It has been one crazy year, to say the least. It’s hard to believe that just 11 months ago kids were eating Tide Pods and screaming “do you know the way” in class. It’s safe to say that we’ve come a long way in a year packed with great memes. I tasked myself with ranking the top 10 memes of the year based off, humor, longevity, and overall impact they left. I will also award my first annual Meme of The Year.

10. E

This meme honestly is the peak of what humor has degraded to. We literally laugh at the letter E now. The meme consists of the head of Shrek character Lord Fraquaad with YouTuber Markiplier’s face photoshopped on and a large white letter E. It’s normally deep fried. Deep frying is when you distort and saturate the filters on an image to get a deep fried look. When in video format the meme consists a loud E audio from the EA sports intro scene. The meme has a great lasting impact because it’s going to be remembered for how dumb it is.

9. American Chopper argument 

 The meme is Originally from an episode of the TV show American Chopper. It depicts an argument between a younger employee who is getting fired by  Paul Teutel Sr. (the man pictured in the image) who owns Orange County Choppers. The meme is used to show more complex arguments than it’s counterpart memes, Krusty Krab v.s. Chum Bucket and distracted boyfriend meme. The results of the meme are generally humorous, or feature nonsense arguments about current events or even other memes.

8. Ed Edd n Eddy book of facts 

Originally from an episode of Ed Edd n Eddy, the meme started in late 2017 but went strong through 2018. The meme is generally deep fried. The content usually includes a funny or nonsensical opinion that makes people laugh. It often has an eye lenses flare on the character with the book above.

7. Exit Ramp 

The meme features a car drifting off into the exit when it has two choices to make. The meme would caption things as the road being a good life decision and the exit being a terrible decision. For example, the road could be studying for an important test and the car taking the exit is playing video games instead of studying.

6. FBI/parent text 

The meme would consist of someone looking up something like hacks or cheats to a game and the parent texting them “why is the FBI here.”  The other format of the meme is the FBI catching you for finding something clever (but doesn’t actually work). For example, plugging a plug back into a circuit for infinite electricity, or taping the gas meter down on ‘full’ for infinite fuel. Then, you get sent a text that says “don’t move”. The third format of the meme is someone playing a game or texting, and the FBI sends them a text to help them win at the game or give them a second chance by interrupting their text messages.

5 . This Is America

On May 5th, 2018, rapper Childish Gambino released the song and the internet went immediately to work, as they do with most music videos. VICE, a news network, released an article about the music video saying that to “meme” the music video was missing the point of the song. The article inspired people to make fun of VICE and make memes out of the music video. The format of the meme is in 3 forms, the choir scene, running from the crowd, and the gun and the chair. Video edits were just as prominent as still image memes.

4. Surreal Memes 

Just like surrealism art, the memes are wild fantasies of the imagination. They don’t have a purpose, and the humor to them is that they don’t make sense. Surreal memes are funny because they are odd. This meme genre really picked up this year with void memes in October.

3. Mark Zuckerberg

This year Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of facebook, was in a senate hearing for leaks and fake news on the Facebook site. The running joke about him blossomed into memes after the hearing when he oddly sipped his water during the session. Zuckerberg once misspoke during a past speech, “when I was human.”  which sparked the conspiracy that he’s either a lizard or a robot because of his odd social behavior. An image surfaced a few years ago of him walking his dogs, and his knees were bent at an awkward angle which was the original photo to start the joke.

2. Despacito

The hit song from the summer of 2017, somehow, because of the internet, turned into a meme that is very odd. It usually goes with a headline announcing some new version of the hit song, and it can also be in the format of a Roblox head on a red spider’s body with the caption “Despacito.” Video edits are extremely popular for the meme with videos on YouTube like “Despacito 2” receiving millions of views.

1. Thanos 

Thanos is main antagonist of Infinity War and the spawn of countless memes throughout the year, and I think it deserves my 1st annual Meme Of The Year (MOTY) award. The meme had lots of different formats, such as: “Thanos Car”, “is this your home”, “perfectly balanced”, and “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good”. The meme had lasted all year, and ever since it’s creation it never went away. Just when you thought it was going to die out like most memes do, a new format appeared. Overall, this is by far the best meme of the year in terms of how long it lasted and the overall humor towards it.