campaign cuts a thirty-second ad called Big Bird within four days, ranking the yellow puppet beside Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay as Romney's enemies. 02. Realtime Twitter Politics The debate logs 10.3 million tweets, the most political event ever measured by Twitter at that point. The Big Bird spike establishes the pattern that defines the next eight years: a single off-script line metabolises into a shareable joke before the candidate finishes the sentence. Sesame Workshop asks the Obama campaign to pull the ad. The campaign declines. Big Bird hosts SNL on 6 October, performed by Caroll Spinney. The 2012 election is the first in which the second screen is the primary screen. Sources • Transcript, First 2012 Presidential Debate, Commission on Presidential Debates, 3 October 2012 • Twitter Government blog, 'Dispatch from the Denver debate', 4 October 2012 • New York Times, 'Big Bird Becomes Election Issue', 4 October 2012
  4. — Vine Launches and Defines the Loop. Date: 24 January 2013 · Place: New York; acquired by Twitter October 2012 · Figures: Dom Hofmann, co-founder · Rus Yusupov, co-founder · Colin Kroll, co-founder · Twitter, acquirer · Tags: Platform, Vine, Format 01. Six Seconds, Looping Twitter ships Vine on 24 January 2013, four months after acquiring the company from Hofmann, Yusupov, and Kroll for thirty million dollars. The constraint is brutal: six-second clips, autoplay, infinite loop, no skipping. Within a year the constraint produces a wholly new comedic form. Setup and punchline collapse into a single gesture; the loop turns repetition into rhythm. Vine Stars Thomas Sanders, King Bach, Lele Pons, and Brittany Furlan accumulate audiences in the tens of millions. 02. Twitter Kills It Twitter announces Vine's shutdown on 27 October 2016 amid an inability to monetize. The app remains live through January 2017; the archive stays online as an artifact through 2019. Vine's grammar migrates wholesale to TikTok when ByteDance launches it internationally in September 2017. Half the canonical TikTok moves are direct Vine descendants. Sources • Twitter blog, 'Introducing Vine', 24 January 2013 • Casey Newton, The Verge, 'Why Vine died', 28 October 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Vine'
  5. — Harlem Shake. Date: 2 February 2013 · Place: YouTube; Brisbane, Australia (Sunny Coast Skate) origin upload · Figures: Baauer (Harry Rodrigues), producer · Filthy Frank (George Miller), first costumed upload · Sunny Coast Skate, viral catalyst · Tags: YouTube, Dance, VideoReply 01. Thirty-One Seconds Baauer's instrumental Harlem Shake drops on Mad Decent's Jeffree's imprint in May 2012. On 30 January 2013 George Miller, performing as Filthy Frank, posts a short video of four costumed friends thrashing to the drop. On 2 February 2013 the Australian teen crew Sunny Coast Skate copy the format with a clean structure: one person dancing alone in a helmet for fifteen seconds, the bass drop, jump cut to the entire room in costume losing their minds for fifteen more. The structure is the meme. Within a week forty thousand response videos exist. The Norwegian army, the Miami Heat bench, the Today Show, Facebook HQ, and a Boeing 737 in flight all post versions. 02. The Billboard Rule Change Baauer's track hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 2 March 2013, the first week YouTube views count toward chart position. The Harlem Shake forces the rule change. Residents of actual Harlem object that the dance bears no relationship to the local 1981 Albert Boyce original. Schlepa, a Harlem resident, films interviews of neighbors watching the videos with visible distaste. The meme's geographic illiteracy becomes part of its record. "That's not the Harlem Shake." — Harlem resident in Schlepa's street interview, posted 20 February 2013 Sources • Billboard, 'Baauer's Harlem Shake Hits No. 1', 27 February 2013 • Kevin Ashton, The Atlantic, 'You Didn't Make the Harlem Shake Go Viral, Corporations Did', 28 February 2013 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Harlem Shake'
  6. — Confused Math Lady. Date: March 2013 (telenovela air); 2016 (peak) · Place: Brazil; Vine and Twitter · Figures: Renata Sorrah, actress as Nazare Tedesco · TV Globo, network airing Senhora do Destino reruns · Tags: Reaction, Telenovela, PhotoCutout 01. Equations Floating Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah plays the villain Nazare Tedesco in TV Globo's 2004 telenovela Senhora do Destino. In a 2013 GIF compilation a frame of her squinting calculation is overlaid with floating mathematical equations. The GIF migrates from Tumblr to Twitter through 2014 and 2015. By 2016, with the rise of confused-Nick-Young face the same year, the equation-overlay Sorrah is the dominant visual for doing complicated mental math under pressure. 02. Apple Adopts Apple includes the Confused Math Lady symbology in iOS animoji and emoji-reaction marketing by 2018. Sorrah herself acknowledges the meme on Brazilian television with bemused grace. The face becomes the canonical pictogram for cognitive overload in the meme grammar of the decade. Sources • TV Globo, Senhora do Destino episode broadcast, 2004 • Folha de Sao Paulo, 'Renata Sorrah comenta meme da Nazare confusa', 20 May 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Confused Math Lady'
  7. — #BlackLivesMatter. Date: 13 July 2013 · Place: Oakland and New York; Facebook and Twitter · Figures: Alicia Garza, organiser · Patrisse Cullors, organiser · Opal Tometi, organiser · George Zimmerman, acquitted defendant · Trayvon Martin, killed 26 February 2012 · Tags: Hashtag, BlackTwitter, Movement 01. A Love Letter to Black People On the night of 13 July 2013 a Florida jury acquits George Zimmerman of the killing of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Alicia Garza writes a Facebook post she calls a love letter to Black people ending with the line Our lives matter, Black lives matter. Patrisse Cullors shares it with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Opal Tometi builds the social infrastructure across Tumblr and Twitter the following week. The phrase exists before the hashtag; the hashtag is what makes it a movement. "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter, Black lives matter." — Alicia Garza, Facebook, 13 July 2013 02. Ferguson and After The hashtag is used roughly 5,000 times in the year after Martin's verdict. After Michael Brown is killed in Ferguson on 9 August 2014 it appears 1.7 million times in three weeks. By the end of 2016 it has been tweeted 30 million times. BLM is the case study every organiser studies next. The architecture is hashtag as masthead, distributed cell as chapter, Vine and Periscope as wire service. The state learns to track hashtags too. Sources • Alicia Garza, 'A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement', The Feminist Wire, 7 October 2014 • Pew Research Center, 'An analysis of #BlackLivesMatter and other Twitter hashtags related to political or social issues', 11 July 2018 • Jelani Cobb, 'The Matter of Black Lives', The New Yorker, 14 March 2016
  8. — Denny's Surreal Voice. Date: October 2013 · Place: Twitter and Tumblr; Spartanburg, South Carolina · Figures: Denny's, restaurant chain · Erwin Penland, agency · Gawker Media, early amplifier · Tags: Brand, Tumblr, Surreal 01. Pancake Posters In October 2013 the Denny's Tumblr account posts a low-resolution photo of a stack of pancakes with the caption zoom in on the syrup. Then a closer crop. Then closer. The bit runs nine posts deep. The account is run by the agency Erwin Penland out of Spartanburg, South Carolina, the city Denny's calls home. The voice borrows directly from Weird Twitter and shitposting Tumblr. It posts about being trapped inside a pancake, about the suspicious behaviour of a single hash brown, about the soul of breakfast. It never sells anything. 02. Brand Voice Year Zero Within twelve months every brand on Twitter is trying to sound like Denny's. MoonPie, Steak-umm, Sunny D, Arby's, Wendy's all hire copywriters fluent in shitpost. The diner chain that nobody under thirty went to becomes the template for talking to people under thirty. The lesson the marketing industry absorbs is that the voice of a chain restaurant can be indistinguishable from a depressed twenty-three-year-old, and that this is good for business. Sources • Tim Nudd, 'How Denny's Became the King of Twitter and Tumblr', Adweek, 25 March 2014 • Digiday, 'Inside Denny's social strategy', 11 June 2015 • Denny's Tumblr archive, October 2013 onward
  9. — Doge. Date: 2013 (viral peak November) · Place: Tumblr, then Reddit, then everywhere · Figures: Atsuko Sato, kindergarten teacher and Kabosu's owner, Sakura City, Japan · Kabosu, the Shiba Inu (b. 2 November 2005, d. 24 May 2024) · Tags: Doge, Comic Sans 01. Wow. Such Shiba. Atsuko Sato adopts Kabosu, an abandoned Shiba Inu, from a puppy mill in November 2008. She posts photos to her personal blog. In February 2010 one specific photo — Kabosu sitting on a couch, eyebrows raised, looking sideways at the camera with a slight smile — gets reposted to Tumblr. Three years later, in late 2013, someone adds wow. such doge. in Comic Sans, multicolored. The internal-monologue-of-the-dog format crystallizes. Within weeks, Comic Sans captions overlaid on Kabosu with the structure wow. such X. very Y. so Z. are everywhere. The genre rewards bad grammar specifically. It is, structurally, an anti-image-macro: not Impact font, not white outline, not declarative. Doge is the meme's first explicit anti-aesthetic to Impact-font macros. 02. Doge Becomes Dogecoin On 6 December 2013, software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launch Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency parody using the Doge meme as its branding. They intend it as a joke about Bitcoin speculation. By January 2018, Dogecoin's market cap briefly exceeds $2 billion. By May 2021, after Elon Musk's repeated promotion, it briefly exceeds $90 billion. Kabosu the actual dog dies on 24 May 2024 at age 18. Atsuko Sato runs an Instagram (@kabosumama) until the end. The dog never knew it was the cover image of a $90 billion financial asset. Wow. such market. very cap. so meme. Sources • Atsuko Sato, Kabosu-mama blog (2010-2024) • Know Your Meme, Doge entry • Dogecoin whitepaper / launch announcements, December 2013
  10. — #BlackGirlMagic. Date: 2013 · Place: Twitter; Washington, DC · Figures: CaShawn Thompson, originator · Misty Copeland, ballerina invoked · Simone Biles, gymnast invoked · Julee Wilson, Essence editor · Tags: Hashtag, BlackTwitter, Affirmation 01. The Original Phrasing In 2013 CaShawn Thompson begins tweeting black girls are magic as a way of cataloguing the everyday and historic achievements of Black women. The clipped hashtag #BlackGirlMagic follows. Thompson sells the phrase on T-shirts from her account; the tag spreads without her brand attached. By January 2016 Essence magazine runs a four-cover issue under the banner. Misty Copeland's American Ballet Theatre promotion, Simone Biles's first all-around world title, and Ava DuVernay's Selma awards run are tagged on Twitter the same week they happen. 02. Joy as Counter-Hashtag BlackGirlMagic functions as the affirmative counterweight to BlackLivesMatter on the same timeline. The protest tag mourns; the magic tag celebrates. The same accounts post both, often in the same hour. Critics inside the community argue the word magic dehumanises Black women into superhuman labourers. Linda Chavers writes the case against in Elle, January 2016. Thompson responds that magic is the point: ordinary made visible. Sources • Julee Wilson, 'The Meaning Of #BlackGirlMagic, And How You Can Get Some Of It', Essence, 12 January 2016 • Linda Chavers, 'Here's My Problem With #BlackGirlMagic', Elle, 13 January 2016 • Washington Post profile of CaShawn Thompson, 22 February 2016
  11. — Netflix and Chill. Date: 20 January 2014 (Twitter coinage); 2015 peak · Place: Twitter; Black Twitter; Tumblr · Figures: @kayswisha (Cory Levy), Twitter user credited · Netflix, brand · Black Twitter, propagator · Tags: BlackTwitter, Vocabulary, Brand 01. Innocent to Euphemism The phrase Netflix and chill appears on Twitter as early as 2009 in the literal sense. By 20 January 2014, when @kayswisha tweets Netflix and chill?, the phrase has accreted its euphemistic second meaning on Black Twitter. By summer 2015 the phrase is a national punchline. Netflix itself stays silent for two years, then acknowledges the meme with carefully neutral marketing copy in 2016. The euphemism is added to OxfordDictionaries.com on 1 April 2016. 02. Lexicographic Catch-up Netflix and Chill is the cleanest case of a phrase moving from Black Twitter to dictionary in eighteen months without the originators being named or paid. The pattern repeats with on fleek, tea, and slay across the same window. By 2018 the phrase is dated. The euphemism is folded into the standard register; the originating cohort moves on. Sources • @kayswisha, Twitter post, 20 January 2014 • Andrew Hampp, Billboard, 'A Brief History of Netflix and Chill', 25 August 2015 • Oxford Dictionaries online, addition, 1 April 2016
  12. — Ice Bucket Challenge. Date: July-August 2014 · Place: Sarasota, Florida; Boston, Massachusetts · Figures: Pete Frates, former Boston College baseball captain · Pat Quinn, ALS patient · Chris Kennedy, golfer who first tied the dare to ALS · Tags: Challenge, Charity, VideoReply 01. From Cold-Water Dare to ALS Cold-water dunk dares circulate on Facebook through spring 2014 as a generic generic challenge. On 15 July 2014 Florida golfer Chris Kennedy dunks himself, tags ALS, and nominates his cousin in Pelham, New York, whose husband has the disease. The chain reaches Pat Quinn in Yonkers, then Pete Frates in Beverly, Massachusetts, the former Boston College baseball captain diagnosed in 2012. Frates's nomination on 31 July 2014 lands the format in the BC athletic network. Within ten days celebrities, politicians, and CEOs are filming themselves under buckets and nominating three more. 02. 115 Million Dollars The ALS Association reports 115 million dollars raised between 29 July and 1 September 2014, against 2.8 million in the same period a year prior. Funds underwrite the discovery of the NEK1 gene as an ALS contributor in 2016. The challenge becomes the canonical case study for any cause that wants viral fundraising. Almost none of the imitators replicate the result. Frates dies 9 December 2019; Quinn dies 22 November 2020. Sources • ALS Association, 'Ice Bucket Challenge Dramatically Accelerated the Fight Against ALS', 28 July 2017 • ESPN, 'Pete Frates and the Ice Bucket Challenge', 9 December 2019 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'ALS Ice Bucket Challenge'
  13. — Nihilist Arby's. Date: January 2015 · Place: Twitter; Chicago · Figures: Brendan Kelly, operator · Lawrence Arms, his band · Arby's corporate, the unwitting subject · Tags: Twitter, Parody, Brand 01. Roast Beef of the Void In January 2015 Brendan Kelly, frontman of the Chicago punk band Lawrence Arms, registers @nihilist_arbys. Every tweet is a corporate marketing line ending in cosmic despair. At Arby's, we have the meats. They are stacked in piles. So are all the dead. The account hits 200,000 followers in six months. Arby's actual social team, run by Josh Martin, plays along publicly and reportedly tries to hire Kelly. He declines. He keeps his identity quiet until a Splitsider interview reveals him in March 2015. 02. Parody Beats the Brand Nihilist Arby's is the moment brand-voice and shitpost-voice collapse into each other. The parody is funnier than the corporate account because the corporate account is already shaped like a parody. Kelly later writes the entire account is a Camus footnote about advertising under late capitalism. The real Arby's account leans into the same register through 2016 and 2017 under Josh Martin. The Wendy's roast era arrives downstream from this lineage. Sources • Megh Wright, 'Talking to the Guy Behind the Nihilist Arby's Twitter Account', Splitsider, 30 March 2015 • Brendan Kelly, Reasons to Quit (Three One G, 2016) liner notes • Eater, 'How Arby's Got Funny on Twitter', 13 September 2016
  14. — #OscarsSoWhite. Date: 15 January 2015 · Place: Twitter; Washington, DC · Figures: April Reign, attorney and originator · Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences · Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Academy president · Tags: Hashtag, BlackTwitter, Industry 01. Six Words on the Couch On the morning of 15 January 2015 the Academy announces all twenty acting nominees are white. April Reign, watching from her couch in Washington, tweets #OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair. The hashtag is meant as a one-liner. By that evening it is the top trending tag in the United States. Reign keeps tweeting under it for the rest of awards season. The framing it offers, a single tag that doubles as headline and call to action, becomes the template for industry pressure campaigns. 02. The Academy Capitulates The 2016 nominations land in January, all-white again. The hashtag returns at higher volume. By 22 January 2016 Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announces a doubling of the membership by 2020 to broaden eligibility. The Academy inducts 683 new members that summer, the largest single intake in its history. Reign goes on to consult on industry-equity hiring through 2020. #OscarsSoWhite is the proof of concept that Black Twitter, with a single attorney holding the hashtag, can move a Hollywood institution in twelve months. Sources • April Reign, original tweet, @ReignOfApril, 15 January 2015 • Cara Buckley, 'Oscars So White? Or Oscars So Dumb?', New York Times, 15 January 2015 • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences press release, 22 January 2016
  15. — Left Shark. Date: 1 February 2015 · Place: University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Arizona · Figures: Katy Perry, headliner · Bryan Gaw, Left Shark performer · Scott Myrick, Right Shark performer · Tags: Halftime, Gif, Reaction 01. Improv in the Costume Katy Perry performs Teenage Dream at Super Bowl XLIX on 1 February 2015. Two backup dancers in plush shark suits flank her. Stage left, Bryan Gaw improvises through choreography Scott Myrick on the right executes precisely. Twitter screenshots and GIFs Gaw's freelance flapping within minutes. Left Shark becomes the universal avatar for confident incompetence. The NFL's Twitter joins. 02. Cease and Desist Versus the Public Domain Perry's lawyers send a cease-and-desist on 4 February 2015 to a sculptor 3D-printing Left Shark figurines. The lawyer Christopher Sprigman publishes a public response arguing the costume is not copyrightable. The dispute becomes a Cardozo Law Review case study. Perry eventually licenses Left Shark merchandise herself. The shark and the dress, twenty-five days apart, define the new genre of single-image mass attention events. Sources • NFL broadcast, Super Bowl XLIX halftime show, 1 February 2015 • Christopher Sprigman, 'Katy Perry, Left Shark, and the Public Domain', Volokh Conspiracy, 5 February 2015 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Left Shark'
  16. — Drake Hotline Bling Reaction Template. Date: 19 October 2015 · Place: YouTube; Director X video shoot, Toronto · Figures: Drake (Aubrey Graham), subject · Director X, music video director · James Turrell, lighting reference · Tags: Template, ImageMacro, Music 01. The Two-Panel Director X releases the music video for Drake's Hotline Bling on 19 October 2015. The lighting cites James Turrell's installations; the dancing cites Drake's own off-rhythm uncle physicality. Two frames go viral: Drake's left hand raised in dismissal, and his right hand pointing at what he prefers instead. By the following week the two frames are paired as a vertical image macro with text labels: top panel rejects something, bottom panel approves of something else. The form becomes one of three universal comparison templates of the era. 02. Syntax Lock The Drake template, Distracted Boyfriend, and Expanding Brain together establish that comparative judgment can be a four-frame piece of grammar with no caption tradition. The image becomes the punctuation; the labels become the sentence. Drake never publicly comments on the template. The video racks two billion views by 2024. Sources • Director X, 'Drake — Hotline Bling', Vevo upload, 19 October 2015 • Doreen St. Felix, The Fader, 'How Hotline Bling Became a Meme', 21 October 2015 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Drakeposting'
  17. — Hello Darkness My Old Friend. Date: October 2015 · Place: Twitter and Tumblr · Figures: Paul Simon, songwriter (1964) · Disturbed, 2015 cover · anonymous template inventors · Tags: Reaction, Music, Caption 01. Sound of Silence as Reaction By October 2015 the four-panel template is standard: three panels of a person committing a small social violation, then a fourth panel of the protagonist staring into middle distance with the caption hello darkness, my old friend. The line is from Paul Simon's 1964 song, sung by Simon and Garfunkel. The October 2015 release of Disturbed's cover of the song accelerates the format. The cover is a viral phenomenon in its own right at 1.2 billion YouTube plays. The caption attaches itself to any image of resigned despair. 02. Pure Caption Meme Hello Darkness is a rare meme that travels entirely as a text overlay; the image underneath is variable, the line is fixed. It is the universal kicker for relatable suffering. It is used unironically by parents on Facebook by 2017. The Simon and Garfunkel original returns to the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2015 on the strength of meme traffic. Paul Simon, asked about it in a 2016 New Yorker profile, declines to comment. Sources • Disturbed, 'The Sound of Silence' (Reprise, 1 October 2015) • Billboard Hot 100, week of 19 December 2015 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Hello Darkness My Old Friend'
  18. — Bernie or Hillary Format. Date: February 2016 · Place: Twitter; Tumblr · Figures: Bernie Sanders, candidate · Hillary Clinton, candidate · anonymous Tumblr blank-template creator · Tags: Politics, Template, Election 01. Authentic vs. Pandering In February 2016 an anonymous Tumblr user posts a blank explainer template designed to look like a serious New York Times comparison: a topic, a Bernie Sanders box with an authentic-coded answer, a Hillary Clinton box with a transparently pandering or out-of-touch answer. Twitter weaponizes the template within forty-eight hours. The topics become absurd: tarot decks, Smash Bros tier lists, ska bands. Bernie always knows; Hillary always Googles. 02. The Primary as Image Macro The format is one of the first uses of a serious-news visual grammar for joke labor in mainstream politics. It anticipates the four years of macro-driven political reasoning that follow. The Clinton campaign tries to clap back with their own version; the format does not run in their direction. The template returns intermittently for the 2020 and 2024 cycles, always recognized. Sources • Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post, 'The Bernie vs. Hillary meme, explained', 8 February 2016 • Tumblr origin post, anon, early February 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Bernie or Hillary?'
  19. — Becky With The Good Hair. Date: 23 April 2016 · Place: HBO; Twitter · Figures: Beyoncé, artist · Warsan Shire, poet whose lines anchor the album · Rachel Roy, accused (denied) · Rita Ora, accused (denied) · Iyanla Vanzant, speaker on the audio collage · Tags: BlackTwitter, Pop, Lyric 01. Sorry Outro Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade premieres on HBO at 9 pm Eastern on 23 April 2016. The track Sorry closes with the line he better call Becky with the good hair. Twitter spends the next 72 hours trying to identify Becky. Rachel Roy's vague Instagram about good hair draws thousands of bee emojis to her replies; she denies and locks the account. Rita Ora's choice of necklace the same week draws the same swarm. The phrase becomes a Black Twitter shorthand for the white-coded other-woman in any betrayal narrative. Becky as racialised proper noun is older; Lemonade fixes it in the meme economy. "He better call Becky with the good hair." — Beyoncé, 'Sorry', Lemonade, 23 April 2016 02. Bee Emoji as Warrant The Beyhive's bee emoji becomes a public summons. To be bombed by bees on Instagram is to be accused of being Becky. The harassment is severe enough that several outlets run pieces against it within the week. Lemonade is the case study for one album release as one meme event. Every track surfaces a phrase; every phrase moves the timeline for a full week. The album is the year's most-tweeted entertainment release. Sources • Beyoncé, Lemonade (Parkwood/Columbia, 23 April 2016) • Doreen St. Felix, 'On Beyoncé, Becky, and Black Women's Rage', Pitchfork, 26 April 2016 • New York Times, 'Becky With the Good Hair: Decoding Beyoncé's Lemonade', 25 April 2016
  20. — Arthur Fist. Date: 26 July 2016 · Place: Tumblr; PBS Kids · Figures: Arthur Read, animated aardvark · WGBH, broadcaster · @rosadiazsbutt, Tumblr poster credited with first viral post · Tags: Tumblr, Cartoon, Reaction 01. Aardvark Anger A still from the 1999 Arthur episode Arthur's Big Hit shows Arthur Read's clenched yellow fist in the foreground of a close-up. On 26 July 2016 the still circulates on Tumblr and Twitter as the universal reaction for suppressed rage with no available recourse. PBS Kids tweets the image themselves within forty-eight hours, captioning Don't worry. Arthur is just stretching. 02. The Children's Cartoon as Affect Library Arthur Fist sits alongside SpongeBob, Kermit, and the Caveman SpongeBob frame as evidence that the children's-cartoon screencap is the richest reaction-image vein of the decade. Every cartoon shipped before 2000 becomes mineable. The episode air originally on 25 October 1999. The frame waits seventeen years for its second life. Sources • PBS Kids Arthur, episode 'Arthur's Big Hit', original air 25 October 1999 • Abby Ohlheiser, The Washington Post, 'The Arthur fist meme has united the internet', 27 July 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Arthur's Fist'
  21. — Pokemon GO To The Polls. Date: 16 July 2016 · Place: Annandale, Virginia; Twitter · Figures: Hillary Clinton, Democratic nominee · Niantic, Pokemon GO developer · Robby Mook, Clinton campaign manager · Tags: Politics, Cringe, Election 01. The Line at the Rally Pokemon GO releases on 6 July 2016 and is the largest mobile-game launch in US history within a week. On 16 July 2016, ten days later, Hillary Clinton tells a rally in Annandale, Virginia I don't know who created Pokemon GO but I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokemon GO to the polls. The pause for laughter does not get the laugh she expects. The clip is on Twitter within minutes. The framing is unanimous: this is what a campaign chasing relevance looks like. It becomes the canonical example of cringe-pander politics for the rest of the cycle. 02. The Cringe Cycle The clip plays on every late-night show that week. The Clinton campaign quietly drops a planned Pokemon-themed get-out-the-vote push. The bit is filed alongside the Mason jar headline-photo opportunity as evidence of a campaign that did not understand the joke. The post-mortem after 8 November cites the moment in passing. The deeper lesson is that any reference older than 96 hours is dead before the candidate speaks it on stage. Sources • Pool report, Clinton rally at Annandale High School, 16 July 2016 • Washington Post, 'Hillary Clinton's awkward Pokemon Go pitch', 17 July 2016 • C-SPAN video archive, Clinton Annandale event
  22. — Skittles Tweet. Date: 19 September 2016 · Place: Twitter; Wrigley Company, Chicago · Figures: Donald Trump Jr, campaign surrogate · David Kittos, photographer of the stock image · Mars Wrigley Confectionery, brand · Lawrence Doll, original speech metaphor · Tags: Politics, Brand, Election 01. Bowl of Skittles On 19 September 2016 Donald Trump Jr posts a graphic to Twitter: a white bowl of Skittles with the caption If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem. The metaphor is older; a version appears in a 1938 children's book and again in a 2014 Joe Walsh tweet. Donald Trump Jr's deployment ties it to the closing weeks of the campaign. Wrigley issues a one-line statement within hours: Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. 02. Brand Counter-Statement David Kittos, the British-Cypriot refugee who took the stock photo, surfaces within 48 hours and asks for it to be taken down. His own family fled Cyprus in 1974. The Trump campaign does not respond. The exchange establishes the brand counter-statement as a category. By 2017 every retail brand has a playbook for a one-sentence repudiation of a politician using their product as metaphor. Wrigley's line is the template. Sources • Donald Trump Jr, original tweet, 19 September 2016 (archived) • Mars Wrigley Confectionery, official statement, 19 September 2016 • Guardian, 'I had no idea: Skittles photographer is shocked by Trump Jr tweet', 20 September 2016
  23. — Ken Bone at the Town Hall Debate. Date: 9 October 2016 · Place: Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; second presidential debate · Figures: Kenneth Bone, undecided voter · Hillary Clinton, candidate · Donald Trump, candidate · Tags: Politics, Sweater, Debate 01. The Red IZOD An undecided voter named Kenneth Bone asks a question about energy policy at the 9 October 2016 town-hall debate in St. Louis. He wears a red IZOD half-zip sweater after his original olive suit splits in the car on the way to the venue. He uses a disposable camera. By the next morning he is the meme of the election cycle. The sweater sells out at IZOD within hours. Bone trends globally for thirty-six hours. 02. The Reddit AMA Bone hosts a Reddit AMA on 13 October 2016 from his own account, u/StanGibson18. The account history contains explicit pornographic comments and a defense of George Zimmerman. Within an hour the wholesome image collapses; the press cycle pivots into a parable about background-checking your viral celebrities. The episode is the cleanest demonstration that a single televised image can be hoisted and dropped inside one news cycle, with the subject providing the rope. Sources • Commission on Presidential Debates broadcast, 9 October 2016 • Reddit u/StanGibson18 AMA, 13 October 2016 • Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post, 'The Ken Bone moment, fully explained', 14 October 2016
  24. — Mannequin Challenge. Date: 26 October 2016 · Place: Edward H. White II Middle School, Jacksonville, Florida · Figures: Emily France, student credited with first video · Rae Sremmurd, Black Beatles soundtrack · Tags: Challenge, Video, Soundtrack 01. Frozen Choreography Students at Edward H. White II Middle School in Jacksonville post a video on 26 October 2016 in which the entire room freezes in mid-action while a phone camera glides through. The soundtrack is Rae Sremmurd's Black Beatles. Within two weeks the form is everywhere: the New York Giants locker room, Hillary Clinton's campaign plane, Beyonce's birthday party, an operating theatre at Mount Sinai. Black Beatles goes to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 26 November 2016. 02. The Tableau as Format The mannequin challenge is the last major group video format before TikTok rewrites the grammar. It sits cleanly between the dance circle of Harlem Shake and the duet stack of TikTok. The format dies clean by January 2017. Three months of total saturation, then gone. Sources • Emily France, original Mannequin Challenge video, 26 October 2016 • Billboard, 'Rae Sremmurd Hits No. 1 With Black Beatles', 28 November 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Mannequin Challenge'
  25. — Evil Kermit. Date: 6 November 2016 · Place: Twitter; still from Muppets Most Wanted (2014) · Figures: Kermit the Frog, character · Constantine, evil doppelganger · @AaaghAndrew, Twitter user credited · Tags: Reaction, Template, Muppets 01. Me to Me On 6 November 2016 Twitter user @AaaghAndrew posts a still from Disney's Muppets Most Wanted (2014). Kermit faces his evil twin Constantine, wearing a black hood. The image is captioned me: should I go to bed at a reasonable hour? me to me: throw away your responsibilities, establishing the inner-monologue template. Within seventy-two hours the template is the canonical visual for intrusive thoughts. Disney never sends a cease-and-desist. 02. Inner Demon as Image Macro Evil Kermit replaces the angel-and-devil-on-shoulder convention of twentieth-century cartoons with a single image stripped of moral framing. The hooded twin always wins. The format remains in active rotation through 2024. Sources • @AaaghAndrew, Twitter post, 6 November 2016 • Abby Ohlheiser, The Washington Post, 'The Evil Kermit meme', 11 November 2016 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Evil Kermit'
  26. — Salt Bae. Date: 7 January 2017 · Place: Nusr-Et Steakhouse, Istanbul, Turkey · Figures: Nusret Gokce, butcher and restaurateur · Tags: Instagram, Gif, Brand 01. The Sprinkle Nusret Gokce, owner of Istanbul's Nusr-Et steakhouse, posts a thirty-six-second Instagram video on 7 January 2017 of himself slicing an ottoman steak and finishing it with a flick of salt down his forearm. The clip hits ten million views in forty-eight hours. The pose, elbow up, fingers loose, salt cascading off the back of his wrist, becomes the universal pictogram for unwarranted flourish. The salt and the gesture are the meme; the meat is incidental. 02. Diplomacy and Steaks Nusr-Et opens in Miami, New York, Doha, and London by 2018. Leonardo DiCaprio, Drake, Maduro, and Mbappe all post salting-themselves photos. Argentine players Salt-Bae the World Cup trophy on the Lusail pitch on 18 December 2022 to FIFA's stated displeasure. The gesture is the proof that a single restaurateur's Instagram can generate brand value at a scale no advertising budget could buy. Sources • Nusret Gokce (@nusr_et), Instagram post, 7 January 2017 • Bloomberg, 'How Salt Bae Built His Steakhouse Empire', 23 May 2019 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Salt Bae'
  27. — Wendy's Twitter Roasts. Date: 2 January 2017 · Place: Twitter; Wendy's HQ, Dublin, Ohio · agency VML · Figures: Amy Brown, social media lead · @NHride, fan who set the chain off · @McDonalds, foil · Tags: Brand, Twitter, Wendys 01. Where's the Beef On 2 January 2017 a user named @NHride asks Wendy's account if their beef is really fresh. Amy Brown, running the account, replies Where do you get this nonsense? We've only ever used fresh, never frozen beef on our hamburgers. Period. The user pushes back; the account does not back down. The exchange goes viral within hours. Over the following week Wendy's roasts McDonald's, then individual users, then pages of replies. The thread roast me becomes its own format, with users tagging Wendy's for ritual abuse. 02. Brand Account as Personality Wendy's account becomes a case study cited in every marketing textbook printed after 2018. The Mixtape EP We Beefin'? drops on Spotify in March 2018. The brand's account follows in the @dril cadence, with no acknowledgement. Steak-umm, Denny's, Moonpie, MTA, and the LAPD all adopt the strategy through 2017. Most fail; Wendy's keeps the franchise. Sources • Wendy's Twitter thread, 2-4 January 2017 • Adweek, 'How Wendy's Won Twitter', 6 January 2017 • Sapna Maheshwari, The New York Times, 'How Wendy's Twitter Personality Was Born', 24 May 2017
  28. — MoonPie Twitter. Date: 20 February 2017 · Place: Twitter; Chattanooga Bakery, Tennessee · Figures: Tom Tumbusch, MoonPie president · Jess Cervellon, social lead at the agency · IHOP, the rival in the IHOPancakes exchange · Tags: Brand, Twitter, Snack 01. Pancake Trash Talk On 20 February 2017 IHOP tweets pancakes or french toast? MoonPie's account quote-tweets or a moonpie. The exchange screencaps across Twitter the same evening. The MoonPie account has been quietly running a Denny's-style surreal voice for months; the IHOP reply is the breakout. The 117-year-old Chattanooga Bakery has roughly twenty employees. Its Twitter is operated by a small agency. The account ends 2017 with 240,000 followers, up from 18,000 at the start of the year. 02. The Solar Eclipse Bit On 21 August 2017 the total solar eclipse crosses the United States. MoonPie tweets a black circle with the caption the official snack of the eclipse. NASA quote-tweets it. The bit is so good it ends up on the front of Buzzfeed twice. MoonPie sales rise an estimated 17 per cent year-on-year through 2017. The Tom Tumbusch interview cycle that follows makes clear the brand had no Plan B; it just kept posting until it worked. This is the canonical case for permission to be weird. Sources • @MoonPie original IHOP quote-tweet, 20 February 2017 • Tim Nudd, 'How MoonPie Became the Strangest, Most Wonderful Voice on Twitter', Adweek, 28 March 2017 • Tom Tumbusch interview, Marketing Brew, 11 January 2018
  29. — Spicy Spicer and Melissa McCarthy. Date: 4 February 2017 · Place: Saturday Night Live, Studio 8H, NBC, New York · Figures: Sean Spicer, White House press secretary · Melissa McCarthy, impressionist · Tags: Politics, SNL, Television 01. The Podium Charge Melissa McCarthy plays Sean Spicer in the Saturday Night Live cold open on 4 February 2017. The performance, podium-shoving, gum-chewing, hostile to the press corps, lands as the canonical political impression of the Trump first year. The sketch is cited as a White House irritant by Politico the following week. McCarthy returns four more times in 2017. She wins the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in September. 02. Easter Bunny Spicer resigns on 21 July 2017. Photographs of his last day at the White House are screenshotted into reaction images for the rest of the year. By December he is appearing on the Emmys himself, wheeling out a McCarthy-style podium. The episode marks the high-water mark of mainstream television impressions producing instantly memefiable images of a White House. Sources • Saturday Night Live, cold open, 4 February 2017 • Tara Palmeri, Politico, 'Trump not pleased with McCarthy's Spicer impression', 6 February 2017 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Spicey'
  30. — Covfefe. Date: 31 May 2017 · Place: Twitter, @realDonaldTrump · Figures: Donald Trump, president · Sean Spicer, press secretary · Tags: Politics, Typo, Twitter 01. 12:06 AM At 12:06 AM Eastern on 31 May 2017 President Donald Trump tweets Despite the constant negative press covfefe. The tweet stays live for nearly six hours before being deleted. By morning the word is on every front page in the country. Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel, the Merriam-Webster Twitter account, every late-night host, and every congressional Democrat run a covfefe joke that week. "Despite the constant negative press covfefe" — @realDonaldTrump, 31 May 2017, 12:06 AM EDT 02. Spicer's Non-Denial Press secretary Sean Spicer tells reporters at the 31 May briefing that the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant. The line becomes its own meme. Covfefe is the moment the leader of a G7 country's typos become an item on the global meme stack within six hours. The episode is one of the clearest illustrations of the new compression: head of state, sleep tweet, mass humor event, all inside a news cycle. Sources • @realDonaldTrump, Twitter post, 31 May 2017, 00:06 EDT • Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, 'Covfefe: What Trump's typo means and why it matters', 31 May 2017 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Covfefe'
  31. — Mocking SpongeBob. Date: 5 May 2017 · Place: Twitter; still from SpongeBob SquarePants episode 'Little Yellow Book' (2013) · Figures: SpongeBob SquarePants, character · @OGBEARD, Twitter user credited with viral post · Tags: Reaction, Template, Cartoon 01. Chicken-Posture SpongeBob On 5 May 2017 @OGBEARD posts a still from the SpongeBob episode Little Yellow Book, originally aired 5 January 2013, in which SpongeBob hunches like a chicken with one foot raised. The caption mocks an opposing argument by typing it in MiXeD CaSe. Within a week the template is the default for sarcasm. MiXeD cAsE typography becomes its own punctuation, transferable to any sentence without the image. 02. Punctuation Migration Mocking SpongeBob succeeds at something most reaction images don't: it migrates from image into typography. The capitalization survives the loss of the picture. Tweets without the SpongeBob still still read as mocking, because of the case alone. The format is the cleanest example of the era's tendency to compress an entire affect into a pure formatting convention. Sources • @OGBEARD, Twitter post, 5 May 2017 • Brian Feldman, New York Magazine, 'The Mocking SpongeBob Meme', 9 May 2017 • KnowYourMeme entry, 'Mocking SpongeBob SquarePants'
  32. — Steak-umm Philosophical Twitter. Date: August 2017 · Place: Twitter; Reading, Pennsylvania · Figures: Nathan Allebach, agency copywriter · Allebach Communications, agency · Steak-umm, frozen-beef brand owned by Quaker Maid · Tags: Brand, Philosophy, Twitter 01. Beef Account Goes Mononoke In August 2017 the Steak-umm account, a frozen-beef brand from Reading, Pennsylvania, posts steak-umm bless. The line catches. Within months the account is running long-form threads about media literacy, generational despair, and the difficulty of knowing the truth in a fragmented information environment. The copywriter is Nathan Allebach, working at his family's agency in suburban Philadelphia. The bit is sincere. Allebach writes the account as a sleep-deprived young person who happens to work for a frozen-beef brand. The frozen-beef brand notices its sales rising and lets him keep going. 02. Brand as Public Intellectual By 2020 Steak-umm tweets thread-form essays about epistemic humility during the pandemic. The accounts gets profiled in The New York Times. Allebach uses the platform to thank teachers, push voter registration, and discuss his own anxiety. The lineage is direct: Denny's establishes brand-as-shitpost, Nihilist Arby's parodies it, MoonPie deploys it earnestly, Steak-umm pushes it to philosophy. The corporate Twitter account becomes a poet under late capitalism. The product remains a thin disc of pressed beef. Sources • @steak_umm Twitter archive, August 2017 onward • Taylor Lorenz, 'How Steak-umm Became a Welcome Voice During the Coronavirus Pandemic', New York Times, 9 April 2020 • Nathan Allebach interview, Marketing Brew, 23 May 2019
  33. — Bee Movie Script Copypasta. Date: early 2017 · Place: Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube · Figures: Jerry Seinfeld, writer and voice · DreamWorks Animation, 2007 producer · Avi Arad, producer · Tags: Copypasta, Tumblr, Recycled 01. According to All Known Laws of Aviation DreamWorks releases Bee Movie on 2 November 2007. It is a Jerry Seinfeld vehicle about a bee who sues humanity. It is mid. The opening monologue, according to all known laws of aviation there is no way a bee should be able to fly, becomes Tumblr material almost immediately on release. By early 2017 the full screenplay, 30,000 words, is copypasta. Tumblr users reblog it in full. Twitter users post it as a quote-reply weapon. A YouTube user uploads the entire film sped up to play every time the word bee is said; the video draws 23 million views by 2018. 02. Forgotten Film as Eternal Material The Bee Movie remix economy includes: the whole film played in reverse, the whole film at one frame per word, the whole film with the audio replaced by Whip and Nae Nae, the whole film overdubbed by Trump impersonator. The film is the closest thing the 2010s has to a public-domain remix substrate. Seinfeld, asked about it in a 2018 New York Times interview, says he does not understand it and finds the attention to a film he made for his kids exhausting. The script keeps circulating regardless. Sources • DreamWorks Animation, Bee Movie (2 November 2007) • Cecilia D'Anastasio, 'The Bee Movie Meme, Explained', Kotaku, 19 January 2017 • New York Times Magazine interview with Jerry Seinfeld, 21 May 2018
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