About

The Thinking Face Emoji 🤔 is a circular emoji featuring a face with a raised eyebrow, down-turned mouth and a single hand appearing to scratch its chin, which is commonly used to convey confusion or deep thought.

Origin

In 2015, the Thinking Face was added to Unicode 8.0 and Emoji 1.0 with the code “U+1F914”. The circular face is displayed differently on a variety of platforms, including Apple, Google and Microsoft (shown below).^[3]

Spread

On December 7th, 2015, NY Mag^[1] published an article about the emoji’s use on Twitter.

On November 16th, 2016, Redditor TheAnt317 submitted a post asking “Why is the ‘Thinking Face’ emoji suddenly a meme?” to /r/OutOfTheLoop. On January 5th, 2017, Instagram user @wikkp209 posted a video of a van falling backwards while driving down a road with the caption “Someone please explain this 🤔🤔” (shown below). Within two months, the video gained over 71,500 views.

On February 14th, journalist Glenn Greenwald sarcastically tweeted that the emoji signals someone “made a very clever, original, wry and amusing” refutation of someone else’s tweet (shown below).^[4]

On February 20th, YouTuber Incendio_Wolf uploaded a tutorial video for creating a Thinking Face emoji emblem in the game For Honor (shown below).

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Mr. Meme is an internet meme that was made on january 14, 2017 on ms paint, it has a drawing saying “woow” and it was posted to discord where people gave some attention, but the meme wasn’t too popular, still, the original creator of Mr. Meme kept drawing these mr meme memes without sharing them, but sharing some.

2 days later, reddit MarlK5 posted woow to /r/dankmemes
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/5pirh8/woow/

and the memes didn’t gain attention

but things turned around when the memes were posted to 4chan’s [s4s] board where it gained more attention and memes started flowing
http://archive.4plebs.org/s4s/thread/5118895/#5118895 on february 4

but 8 days later, things started exploding and threads appeared by minute
and on february 13, joe capo, who was famous for the oats videos, made this https://youtu.be/DRh_qTduzzg and it now has 9k views and a meme compilation with woow in it has 14k views, and since then, Mr. Meme’s popularity has been rising.

About

Crying Northwestern Kid is a nickname given to a young fan of the Northwestern Wildcats men’s basketball team who broke into tears after a foul was called on the Wildcats during the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament match against the Gonzaga Bulldogs in March 2017.

Origin

On March 18th, 2017, Northwestern University and Gonzaga University were matched up in the single-elimination stage of the 2017 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. About halfway through the second half of the match, with the Northwestern Bobcats trailing ten points behind the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the referee called a flagrant foul on the Bobcats’ reserve Barret Benson. Many Northwestern University supporters were dismayed by the foul call, and among them were a young Bobcats fan who broke into tears and flailed his arms up in the air in protest. Within minutes of his on-camera appearance, CBS Sports tweeted a video clip of the teenager’s emotional reaction, garnering nearly 1,700 retweets and over 3,400 likes in the first 24 hours.

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[researching]

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About

“Onee-Chan” is a Japanese word for “older sister" commonly used by men and women to address women who are slightly older, often regardless of their blood relations. Online, the honorific label has garnered traction among non-Japanese Otakus as a term of endearment for attractive female characters in anime and manga series.

Origin

The earliest Urban Dictionary^[1] submission for the term “onee-chan” was submitted by user Makayo onJuly 10th, 2006, defining it as “the Japanese word for ‘older sister’.”

Spread

On August 10th, 2016, YouTuber Illyasviel von Einzbern uploaded a clip from the anime Fate, in which a young woman calls the older woman “Onee-chan” (shown below, left). On January 27th, 2016, YouTuber Makoto Amakawa uploaded a video clip from the animeMusaigen no Phantom World, where a young woman calls her friend “onee-chan” to (shown below, right).

On Aug 16, 2012, YouTuber Makoto Amakawa uploaded a video titled “Yuru Yuri – Akane, the ulimate siscon,” featuring a the a sister obsessed character Akane from the Japanese manga franchise Yuru Yuri. On Dec 19, 2014, Youtuber Stephen Katz posted a video of a young girl getting called Oneechan by a kid from the anime Noucome.

On March 17th, 2015, an ifunny^[2] user waking1 posted a picture of Kill la Kill sisters, titled “Onee-chan”. >

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About

Cup Blowing Challenge is a social media game that involves combining two disposable or lightweight cups into a stack and blowing against the surface of the top cup to sling it out of its place with the aim of landing it into a third cup at a distance away.

Origin

On July 27th, 2016, some of the earliest known video recordings of the #CupBlowingChallenge were uploaded to YouTube^[1] and Instagram^[2], suggesting that the name of the game may have had been coined in the summer of that year. However, the precise origin of the game or its inventor remains unknown, though it was likely popularized through word-of-mouth as a party trick or a drinking game, given its sole reliance on disposable and lightweight glassware as game pieces.

Spread

On January 9th, 2017, YouTuber AshTonk uploaded a video demonstration of the #CupBlowingChallenge, though his introduction clearly suggests that the game had been invented and played prior to the video (shown below).

In March 2017, Instagram user @mo150__ uploaded a video of his friend Deandre performing the cup blowing challenge using two plastic glasses during lunch at a school cafeteria setting. On March 17th, WorldStarHipHop tweeted the video with the caption “can’t lie, that was pretty clean…🤔😳👍 ,” which drew more than 4,000 retweets and 8,000 likes, while bringing mass exposure to the classmates’ recess pastime on the social media platform. On the following day, Bleacher Report UK tweeted the same video with the caption declaring #CupBlowingChallenge as happeninging." On March 20th, Twitter ran a video compilation of #CupBowlChallenge videos in a Moment listicle titled “forget bottle flipping, try cup blowing.”

Examples

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WIP

About

t. is an abbreviated form of the Finnish word terveisin (meaning “regards” in Enlgish), frequently used on several online forums and imageboards like 4chan in order to parody what a certain group would say. The expression is also related to other memes, like Alberto Barbosa.

Origin

WIP

The expression originated in the finnish imageboard Ylilauta.

Spread

WIP

External References

About

Change Team is a photoshop meme based on an exploitable image of the in-game menu screen featured in the 2015 vehicular soccer video game developed and published by Psyonix. In the series of photoshopped parodies, the in-game menu box is typically set in juxtaposition against a background image depicting a crisis that could sway one’s allegiance to the opponent team.

Origin

The game was originally released for PC and PlayStation 4 in July 2015, followed by its expanded release for XBox One, OS X and Linux in 2016. However, the in-game menu screen, which consists of five options: Resume Game, Change Team, Find Online Match, Options, Exit to Main Menu, didn’t quite find its usage as a meme until the evening of March 17th, 2017, when Redditor YoImAli submitted a query asking "Should I invest in “change team” memes? Do they have potential?" along with a World War II-themed parody, which garnered more than 628 points within the first 48 hours.

Spread

Between March 17th and 18th, 2017, nearly two dozens of photoshopped parodies featuring the in-game menu screen set surfaced on Reddit’s /r/dankmemes and /r/memeeconomy subreddits.

Examples

[work in progress]

Search Interest

[not yet available]

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About

Meryl Streep Singing is a series of captioned tweets illustrating an imagined duet of widely recognized lyrics from popular songs as performed by the original singer and the Oscar-winning American actress Meryl Streep. The tweets are accompanied by a still image of Streep caught in the middle of shouting something during the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award ceremony in 2015.

Origin

On March 17th, 2017, Dash Tsushï (@SayItAintDash) tweeted one of the earliest known mock duets by a pop recording artist and Meryl Streep, featuring the chorus from Missy Elliot’s 2002 hit hip hop single “Work It,” with Meryl delivering the backmasked line (“I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it”) in phonetic translation and accompanied by a photograph of the actress cheering on Debbie Reynolds as her fellow actress went on stage to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2015 SAG award ceremony. Within 72 hours, the tweet garnered nearly 30,000 retweets and over 36,000 likes.

Spread

Throughout the week, more iterations of the newly-dubbed “Meryl Streep Shouting Lyrics” meme continued to surface on Twitter, with infusion of mondegreens (misheard lyrics) and phonetic translation in the style of the “Wrong Lyrics Christina” image macro series.

Examples

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About

Mélenchon Reaction is a reaction GIF featuring french politician and presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which is often associated with various captions describing surprising and unexpected circumstances. The original image emerged from an interview published by french radio network Europe 1 on march 15, 2017, and raised to national fame on Twitter the following days, under the hashtag #melenchonreaction.

Origin

On march 15th, 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon held an interview with the french radio network Europe 1^[1], answering different questions regarding his run for the 2017 french presidential election. However, in a peculiar moment of the interview (video shown below, at 4:18), one of the interview hosts accidentally misnamed Mr. Mélenchon, which caused him to raise his head in an expression of complete astonishement and disbelief, in a fashion reminding Massimo D’Alema or Angry Yellow Diamond’s faces.

On the same day, Twitter user Mickaël Frison^[2] posted an animated GIF version of the video, simply captioning it “This GIF is going to make my day” (shown below). Within the next two days, the tweet recieved over 4000 likes and 3900 retweets.

Spread

Later, other Twitter user @Nain_Portekoi^[3] reposted the GIF under the hashtag#melenchonreaction and added the caption “when the girl you’re trying to pick up says she’s a journalist”^[4], before posting a GIPHY link to the image, encouraging other users to do their own variation^[5]. That same day, various news articles on Hitek^[6], Topito^[7], and Le Nouvel Observateur^[8] were published, highlighting several examples of Mélenchon Reaction tweets. The following days, the unofficial Mélenchon supporters’ image hosting site, Melenshack.fr, published several other animated gifs under the tag “Melenchonreaction”, taken from various TV interviews^[9].

Various Examples

(translations available in the image titles)

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About

Sad Donald Trump Jr. refers to a photograph of Donald Trump Jr. sitting on a tree stump looking off camera from an article in the New York Times, which inspired a series of captioned tweets mocking the picture in late March 2017.

Origin

On March 18th, 2017, The New York Times^[1] published an profile on Donald Trump Jr. titled “Donald Trump Jr. Is His Own Kind of Trump,” which featured a photograph of President Donald Trump’s oldest son sitting on a tree stump (shown below, left). That morning, Twitter user @JordanFreiman^[2] tweeted the photo along with other pictures of Trump Jr. sitting along with the quip “how is he so bad at sitting?” (shown below, right). Within 72 hours, the tweet gained over 91,700 likes and 29,900 retweets.

Spread

That day, other Twitter users reposted the New York Times photograph along with joke captions mocking Trump Jr. (shown below).

Meanwhile, comedian Patton Oswalt posted the photograph next to nude photograph of the deceased singer-songwriter Prince from the cover of his 1988 album Lovesexy (shown below).^[3] Within 72 hours, the tweet garnered more than 6,800 likes and 1,200 retweets. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the Twitter meme, including BuzzFeed,^[5] Esquire^[6] and The Huffington Post.^[7]

Donald Trump Jr.’s Response

On March 20th, Trump Jr. reposted Freiman’s tweet on Instagram,^[4] saying ”I now know what it feels like to be Salt Bae!” (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post gained over 37,000 likes and 2,900 comments.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

#ATLOrgy is a hashtag referring to a sex-themed party that occurred in Atlanta, Georgia in late March 2017, which was widely mocked on Black Twitter following its promotion earlier that month.

Origin

On March 1st, 2017, Twitter user @_CoDiddy^[2] posted a link to an “adult sleepover” celebrating a woman’s birthday in Atlanta, Georgia on March 18th, recommending that attendees bring an “open mouf” and “open ass” (shown below). Within three weeks, the tweet gained over 680 retweets and 350 likes.

Spread

On March 8th, Twitter users began posting jokes about the upcoming event. That day, the hashtag #ATLOrgy^[5] began trending on the social networking site.

That day, the ApeThrowbacks channel uploaded a video titled “ATL Orgy Press Conference,” in which the party’s organizers addressed various questions about the event (shown below).

On March 9th, Redditor pfizer_soze submitted a post about the event to /r/Atlanta.^[6] On March 10th, Redditor ronswansonjr submitted a post asking about the orgy to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[7] where it garnered upwards of 3,200 points (92% upvoted) and 400 comments within 10 days. On March 14th, the entertainment news blog RollingOut^[3] published an article about the event, which included a statement from the party’s organizer Cidney Green claiming they “ordered 300 condoms” and would provide" lube and security." On March 18th, Twitter users began posting live updates about the event (shown below).

On March 19th, unsubstantiated rumors that the party was actually a “social experiment” orchestrated by a psychology student began circulating on Twitter. That day, Cidney Green published a post on Facebook^[8] refuting the claims, urging anyone spreading the rumor to prove they attended the event. Meanwhile,

Various Examples

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About

Smiling Devil Emoji😈 is a popular iPhone emoji image of a smiling devil-like face.

Origin

Smiling Face With Horns was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

Spread

Various Examples

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About

Peter Parker’s Glasses is a multi-pane exploitable series in which Spider-Man alter ego Peter Parker looks at various images that drastically change as he puts his glasses on and off.

Origin

In the 2002 film Spider-Man, the protagonist Peter Parker takes his glasses on and off while discovering he no longer needs them after gaining super powers (shown below).

On August 29th, 2016, a four-pane image in which Hillary Clinton is transformed into a land fill was posted on 9gag (shown below).^[1] Within seven months, the post received more than 29,200 points and 680 comments.

Spread

On October 14th, Redditor TheNotoriousWeb-M-D submitted a Watch Those Wrist Rockets-themed version of the image to /r/me_irl,^[5] where it gathered upwards of 2,500 points (97% upvoted) within five months (shown below, right). On March 12th, the official Twitter feed for the Houston Rockets tweeted a version of the image in which a goat is transformed into the basketball team’s shooting guard James Harden (shown below).^[4] Within 10 days, the tweet received more than 5,100 likes and 4,000 retweets.

On March 19th, Redditor HellspawnedJawa submitted a photoshop of the image in which a screenshot of a dog humping a woman becomes a poster for the 2017 film Beauty and the Beast (shown below, left). The following day, Redditor 0v3r1de submitted a picture of Parker looking at a cover the book The Diary of a Young Girl by Ann Frank which transforms into the book Diary of a Wimp Kid to /r/dankmemes^[2] (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post gained over 3,000 points (95% upvoted) and was subsequently reposted to /r/MemeEconomy.^[3]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

#JustAddZebras is a hashtag started by John Oliver that features people editing videos to include footage of a dancing man in a zebra costume.

Origin

On Sunday, March 19th, John Oliver closed Last Week Tonight With John Oliver with a story about how people in Bolivia were dressing as zebras and dancing to make traffic jams more bearable. This inspired the show to devise a segment where they inserted their own dancing zebra with other news clips in the hope of making them more lighthearted (shown below).

Spread

The same day, the show’s YouTube channel uploaded a silent, 23 minute video of a man in a zebra costume dancing in front of a green screen so that video creators could insert the footage into various other video clips. They then encouraged users to share their creations with the hashtag #JustAddZebras

Over the next two days, dozens of videos using the dancing zebra appeared on YouTube and Twitter. ^[1] The influx of #JustAddZebras videos was covered by Uproxx,^[2] Huffington Post,^[3] Time,^[4] and more.

Various Examples

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Jamal Smith counting down all of the aspects of his unknown nemesis that are “Whack”.
Also shows off skateboard tricks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLYUD5IzbiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-JU1BMO6_k

About

Ted Cruz Looking Pleased refers to a series of exploitable two-panel photoshops in which United States Senator Ted Cruz is looking lovingly at various objects.

Origin

On March 21st, 2017, the United States Senate held a confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court nominee of Donald Trump, Neil Gorsuch. During the hearing, Senator Ted Cruz spoke to Gorsuch in an affable manner, which led commenters on Twitter to make jokes about the genial manner between the two (ex: shown below).

Spread

As Twitter users made jokes about the friendliness between the two men, popular Twitter user @Mobute^[1] tweeted the image and captioned it “put anything on this splitscreen with cruz--an old lady cutting pills in half and eating cat food to survive, a buzzard pecking an eye socket”.

This led to dozens of photoshops created in response. Many referenced jokes about Cruz from the 2016 United States Presidential Election such as Cruz’ love of canned soup and Ted Cruz Is The Zodiac Killer. The jokes were covered by Twitter Moments^[2] the following day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

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About

I See You’re a Man of Culture is a reaction image featuring a screenshot of the character Last Samurai from the anime Arakawa Under the Bridge with the caption “Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.” The image is often accompanied by mock dialogues used to express good taste in a specific hobby or interest.

Origin

In Season 2 Episode 9 of Arakawa Under the Bridge, originally aired on November 28th, 2010, the character Last Samurai is shown coyly uttering the phrase “Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well” when discussing the top knot hairstyle around 17 minutes into the episode. On November 16th, 2015, a 4chan user replied to a thread on the /ck/ (cooking) board discussing chain pizza restaurants with a screenshot of the scene (shown below).^[8]

Spread

On March 7th, 2017, the Weebs making fun of weebs for being weebs Facebook page posted the screenshot captioned with a dialogue in which a friend selects “thighs” over “ass” and “tits” (shown below). The following day, the image was reposted by the @dankest_memes_m8 Instagram page.^[6]

On March 11th, 2017, Redditor Noodletank submitted a post advising readers to “invest quickly” in the reaction image to /r/MemeEconomy.^[2] On March 13th, Redditor ShreksAnus69 posted a version of the image espousing a taste for “illegal Minecraft x Roblox trap hentai” to /r/dankmemes,^[5] where it received upwards of 2,700 votes (98% upvoted) within one week (shown below, left). On May 15th, 2016, a 4chan user submitted a posted asking where the “man of culture” meme originated to the /wsr/ (work safe requests) board, where another user replied with a screenshot of the Arakawa Under the Bridge scene.^[1] That day, Redditor AssaSinLife posted a Runescape-themed image macro to the /r/2007scape^[3] subreddit (shown below, right).

On March 19th, Redditor ChrisEvans19 submitted an image macro joking about mechanical keyboard switches to the /r/MechanicalKeyboards^[4] subreddit, where it gained over 2,600 votes (91% upvoted) and 200 comments with 72 hours (shown below, left). On March 21st, a version of the meme sarcastically claiming that Hitler was from Australia was uploaded to 9gag^[7] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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About

Peter Parker’s Spider Bite is an exploitable 4-panel image series that, in the first two panels, features Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in the 2002 film Spider-Man getting bitten by a radioactive spider and becoming the titular hero. In the second two panels, a person is “bitten” by an object and undergoes a similar, humorous transition, becoming a hybrid of a human and the object they were bitten by.

Origin

The first iteration of the comic appeared on June 25th, 2016, on the Indian website 24×7daily.com.^[1] In the comic’s second two panels, a man is bitten by a dog to become Indian film actor Kamaal Rashad Khan (shown below).

Spread

On September 18th, redditor CaptainFiddler posted a variation of the template to /r/funny^[2] which joked that a person using the popular SnapchatDog Filter had been bitten by a dog. The post, shown below, got over 5,300 points.

In the coming months, dozens of variations appeared, mostly on Reddit, as users began incorporating increasingly absurd transformations, including memes such as Left Shark and Trebuchets. On March 21st, 2017, the format began growing popular on me_irl following a post from mandamelon^[3] that featured a transformation into a box-human hybrid and gained over 20,900 upvotes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

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About

Oh No Baby! What Is You Doin??? is a catchphrase of Instagram and Twitter user Nick Joseph, who goes by the handle nicknpattiwhack_. A reaction image of Joseph saying the phrase became a meme on Black Twitter in March of 2017.

Origin

In his videos, Joseph and his friend Dan Rue (@danrue) play pranks where they pretend to trespass. The videos are characterized by Joseph’s narration in which he quickly and jovially comments on the actions of Rue. On January 20th, 2017, he uploaded a video in which Rue gets kicked out of a shoe store. As he gets kicked out, Joseph exclaims, “Oh no, Daniel, what is you doin??”

On March 9th, 2017, Joseph uploaded a video of himself and Rue jumping a fence into the yard of NBA star Anthony Davis (Twitter embed shown below).

Though Joseph does not say “Oh no baby! What is you doin?” in the video, a screenshot of him in the video was later paired with the caption.

Spread

One of the earliest examples of the screenshot being used as a reaction image was posted on March 18th, 2017 by Instagram account supa_cent^[1] and gained over 11,600 likes (shown below).

Soon after, the image began being reposted with various other captions on Twitter. On March 22nd, a thread was posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[2] inquiring about the meme’s origins.

Various Examples

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