Time was you would open an article like this by saying “if 2009 was the year of anything, it was the meme”, explain what a ‘meme’ was, and make a real funny joke of it that anyone could regard something as inconsequential and fundamentally not-serious as a meme being anywhere near deserving of an annual retrospect.
Anyway, it’s 2017 now and memes have enmeshed themselves so deeply within the fabric of culture that you’ve decided to click this article instead of one of our other End of Year roundups about worthy pursuits like music, films and books. Imagine cultivating an interest in something beyond memes. It’s hard, isn’t it? Memes are the prism by which you make sense of life now, your rosetta stone for reality. You can’t parse the news unless it’s been poured through the great big meme sieve of online and garnished with a handful of memes which refer to the original memes.
And it’s so damn moreish. You are a greedy piglet suckling at the teat of the world wide web, and you won’t stop until you’ve guzzled the well dry. There’s a meme drought coming, mark my words, because we’re burning through them faster than I can mix my metaphors. That means we should take stock while we still can. Here were the memes to remember from 2017, in order of artistic merit.
25.Dancing Pooh
24.Distracted Boyfriend
23.Mocking SpongeBob
22.Expanding Brain
This was a very good meme as it allowed you to couch your actual opinions inside a joke so people couldn’t boot off at them. For instance, you could outright say people who liked Sam Diss were pea-brained idiots, and that the more intellectually-inclined preferred Dave Fawbert, and then - as long as you went properly daft with the ‘biggest’ brain’ - you could get away with implying Gary Ogden was choice among those who have more brain than head. Or you could make it about more ‘relatable’ debates about putting ketchup in the fridge, or whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie etc etc.
21.White Guy Blinking/Drew Scanlon Reaction
20.Pennywise Drain
This meme was malleable according to the meaning you wanted to inflect, and therefore it’s a top-tier 2017 entry. You could make imply Pennywise the terrifying child-assaulting clown was luring you into the drain under false pretences, or that he was offering something so damn appealing you would happily hurl yourself into the sewers just to get it, or that he was offering such a Hot Take that he ought to be cemented over. This means the original image is a must for all camera roll-curators.19.Emoji Sheriff
18.I Would Love it if We Beat Them
17.Dancing Hotdog
16.bröther may i have some öats
15.Monkey Getting A Haircut
14.Shooting Stars
13.One Thicc Bih
12.Redbone Remixes
11.Milkshake Duck
10.Cracking a Cold One Open With the Boys
9.Roll Safe
8.Man's Not Hot/The Ting Goes...
7.The Floor Is
6.He Protec but He Also Attac
This is good because it features a nude guy covering his penis with a toy lightsaber in two different ways, and also describes the duality of man. It’s quite sexually aggressive though, and the subsequent memes weren’t as good as the original, but to be fair, that’s because the original featured a nude guy holding a toy lightsaber over his dick.5.This is Just to Say
4.Winona Ryder's SAG Award Reaction
3.Homeboy's Gonna Get It
2.Salt Bae
Sometimes you think, “bloody hell! This year’s gone quick!” and then other times you realise Salt Bae - the hunky butcher who inefficiently poured salt over his meat - was this year. 2017. And then you think, “life is very long”. Anyway, this was good for all of January. Expect him to be wheeled out in Students’ Unions in five years time.1.Covfefe
