Popular memes are the images, phrases and videos that spread fastest online, and the ones that last, such as Doge (a 2013 breakout) and Rickrolling (born in 2007), tend to be remixable, easy to explain and flexible enough to outlive their first joke.
Anyone new to the vocabulary can start with the basics of what a meme is before reading the examples below.
What makes popular memes spread
The word itself dates to 1976, when Richard Dawkins introduced “meme” in his book The Selfish Gene to describe a unit of cultural transmission, analogous to a gene in biology. Online, the idea was reworked: by 2013, researcher Limor Shifman had tied memes firmly to internet culture, and Dawkins himself called the web’s use of the word a “hijacking of the original idea”.
A study by Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear examined how three traits Dawkins attached to successful traditional memes apply online: fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Fidelity is how well the core of the joke survives copying. Fecundity is how quickly it is copied. Longevity is how long it stays in circulation. A format that scores high on all three, like a reaction image with an obvious caption slot, travels further than a one-off joke that only works in context.
That explains why the same few shapes keep returning: the image macro (a picture with a top and bottom caption), the reaction image, the short remixable video and the in-joke phrase. Wikipedia notes that a lolcat image macro was a style especially popular in the mid-and-late 2000s, and the same blueprint, a recognizable picture plus a swappable line of text, still underlies most of today’s formats.
Doge: the 2013 meme that never fully left
Doge became popular in 2013 and shows how one photograph can spawn a whole visual language. It is a picture of a Shiba Inu, usually a dog named Kabosu, with multicolored text in the font Comic Sans laid over the foreground. The photograph itself dates to 2010 and only caught on in late 2013, when Know Your Meme named it the “top meme” of that year.
The format also crossed into money and branding. A cryptocurrency called Dogecoin launched in December 2013 using the same dog, which gave the joke a second life far beyond image boards. Several online polls and media outlets later ranked Doge among the best internet memes of the 2010s.
Doge then branched into a family of characters. Cheems, another Shiba Inu, speaks with the letter “M” added throughout its sentences, and Walter, a Bull Terrier, is typically portrayed as liking “moster trucks” and firetrucks. These offshoots are why Doge counts as a durable template and not a single image: each new dog reuses the grammar of the original while changing the voice.
Rickrolling: a bait-and-switch with a long tail
Rickrolling began on 15 May 2007, when a 4chan user, Shawn Cotter, uploaded the “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video to YouTube and linked it in place of the trailer for the video game Grand Theft Auto IV. The trick is simple: a link promises one thing and delivers Rick Astley instead.
Mainstream attention arrived in 2008. The hacker group Anonymous used rickrolling in a campaign protesting the Church of Scientology, YouTube used the meme for its April Fools’ Day event in April 2008, and users of several websites voted for the song in a poll for the New York Mets’ rally song. Astley then rickrolled the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with a surprise performance, watched by millions of television viewers.
Wikipedia reports that use of rickrolling peaked in 2008 but that it remained popular, calling it a very long-lived meme. Its staying power comes from the fact that the format is not tied to a joke that can go stale. The surprise is the mechanism, and any new platform can host it.
How popular memes rise and fade
A meme usually passes through stages: a small community invents it, a wider audience adopts it, brands and media pick it up, and then it is declared dead. The pattern is laid out in more detail in the guide to the meme lifecycle, and the examples above fit it. Doge moved from a 2010 photograph to a 2013 phenomenon, then to a cryptocurrency mascot. Rickrolling went from a 2007 prank to a 2008 peak and then to a nostalgic standard.
Wikipedia observes that memes once treated as valuable cultural artifacts meant to endure now often convey trivial rather than meaningful ideas. The tradeoff is speed: formats appear and fade faster, yet a few, like those above, become reference points that later formats borrow from.
Platforms shape what spreads. Communities built around voting and comment threads reward in-jokes and quick remixes, which is the territory covered in the page on the reddit meme. Meanwhile, video platforms favour sounds and short clips that can be reused with new footage.
How to tell whether a meme is still popular
Three practical signals help. First, check the date a format was catalogued: Know Your Meme, which named Doge the top meme of 2013, records entries with years, so an old entry with fresh activity suggests a revival. Second, look at variation. A format that produces new characters, like Cheems from Doge, is still evolving, while one that only repeats the original is fading. Third, look for crossover into other media, such as the Dogecoin launch in December 2013 or the Macy’s parade appearance in 2008, which usually marks the mainstream peak.
Copyright is also worth keeping in mind. Wikipedia notes that fair use is a defense under US copyright law, and that Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act sets out the factors courts weigh, so reusing a meme image in commentary or parody is treated differently from reselling it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most popular meme of all time?
No single ranking exists, but Know Your Meme named Doge the “top meme” of 2013, and Wikipedia says several polls and outlets ranked it among the best internet memes of the 2010s.
When did Rickrolling start?
Rickrolling started on 15 May 2007, when a 4chan user uploaded the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video to YouTube and linked it in place of a Grand Theft Auto IV trailer, according to Wikipedia.
Who invented the word meme?
Richard Dawkins coined it in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, using it for a unit of cultural transmission comparable to a gene.
Why do certain memes last longer than others?
The Knobel and Lankshear study applied three traits to online memes: fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Rickrolling, still circulating after its 2008 peak, shows a format whose mechanism does not depend on a single joke.
