We confined ourselves to the internet, so only symbols and phrases that crossed from traditional media to the web qualify.

Whether repurposed from YouTube videos, movie screengrabs, or viral catchphrases, these golden nuggets shape how we consume, criticize, and communicate through cultural touchstones.īut which ones have achieved lasting greatness? To answer that, we looked for memes with universality and malleability a dank meme exists in many permutations, and can cross cultural and linguistic barriers. True, meme-ifying images and videos is a practice as old as humanity itself, but the advent of the internet has made that process much.