The Funniest Memes of 2019
Here’s a list of the funniest memes of 2019 so far, including a brief analysis of each and links to the originals for additional context and laughs.
The World Record Egg
Where did it come from?
The World Record Egg came from out of nowhere to snatch the title of “most liked Instagram post” in early 2019. It beat out a photo of Kylie Jenner’s daughter that had been posted to announce the baby girl’s birth.
As the popularity of the account surged, speculation as who the identity of the creator ran rampant. Eventually, it was tied into a Superbowl ad for a mental health company, which might not be funny, but at least it went somewhere worthwhile.
Bird Box Challenge
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Where did it come from?
The Bird Box Challenge comes from a Netflix movie where Sanda Bullock’s character is forced to navigate a terrifying world while blindfolded. Naturally, people thought it would be fun to attempt everyday tasks while blindfolded, and then upload the results to the internet.
Needless to say, driving while wearing a blindfold is an extremely bad idea, and doing it because of a movie doesn’t make it any better.
Shaggy’s Power
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Where did it come from?
This meme has its origin in the Ultra Instinct Shaggy meme, which itself is only a few years old. That meme centered around the humorous juxtaposition of an easygoing coward like Shaggy obtaining the massive power of Ultra Instinct from Dragon Ball.
The Shaggy’s Power meme riffs on that by showing Shaggy in a variety of situations where he has been forced to use some fraction of his full power. This even culminated in a wildly successful petition to bring Shaggy to Mortal Kombat 11 as a DLC character.
Tide Pod Challenge
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Where did it come from?
While rumors of people eating Tide Pods are nearly as old as the actual product, and The Onion even wrote an article about it in 2015, the Tide Pod Challenge didn’t arrive until 2018. It started as a joke on YouTube, but people took it a little too serious.
Some of You Have Never… and It Shows
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Where did it come from?
The first great meme to rise into the public conscience, and completely take over Twitter, originated in a Tweet that was made in very late 2018.
The tweet, which read, “some of you have never made a ‘can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars I could really use a wish right now <3’ facebook status and it shows,” was retweeted over 20,000 times.
The basic format of “Some of you have never… and it shows” then infested Twitter like the viral meme that it had become.
Ugandan Knuckles (Do You Know Da Wae)
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Where did it come from?
Ugandan Knuckles is a mashup that can be traced back to a few different sources. The design of the character comes from a deformed version of the Sonic character Knuckles drawn by a YouTube creator named Gregzilla
The character was later turned into a 3D model for use in the game VR Chat. Players using the model would commonly repeat lines inspired by the Ugandan movie Who Killed Captain Alex.
My FBI Agent
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Where did it come from?
This meme draws from a paranoia about the possibility of the government spying on people through their webcams. The idea of the government spying through webcams has been around for a while, but the idea of each individual citizen being watched, at all times, by their own FBI agent took off in early 2018.
Off Ramps
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Where did it come from?
The roots of this meme stretch all the way back to 2013 when a video of a car dangerously skidding onto an offramp was uploaded to YouTube.
A screenshot from this video was combined with an offramp sign in very late 2017, and the meme was born. Due to the text on the sign, it is also known as Left Exit 12.
Gym Kardashian
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Where did it come from?
Someone edited a photo of Kim Kardashian to make her look extremely muscular, and other people took that image and captioned it with humorous text. This led to similar photo edits of other members of Kardashian’s family.
Change My Mind
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Where did it come from?
The origin of this meme is a series of YouTube videos created by Ben Crowder. Someone took a screenshot from one of his videos, where he set up a table at a college campus and asked people to change his mind, and removed the text from his sign. This created an exploitable image template, which people alter with humorous text.
The Lad Is An Absolute Unit
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Where did it come from?
This meme is based on a tweet from late 2017 where an image of an overweight man in a suit was captioned with the text “In awe of the size of this lad. Absolute unit.” In early 2018, people started using variations on that quote to caption images of other large objects and people.
Ready Player One Poster
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Where did it come from?
This meme is based on posters for the movie Ready Player One. When the first poster came out, people noticed that one of the character’s legs was improbably long, so they made humorous edits. Other posters for the movie were also subjected to similarly funny treatment.
Google Selfie App
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Where did it come from?
This meme is based on the Google Arts and Culture app that was released in 2016. In late 2017, Google added a feature that allows the user to take a selfie and find artwork that looks like them.
Friends 2018 Plotlines
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Where did it come from?
This meme started when the official Netflix Twitter account tweeted a list of potential plotlines for a 2018 reunion of Friends. This was probably inspired by a YouTube video that mashed together footage from various sources to create a trailer for a fake Friends reunion movie.
Justin Timberlake Is a Man of the Woods
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Where did it come from?
This meme came from people riffing on Justin Timberlake’s 2018 album Man of the Woods.
Super Bowl Selfie Kid
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Where did it come from?
This meme came from a moment during the Super Bowl LII halftime show. During his performance, Justin Timberlake entered the crowd and stood next to a kid. The kid took a selfie and then immediately turned his attention to his phone, as if he had totally lost interest in the halftime show.
Somebody Touch My Spaghet
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Where did it come from?
This meme is based on an animated cartoon from 1939 called The Three Bears. The cartoon is based on Goldilocks, and it features a bear who complains, in a thick approximation of an Italian accent, that someone had touched his spaghetti.
A clip from the cartoon was tweeted out toward the end of 2017, and people started remixing it and riffing on the “somebody toucha my spaghet” line in early 2018.
Connect Four
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Where did it come from?
Connect Four is a game that has been in production since the 1970s, and the box art has been a semi-popular target of online parody for years.
The sudden surge of Connect Four parodies came after a collage of older parodies was posted to Reddit in early 2018.
Britney Spears Is Cleopatra
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Where did it come from?
This meme started in early 2018 when a Twitter user posted a series of 3D renders designed to look like Britney Spears along with text suggesting that the 3D model is a depiction of what Cleopatra looked like.
Evil Patrick Star
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Where did it come from?
This meme features a still image of Patrick Star from the cartoon Spongebob. The image itself dates all the way back to 1999, but users on Twitter turned it into a meme by captioning it with humorous text in February 2018.
Infinity Wars Crossover
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Where did it come from?
Avengers: Infinity War has been associated with the tagline “the most ambitious crossover event in history” due to the sheer number of Marvel characters set to appear in the movie. While it is technically a crossover, and certainly ambitious, fans took that tagline and started sticking it on a wide variety of other crossovers.
Steamed Hams
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Where did it come from?
This meme is based on an episode of the Simpsons that first aired in 1996. The episode features a humorous segment where Principal Skinner attempts to impress his boss while the situation quickly deteriorates into chaos around him.
While this episode has been a fan favorite for years, it ascended to meme status when one of the original writers posted a draft script to Twitter in early 2018.
Renewed interest in the episode resulted in a sudden outpouring of YouTube mashup videos and other memes based around aspects of the episode, such as Principal Skinner referring to hamburgers as steamed hams.
You So Precious
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Where did it come from?
This meme combines the song Mine with snapchat filters and humorous videos. It started with a single video that was submitted to Reddit in early 2018, but it exploded in popularity when other people started copying the basic format for their own versions of the video.
10 Year Challenge
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Where did it come from?
The 10 Year Challenge asks people to post a current photo alongside a photo from 10 years ago. It originated on Twitter in very early 2019. From there, a different person posted a similar “How Hard Did Aging Hit Your Challenge” on Facebook.
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