A Month-To-Month Recap of 2017’s Dank Memes

By Nur M. Nazri  •  21 Dec 2017 in Listicle

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When all things are in flames and your life is a freaking mess, what’s the only thing that keeps you alive and your mental health deteriorating? Memes. Memes have gone beyond than just a picture with words that resonates with your feelings on a whole new level; it’s a form of brotherhood. A strong bond that connects you and I, and the rest world together. It separates us from those who has no interest in the true value of living; the normies.

But, if you wish to take part on this magical journey… you’re going to have to wait until next year. It’s a learning process and not everyone is born to be a meme-er. It’s either you got it or you don’t. So to get you educated on one of life’s greatest gifts, here’s a monthly recap of this year’s meme.

January: Salt Bae

Salt bae is a nickname given to a Turkish hunk-of-a-chef, Nusret Gökçe. After a viral video of him sprinkling salt on a carved steak surfaced around the internet, netizens couldn’t help but meme-fy his fabulous sprinkle gesture. Even Hollywood celebs couldn’t help but to join in on the fun by making videos of their own version of Salt Bae.

February: Roll Safe

“You can’t be broke if you don’t check your bank account.” Before there was Big Shaq, there was this meme, which came from a screenshot of a character named Roll Safe, played by Kayode Ewumi from the web series Hood Documentary. (He also had an appearance on BBC 1Xtra’s Fire in the Booth.) His iconic grinning and pointing at his temple circulated around the web and went down into meme history.

March: How Italians Do Things

Very simple to do, but very hard to achieve for maximum impact, in the meme world at least. According to Becoming Italian Word by Word, this hand gesture signifies “What do you really want?” This meme began spreading when Twitter user @donny_drama began posting a photo of him holding a mug with that hand gesture, captioning it “How Italians drink coffee.” Later, Twitter and Reddit users picked up this meme and began making their own versions of it.

April: United Airlines Passenger Removal

How can we forget that infamous video of the United Airlines’s flight security aggressively ‘accommodating’ a passenger who ‘volunteered’ to leave his flight because there was a last minute update that the flight was overbooked. The video fired up the internet and surprise, surprise, the meme-ers just had to chime in on it.

May: Mocking Spongebob

The image that was taken from an old episode of Spongebob, which aired in 2012, where Squidward takes a read into Spongebob’s diary and finds out that Spongebob acts like a chicken whenever he sees plaid. However, this image became meme-certified when Twitter user @lexysaeyang used Spongebob’s face and the alternation of uppercase and lowercase letters that gives out a mocking tone.

June: Hey man you see that guy over there

Thanks to webcomic artist Florkofcows, these two socks are seen discussing a third character that is out of the frame, with the final frame being a reaction of what that character is doing. And you might remember this meme going viral somewhere in June. Check out the full story here.

July: Dancing Hot Dog Snapchat Filter

Oh Snapchat filters, the wonders you bring. This dancing hot dog took the month of July by storm when videos of it dancing around on everyone’s Snapchat began popping up across the internet, hence the memes began flooding our screens too.

August: Distracted Boyfriend

If you wonder who took this stock photo, you can thank Antonio Guillem for that, whose description of it says “Disloyal man with his girlfriend looking at another girl.” Even though this photo surfaced around February, when Twitter user @_dekhbai_ captioned it with “Tag That Friend / Who Falls in Love Every Month,” this image took flight around August when another user, @n1m161, posted this photo showing the man staring at ‘socialism’ while ‘capitalism’ looks on.

September: You’ve Heard of Elf On The Shelf, Now Get Ready For…

Now you probably might recall that creepy Elf on the Shelf, or for some reason you might think it’s the movie with Will Ferrell, but it’s not. That phrase was spun into a meme and now it combines two things which rhyme with each other, so the image itself is the punchline for the caption.

October: Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

Who knew Bear Grylls from Man Vs. Wild could become a meme, but it happened! This meme came about when the series had a subtitle which featured a humorous adversity with “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” Later it spread out when Redditor furrutia29 posted that photo with the caption “when the porn video doesn’t load so you beat your meat to the ads,” and within 24 hours, it received all the attention it needed.

November: Man’s Not Hot

The ting goes Skrrraa! (And this is where ya’ll continue the part, with pa pa pa…) While this song has become something of a legitimate hit, being played all over the clubs, it originally came from a comedy video by English comedian Michael Dapaah (yes, he knew exactly what he was doing). Playing both rival MC Quakez and Roadman Shaq (aka Big Shaq) – characters from his web series #SWIL – the two duked it out on BBC 1Xtra’s actual series Fire in the Booth where the latter did his infamous verse followed by unnecessary repetitions of gunshot sound effects with his mouth that forever lay in our hearts and minds.

December: If You Play This Song On New Year’s Eve

Roundin’ up our year is the newly introduced meme, which refers to a snowclone that’s popular over on Twitter in which users would claim that if you play a song at a certain time right before New Year’s Eve, then a specific moment in the song happens right as the new year begins. Would you put that to the test? Why not, right!

… and that’s it for this year’s round up of memes.

We hope that those who just discovered memes (normies) will have a clearer understanding of what the community is and what forms of communication we share. Either way, there’s more coming up for us next year, so keep an eye out for them.

Happy Holidays, everybody!

p.s. We’re not claiming that these memes are accurate based on each month, but it’s sure as hell is funny. Also if you want a more in-depth understanding of the origins and story behind each memes, head over to knowyourmeme.com for more deets.