For the last two decades, some of the weirdest and most creative things on the internet played out in images and GIFs. There have always been terrible memes, but for years, memes as a category were consistently funny, useful, inspiring, and even thought-provoking. They crossed over into all of the furthest reaches of our culture, serving as communal glue that invited us all to participate in a recognizable and easily adapted conversation. But judging by what we saw in 2023, it’s clear that the golden age of memes is over. Call it an obituary: memes are dead.
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The most popular memes of the last 12 months are barely worth mentioning: Kevin James, Angela Basset did the thing, Skibidi Toilet, can you even remember the others? Most of Rolling Stone’s list of best memes of the year aren’t memes at all, they’re topics of discussion, with entries including nepo babies, orca attacks, and asking your boyfriend how often he thinks about the Roman Empire.
The smirky stock photo of Kevin James taken to promote his 25-year-old sitcom King of Queens was undoubtedly the biggest meme of the year. Here’s the joke: Kevin James looks smug and a little embarrassed, here’s an example of a time people feel smug or embarrassed. Hilarious. Examples include “When u accidentally like a selfie from 34 weeks ago,” or “watching someone else get blamed for your fart.” Is this how far we’ve fallen?
In one sense, it’s a return to the dawn of meme culture with low-effort “I can haz cheezeburger” style artistry. That isn’t a good thing. The barely amusing cat memes of the early 2000s walked so we could run, and now we’ve forgotten how running works. Our latest meme harvest is all syntax no substance.
This isn’t some lament about how the children are failing us. We’re talking about the consequences of the changing ways we use the internet. Post-pandemic, the web has shifted from an image-based ecosystem to one focused on videos. Part of that comes from the rise of speedy internet connection, but it obviously stems from the growing dominance of TikTok.
In 2023, A lot of the creative energy we used to spend editing memes was taken up reacting to TikTok trends, with shining examples including girl dinner, beige flags, and “this was you when you were a baby.” You could call that a changing definition, but we’re stretching the word meme so far it doesn’t make sense anymore.
Jumping on a popular TikTok format is not a meme. Posting links to an article about Livvy rizzing up Baby Gronk is not a meme. Making jokes about the Chinese spy balloon is not a meme. These are trends.
Before the comment warriors launch their attack, yes, it’s true that these things fit the classical definition of the word “meme” that comes from the philosophical study of memetics, or what Richard Dawkins called “units of culture” that live in our minds. Words can have multiple meanings, and when the internet adopted the idea of “memes” it was in reference to a very specific thing that was malleable enough to riff on endlessly. Argue if you want, but you’re going to sound boring.
When it comes to the year’s truly memey-memes, what was there? Barbenheimer? Sure, those photos of Cillian Murphy ‘I am become death’-ed their way into our hearts, but that is a sorry showing. The same goes for the Grimace Shake. If the best we’ve got are the results of corporate marketing campaigns, we have lost the plot.
It’s not a disaster. Maybe nostalgia is a poison and we should all just move on with our lives, but it’s a little melancholy. Memes were beautiful. Now they’re dead.
We put together a list of the year’s “best” memes. They ain’t much but they’re the best we’ve got. Click through the slide show up at the top of the page to see them all, or just scroll down if you’re on a mobile device.
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