The timeline coming together

December 31, 2023 12:24 PM

as someone who is Extremely Online™️ and a self proclaimed meme connoisseur here is a ranking of my top internet moments / memes of 2023 by Annie Wu [X; nitter]

The 21 Most Defining Memes of 2023 [Rolling Stone]
31 Hilarious Memes From 2023 That Wouldn't Have Made Sense 10 Years Ago [Buzzfeed]

posted by chavenet (21 comments total)

I’m a lot less in touch with meme culture since I quit Twitter, but All Your Base Are Belong To Us was this year, right?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:47 PM on December 31, 2023 [20 favorites]

So this is what it's like to get old.
posted by TrialByMedia at 1:00 PM on December 31, 2023 [15 favorites]

Clicking on that link after deleting my Twitter, and exclusively looking at Bluesky, is blowing my mind. HOW many reposts?? I'm not sure that many people even use Bluesky.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:05 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Real Truth About Jiafei
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:06 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I only know about half of these (old), but Montgomery should be higher on the list. its a top internet moment of ALL TIME.
posted by supermedusa at 1:10 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

I knew some of those!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:18 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would love to see some version of billboard top40 (i know)...but for the internet...by age cohort
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 1:40 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was a little disappointed Toxic Gossip Train didn't make Obama's song list. It's pretty catchy.
posted by dirigibleman at 2:26 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

A couple of these lists have alluded to Kevin James... which is interesting to me because I'm online enough that the role Kevin James has played in comedy culture since 2000 is an thing I often think about with a mix of sincere and also very ironic appreciation. But Im not sure why 2023 is a year that sticks out in terms of appreciating the fact Kevin James exists.

It's kinda like someone made a reference to 2019 as the year "everyone was joking about Nick Cage making so many weird movies" and I'm here thinking "sure... 2019... that's the year...we did that..."
posted by midmarch snowman at 3:37 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm on-line a whole lot but had missed most of these, because I don't do TikTok. It's not a fierce moral stand, but an accident; some adblocker or something I use means that TikTok is broken on my laptop and it's a pain to get going, and I usually can't be bothered.

I still miss Vine. Has TikTok become as good as Vine yet? Or should I keep being lazy?
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:40 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

You should watch TikTok videos via YouTube. That means they’ve graduated from TikTok to instagram, and then again to a compilation somebody else has made in search of clicks on YouTube. It’s survival of the fittest meme.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:52 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm gobsmacked that I understood like half of these.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:03 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

But Im not sure why 2023 is a year that sticks out in terms of appreciating the fact Kevin James exists.

I haven't delved deeply into it, but from what I gather it isn't anything directly related to James himself. Someone randomly posted an old picture of him smirking with his hands in his pockets, people randomly decided the facial expression and body language displayed was useful for their own non-James-specific meme purposes, and here we are. That's just how virality works with The Kids These Days.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:34 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was saddened by the utter lack of my favorite meme of the year, the Orca uprising. Fuck them boats, indeed.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:37 PM on December 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also, these lists remind me of a anecdote on one of YoungAmerican's podcasts, his co-host talked about the phenomenon of being in comedy, getting older and your only insight into memes being when they pop up in a young, up-and-coming alt comedian's social media. By that time, everything has been filtered through some very specific lenses and the first reference to "Girl Dinner" you see may just be a stock photo of a pile of dildos and vibrators. It only takes a moment to figure out the "A-to-C" of it, but in that moment you're left bewildered as to how is it that "this" is trending? And are you finally going to have to ask a younger friend to explain something?

Anyways, back in my day, "Girl Dinner" was "30 to 40 Olives" and we liked it.
posted by midmarch snowman at 6:27 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

the first reference I saw to girl dinner was on a t-shirt with like 30 little pictures of Astarion Baldursgate and I assumed he was having girl for dinner
posted by taquito sunrise at 7:42 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was saddened by the utter lack of my favorite meme of the year, the Orca uprising.
It's in the second link.
posted by one for the books at 10:47 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was saddened by the utter lack of my favorite meme of the year, the Orca uprising. Fuck them boats, indeed.

White Gladis might be the only time in the last several years that calling something white wasn't pejorative.
posted by srboisvert at 4:53 AM on January 1 [1 favorite]

Despite being well beyond young, I knew some of these!

Not from Twitter, I don’t have an account there. But rather TikTok, and more importantly Buzzfeed is on my RSS feed. That site is about 90% “X products that…” and then 9% memes, (1% other). Although at least in my FYP, TikTok memes are very video: the old school “image macro” is not popular on TikTok in my feed.

In 2007 I taught a summer coding camp with 10-12 year old students. We had a lot of fun with “I can has cheeseburger?” memes, and I’ve considered myself a connoisseur ever since, if you will. What an embarrassing sentence.

I still miss Vine. My younger friend has a “rip vine” tattoo. She is mortified by it. I love it.
posted by teece303 at 9:42 AM on January 1 [1 favorite]

The other night at the symphony I heard a kid explaining Insincere Ukulele Apology to their suffering guardians. Circle of life.

(Also, symphonies should have encores. When the applause for Ode to Joy dies down come back swingin' with 'Devil Went Down to Georgia.' For irony, Johnny can defeat the devil by playing Paginini.)
posted by stet at 5:14 PM on January 1 [2 favorites]

In the first link I was familiar with almost all of them - except for Alix Earle.

Even googling didn't tell me anything useful. They're just a person who did makeup on TikTok and got famous?

Apparently I am doing TikTok correctly though: if it is good enough to squeeze through onto other platforms, without me ever opening the TikTok app, then it must be worth seeing.

I cannot use TikTok. It literally only shows me junk I didn't ask for, with a heavy dose of baldfaced propaganda/copaganda and things I think have to be ads but it's not very clear. I don't understand why I would ever spend more than ten seconds on TikTok, and those seconds are only due to accidentally clicking on a link to TikTok.

Wait... The grimace thing was just in 2023? Oh, how time flies...
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:00 AM on January 2 [1 favorite]