Explore Meme Culture

Distracted Boyfriend is a stock photo turned object labeling meme showing a man checking out another woman while his girlfriend looks on in disapproval. Taken by Barcelona photographer Antonio Guillem in mid-2015, the image first appeared as a meme in a Turkish Facebook group in January 2017 before going massively viral across Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram in August 2017. It won Meme of the Year at the 10th annual Shorty Awards and helped popularize the object labeling format that dominated meme culture in the late 2010s.

Yeet is an exclamation and slang verb that exploded out of black social media culture in early 2014, first as a choreographed dance on Vine and YouTube before evolving into the internet's favorite word for throwing something with maximum force and zero concern. The word was voted the American Dialect Society's 2018 Slang/Informal Word of the Year and was added to Dictionary.com in 2021[2].

"It's a Trap!" is a catchphrase and reaction image based on Admiral Ackbar's famous line from the 1983 Star Wars film *Return of the Jedi*. The image macro version first appeared on Something Awful in the early 2000s and quickly spread to FARK, YTMND, 4chan, and YouTube, making it one of the most recognizable and long-lived memes from the early internet era. The phrase is used as a humorous warning about anything deceptive, misleading, or suspicious.

Keyboard Cat is a viral video meme featuring an orange tabby cat named Fatso, filmed in 1984 by performance artist Charlie Schmidt, appearing to play an electronic keyboard while wearing a blue shirt. The clip sat dormant for over two decades before being uploaded to YouTube in 2007 and exploding into one of the internet's most recognizable memes in 2009, when Brad O'Farrell created the "Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat" mashup format that paired the footage with fail videos as a comedic send-off.

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions is a reaction image meme featuring comedian Dave Chappelle pointing to his temple with a knowing expression. The screenshot comes from a 2004 episode of Chappelle's Show and went viral on Reddit in December 2018[2]. The format is used to caption clever, absurd, or questionable "solutions" to everyday problems.

Baby Yoda is the internet's nickname for Grogu, a tiny green alien character from the Disney+ series *The Mandalorian* who looks like an infant version of the iconic Star Wars Jedi Master Yoda. First revealed in the show's premiere on November 12, 2019, the character instantly broke the internet with an avalanche of memes, reaction images, and photoshops that made him one of the biggest memes of the year. Despite Disney officially naming him "The Child" and later revealing his canonical name as Grogu in Season 2, the internet overwhelmingly stuck with "Baby Yoda."

Grumpy Cat is the internet nickname for Tardar Sauce, a mixed-breed cat from Arizona whose permanently scowling face made her one of the most famous animals on the internet. First posted to Reddit in September 2012, her photos spawned thousands of image macros with cynical, deadpan captions and built a merchandising empire worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing deals. Tardar Sauce died in May 2019 at age seven, but her grumpy face is still one of the most recognizable meme images ever created.

Big Chungus is a meme built around a screenshot of an overweight Bugs Bunny from the 1941 cartoon *Wabbit Twouble*, typically presented as a fake PlayStation 4 game cover. The meme went viral in December 2018 after a GameStop employee shared a story about a customer trying to buy the nonexistent game. It became one of the defining absurdist memes of late 2018 and eventually received official recognition from Warner Bros.