Top 10 Pop culture moments of the decade #2: Memes

An entire decade has passed and, surprisingly, we are still here. From the world ending in 2012 to fidget spinners, this decade has been filled with iconic and weird memories. In this segment, our writer reflects back on this decade and decides which pop culture moments were the most memorable or the most influential. 

I know this is incredibly broad. Originally, this started as an article on one specific meme, but I couldn’t choose one decade-defining meme, so here we go.

At the beginning of 2010, we had simple and effective memes, such as Nyan Cat, Me Gusta, and Antoine Dodson’s “hide your wife.” Now, nearing the end of 2019, meme culture has become a staple of our everyday life, leading to more advanced memes that require some sort of insider knowledge. For instance, memes now can spoil an entire movie for you (like the Avengers). 

There’s a meme for every occasion, from every show or incident. Everything can become a meme. Before this decade, memes weren’t as generation-defining as they are now. 

At the beginning of 2010, memes had surface-level meaning and, generally, memes were just plain old fun (which they still are, but in a different way). For instance, Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka was used to convey sarcasm and annoyance. There’s also the simple Forever Alone to portray your sad, lonely life in a humourous way.

However, as our existential crisis grew and the world became more fucked up (or, we became aware of how fucked up the world is), memes became a way to convey our hidden feelings or our political beliefs. Notably, there are a ton of memes about depression and existential dread, like Sad Keanu.

Of course, there’s still dank memes, but, we don’t talk about dank memes, so…

Memes are not going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, they’re just going to become more unique, or if I am somehow wrong, then we’ll be stuck with Baby Yoda forever.