I think it’s fair to say we all enjoy the odd meme.
Some have run their course, some should never have taken off, and others will continue to provide chuckles in the years to follow.
The fact is that they’re everywhere, so much so that TIME has decided, as of last week, to pick the best of the bunch from the first five months of the year.
They’ve picked 10, but ain’t nobody got time for that, so we’ll pick four that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed – and one they just missed out on.
Salt Bae
With just a dash of salt in a flashy viral video, the internet crowned butcher and entrepreneur Nusret Gökçe as “#saltbae.” People shared the flamboyant video with captions about triumphant finishing touches, and Gökçe continued to attract internet groupies with his looks, his sensual feelings for meats and that swagger. Months later, he’s still relishing the moment, opening new restaurants and making headlines whenever he recreates his salty moves. No one has ever achieved this status with seasonings.
And one of the videos that started it all HERE.
Executive Order Drawings
If there’s one meme that proved it could endure, it was this one. During Trump’s first week in the Oval Office, he made a number of significant decisions, including his personal choice to hold up executive actions he signed for the cameras. People got right down to transforming those images into memes of childhood illustrations like a cat (spelled kat). In the internet’s grand tradition, people had even more fun when Bernie Sanders and Paul Ryan offered America more blank slates onto which it could Photoshop whatever it wanted to see.
Kinda like this gem:
kat pic.twitter.com/ra55wo0ulW
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
The Moonlight-La La Land Oscars Mix-up
Shock spread at the 2017 Oscars as everyone learned that Moonlight actually won Best Picture, not La La Land as originally announced. To set the record straight, the musical’s producer Jordan Horowitz held up the accurate card: Best Picture Moonlight. La La Land was never supposed to be on the final card, and neither were a bunch of other things that quickly took over the internet in meme-form. There were endless “Envelopegate” possibilities for Beyoncé fans, Hillary Clinton supporters and several people who loved Space Jam.
BBC Dad and His Kids
Part of what makes this meme so notable is how quickly this video of two cute kids interrupting their dad’s Skype interview with the BBC blew up to score international buzz. When political science professor Robert E. Kelly’s daughter, Marion, crashed his live interview, her indifference toward whatever her father was trying to do won everyone over.
walk into the club like pic.twitter.com/Dp4rcdI0pj
— Valerie Loftus (@valerieloftus) March 10, 2017
The dad later explained she was “in a hippity hoppity mood,” and the video made an internet hero out of the daughter and spawned multiple parodies. Post-spike, people continued to use her adorable entrance to show how they aspired to waltz into situations with unflappable confidence.
Now that TIME story went live on May 31, just hours before the meme that might just crush them all: COVFEFE!
We’re just going to drop this here:
If you’re a fan of McSweeneys and the Da Vinci code, THIS should be right up your ally too.
May the rest of 2017 continue to serve up all that meme goodness.
[source:time]
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