Find Meme

Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, 2016, after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure. The incident spawned one of the defining memes of 2016, mixing ironic tributes, mock-serious mourning, and the viral rallying cry "Dicks Out for Harambe" into a sprawling internet event that outlasted every thinkpiece written about it.

Crying Jordan is a photoshop meme built from a cutout image of Michael Jordan's tearful face during his 2009 Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech. Starting as a niche sports forum joke around 2012, it exploded into one of the internet's most recognizable memes by 2015-2016, used primarily to mock defeated athletes and teams. The meme became so widespread that Jordan himself acknowledged it, President Obama referenced it during a Medal of Freedom ceremony, and it spawned physical merchandise including custom sneakers.

Loss is a four-panel webcomic strip from Tim Buckley's gaming series Ctrl+Alt+Del, published on June 2, 2008, depicting a miscarriage scene that was so tonally jarring it became one of the internet's most enduring and widely parodied memes. The strip's simple visual layout, a single figure, two figures, two figures, and one standing with one lying down, was distilled into the minimalist notation "| || || |_" and hidden in countless images, objects, and artworks across the web. Recognizing the pattern became a game unto itself, spawning the catchphrase "Is this Loss?"

"Wait, That's Illegal" is a reaction image meme taken from the Rooster Teeth web series *Red vs. Blue*, featuring the character Church delivering the line. The source material dates back to 2004, but the screenshot didn't take off as a meme format until January 2019, when it blew up on Reddit's r/MemeEconomy and r/dankmemes. It's used to react to anything that seems like it shouldn't be allowed, whether genuinely rule-breaking or just absurd.

Surprised Pikachu is a reaction image pulled from a 1997 episode of the Pokémon anime, showing Pikachu with wide eyes and an open mouth in a look of shock. First used as a meme on Tumblr in September 2018 by user popokko (Angela), it became the most-used meme of that year by pairing the image with scenarios where someone is "surprised" by a completely predictable outcome. A WIRED investigation into its viral trajectory raised questions about whether its November 2018 popularity spike was connected to the Detective Pikachu film marketing, though no definitive link was established.

"But That's None of My Business," also known as Kermit Sipping Tea, is an image macro meme featuring Kermit the Frog drinking a cup of Lipton iced tea, paired with a passive-aggressive observation about someone else's behavior. The format exploded on Instagram and Twitter in June 2014, becoming one of that year's defining memes. After fading in early 2015, the meme got a rare second life in June 2016 when LeBron James wore a Kermit sipping tea hat after winning the NBA Finals.

"All Star" is a 1999 rock song by Smash Mouth that became one of the internet's most enduring memes after its prominent use in the 2001 animated film *Shrek*. The song's iconic opening line, "Somebody once told me," launched thousands of remixes, mashups, covers, and parodies across YouTube, Reddit, and beyond. Written as an anthem for outcasts by guitarist Greg Camp, the track found a second life online in the 2010s through creators like Neil Cicierega and Jon Sudano, and the band themselves leaned into the joke.

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.