The Most Important Internet Memes from 2004 to 2019

It’s clear that the history of memes precedes the Internet. We’ve seen their equivalents distributed as photocopies for years, and some magazines at the beginning of the 20th century published what could be considered memes, but the concept exploded once the network of networks began to expand. The Abacaba channel on YouTube recently published a timeline with the most popular memes of the last 15 years. Much water has passed under the bridge, and the names in this video will surely stir your memories…

They say memes have a very short expiration date, and in practice that is true. Some “ideas” take the Web by storm with extreme intensity, only to disappear as quickly as they arrived within a matter of weeks. Let’s do a quick exercise: think of a “modern” meme. At the time of writing, all I see in my feeds is a drawing of a bird slapping a table, Cersei Lannister caught in an elephant crisis, and dozens of edits based on the imminent Avengers: Endgame. Something tells me they’ll fade away in a few days, but they’ll surely be replaced without a hitch. That process of “purge and renewal” has been going on for more than 15 years, and the Abacaba channel shows us this with a video dedicated to the most important memes on the Internet, from 2004 to 2019:

All Your Base Are Belong to Us needs no introduction. Some protomemes classified as “disgusting” like Goatse and Tubegirl dominated the darker corners of the Web for a long time, but in May 2005 we witnessed a historic event: Leeroy Jenkins. A very particular case is the Rickroll, which first appeared in May 2007 and made a comeback in April 2008. The release and subsequent success of the game Portal made us fall in love with The Weighted Companion Cube and The Cake is a Lie. A quick jump to 2011 brings us face to face with Nyan Cat, but once we reach November, everything falls under the control of Skyrim and its Arrow in the Knee.

Two memes that proved especially resistant to the passage of time are Doge and Lenny Face, and if we look for the one that generated the most hits, it’s without a doubt Ugandan Knuckles. The rest is relatively recent. The infamous dress, Yanny or Laurel, and even the Momo Challenge (which already has a replacement) all appear in the timeline. All the data was extracted from the Know Your Meme portal, while trends were handled by Google Trends. Do you remember any meme that isn’t in the video and deserves a mention? Leave a comment!