#then came good old twitter in 01/2010

[owlsie-hoot]

tumblr my sweet darling.

social media platform I've been active on the longest.

stop logging me out every other week!

[dansnaturepictures]

24/01/21-Snowy morning and afternoon walk 

A loud clap of thunder temporarily interrupted my slumber early this morning, then when I ultimately woke it had happened, the forecast snow had and was falling and unlike the flurries between Christmas and New Year it had laid. Albeit like the small bout in December on at least one of the days it wasn’t to last and the sun eventually came out as the day went on. Meaning in a part of the country when snow is never guaranteed in winter it was considerable like in 2015, more so than a dusting in 2012, but not quite the famous beasts from the east of 2018, the first real heavy bouts I knew in 2009 and twice both ends of 2010, a notable long weekend in January 2013 or even going into February 2019. 

But it was still snow carpeting the garden and areas visible from my room and looked very beautiful and a really breathtaking scene making the urban jungle look very nice. I loved looking at it as a little bit still fell, and taking pictures of the views all around a nice set of snow pictures to have taken this winter. These included the first, third and fourth pictures I took today in this photoset. What snow also does in urban realms is bring interesting birds in locally or in the garden and give you so many unique avian photo opportunities among the white scenes. I indulged in the latter taking photos of Collared Dove (including the second in this photoset at the feeding tray and one more I tweeted of two on a white roof visible from my room) a species I took a photo of on a very white snowy Sunday morning in March 2018 which lived long in the memory so this was nice, House Sparrows (seventh picture in this photoset at the bird table), Feral Pigeon (sixth in this photoset), Robin (fifth picture in this photoset on an icy fence) and Black-headed Gulls on roofs looked nice in snow I was too slow for a closeup but they can be seen within the first picture of mine today in this photoset so a nice array of species. I also enjoyed seeing Starling, Woodpigeon, Magpie, Blue Tit and as I had seen and photographed before in snow Goldfinches all looking great in the snow. Being the first time I was very interested in flowers whilst it snowed I looked at and took pictures of these in it too today most notably daffodil shoots coveted in snow something so symbolic of this transitional time of year in winter with the hope of spring on the mind I took the eighth picture in this photoset of this.

With the sun well and truly out on a similar walk it was a similar day to yesterday afternoon as we took a great walk taking in some wonderful and refreshing view and sky scenes including the ninth picture in this photoset. There was a trace of snow left I took the tenth and final picture in this photoset a closeup of some on a log with my macro lens. Its interesting in 2019 I did the same a closeup of snow with my old macro lens and then bringing it out on a walk was an interruption of the usual hibernation of this lens which I mostly use for butterflies and mushrooms in spring then autumn and at that stage flowers occasionally. But after a strong few days following some quiet ones for it I’m seeing how this new macro lens is becoming a year round one now and I think flowers notably some still around in the garden and being at home so much to see them has driven that and whilst this macro lens will certainly be used more when spring comes its been great. 

And some great bird moments awaited too on our walk as I loved seeing two Treecreeper a star bird of my year already. A Raven also darted and barked over our head, something I have mentioned in relation to representing wilderness before. It did that again today for me, interestingly in the week where I described the Golden Eagle as being the bird of the wilderness during my “A raptor a day” posts on Twitter and I definitely felt that seeing these birds in the mountainous lands of Scotland three years ago last week on the trip for my 21st birthday. And it got me to thinking today whilst we have an amazing bird of prey scene in the south of England starring so many brilliant species also, the Raven can be our Golden Eagle in terms of epitomising wilderness as it’s so symbolic of the vast open and quite quiet spaces it can be seen in. A quite nice thought to end another brilliant weekend of walks and time at home, I have enjoyed it so much and I hope you have had a good and safe one. 

Wildlife Sightings Summary: Treecreeper, lots of Robins we are seeing so many lately, Blue Tit, Coal Tit, Raven, Carrion Crow and Woodpigeon. I also loved seeing one of my favourite birds the Buzzard really well today.

[ledonjuann]

ooc meme - 1, 2, 12

OUT OF CHARACTER MEME

01 previously answered here

02. how long have you been writing on tumblr?

Good Lord I have no idea when I actually started. It was right after Pokémon B+W came out. Google says 2010. Wow, I feel incredibly old. 

12. do you write off tumblr too?

Oh yes. I write on Discord with my friends, it’s a great app. Rping in bed is the true endgame and Discord lets me. Also Jcink sometimes, also sometimes Twitter. I’ll go anywhere so long as good people are waiting for me!

[biofunmy]

JC Penney, Bed Bath, Pier 1 hit as retail slumps

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The start of a new decade isn’t offering much hope for beleaguered retailers.

Traditional chains are looking increasingly frail less than a month into 2020, with vacancies piling up and few near-term prospects for a turnaround.

National chains Macy’s, J.C. Penney, Papyrus, Express and Pier 1 Imports, as well as other retailers, have collectively announced 1,218 store closures this year, according to global marketing research firm Coresight Research.

The fallout comes after a year in which retailers closed more than 9,200 stores, according to Coresight. Those included the liquidation of Payless ShoeSource, Fred’s, Gymboree and Charlotte Russe and mass closures by Family Dollar, Forever 21, Charming Charlie, Sears, Kmart, A.C. Moore and GameStop.

Retailers will likely announce plans to close more than 100 million square feet of space in 2020 for the fourth straight year, projected real estate data tracker CoStar. That’s the equivalent of about 562 Walmart supercenters.

“This year will generally be more of the same,” said Robin Trantham, a consultant for CoStar. “We expect many companies – and many sizable companies – to announce closures.”

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Brick and mortar stores that we thought would never disappear are now creating empty retail landscapes.

USA TODAY

To be sure, it’s common for the industry to face a reckoning of sorts early in the year following the do-or-die holiday shopping season. About half of closures are typically announced in the first quarter, according to CoStar.

But the cascading nature of the recent closure announcements reflects a deepening crisis for retail. Some recent closure announcements include:

• Home goods retailer Pier 1 Imports announced plans to close up to 450 locations, or nearly half of its stores.

• Schurman Retail Group announced the closure of its 246 stores, including stationery and greeting card chains Papyrus and American Greetings.

• Fashion retailer Express announced plans to close 91 locations, including 31 stores by the end of January and 35 by the end of January 2021.

• Department store chains Macy’s and J.C. Penney are closing 29 and six stores, respectively.

• Bed Bath & Beyond is closing 60 locations, including 40 of its namesake locations.

With too many stores in the U.S. and chains trying to figure out the right approach, “the current decade will continue to see store closures and a repurposing of retail real estate as the retail landscape adapts to the digital era,” Coresight Research analyst Marie Driscoll said in an email.

Off to a bad start

As the new year starts, many stores are already looking ghostly. In the third week of the month, foot traffic to stores fell 4.9% compared with the same period last year. And it was down 1.4% compared with the previous week, according to Cowen retail analysts.

That came despite nice weather, which typically encourages shopping. Average temperatures were 3.8 degrees warmer last week than the same week a year earlier, and they were 6.8 degrees warmer than usual for this time of year.

More than 100 million square feet of stores are expected to close their doors in 2020 for the fourth straight year, according to CoStar. (Photo: Getty Images)

Don’t expect conditions to get much better for the retail sector later in the year, either.

The second half of 2020 poses particular challenges for the industry, according to Morgan Stanley research analyst Kimberly Greenberger, who tracks specialty retailers, department stores and footwear.

It will be “tricky with the election looming” for retailers to stand their ground, since the presidential election could cause consumers to get skittish about spending, Greenberger wrote Wednesday in a research note.

Although the “fundamental consumer backdrop is healthy,” people’s spending on discretionary items “is likely to be challenged,” Greenberger wrote.

Is your store on the list?: J.C. Penney closing more stores and a call center

Mall foot traffic underwhelms: Express closing 91 stores as fashion retailer grapples with declining sales

Even some chains that were recently thought to be on solid ground are encountering turbulence. The proposed split of Old Navy from its troubled counterpart, Gap, was called off last week amid a “lackluster performance” for Old Navy, Cowen retail analyst Oliver Chen wrote in a research note.

“The company has a lot of work ahead to drive consistent performance,” and figure out the right number of stores to keep open,” Chen said of Old Navy.

Department stores falter

Of course, digital threats remain at the heart of the retail industry’s crisis. E-commerce made up 11.2% of total retail in the third quarter of 2019, up from 4.2% during the same period in 2010, according to financial data firm Refinitiv.

Department stores, which historically set themselves apart with their wide variety of merchandise, are particularly threatened by Amazon and other digital marketplaces.

Sears and J.C. Penney, in particular, are facing the fight for their lives in 2020. Sears barely survived its recent bankruptcy filing but almost immediately resumed store closures after emerging from Chapter 11 last February.

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Some retailers are taking an if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em approach. Department store chain Kohl’s won praise last year when it announced a returns partnership with Amazon that was hailed as effective insulation from digital competition because of the foot traffic it would presumably create.

But the significance of that deal is being called into question after Kohl’s surprised investors this month by reporting a same-store sales decrease of 2% in November and December. The company experienced what CEO Michelle Gass called “softness” in women’s apparel, “which we are working with speed to address.”

In an effort to lure shoppers into the store, department stores put an average of 74% of their merchandise on sale in 2019, according to Refnitiv.

Haves and have-nots

It’s not all doom and gloom for the retail sector. Retailers have announced about 500 more openings than closures so far this year, Coresight Research said.

And some retailers are capitalizing on the demise of others.

Makeup chain Ulta Beauty is projected to pick up sales as department stores continue to wither, according to Oppenheimer equity analyst Rupesh Parikh. Ulta could benefit if J.C. Penney accelerates store closures, which would affect the Sephora beauty shops located within the ailing department store.

 (Photo: Ulta Beauty)

In a world of haves and have-nots, the haves are still flourishing.

Namely, Walmart and Target are still in great shape, with sales growing and profits rising for discount chains. And specialty retailers like Five Below continue to lure shoppers with low prices and convenient options.

But even they’re not immune. Target reported same-store sales growth of 1.4% in November and December, which was “below expectations,” the company said earlier this month. And Five Below reported weaker-than-expected holiday season as same-store sales fell 2.6%.

For retailers to thrive in 2020, they’ll have to place an emphasis on “building customer loyalty via authenticity and innovation through inspiring product, relevant marketing and customer-centric stores,” Chen wrote.

And they need to place an emphasis on a smooth customer experience between their digital and physical operations, including options like buy-online-pick-up-in-store.

Customers who shop in a physical store become more likely to shop at the store online, and the other way around, according to a recent study by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

For every $100 a customer spends online with a retailer, they spent $131 in-store with the same retailer within a 15-day period, according to the ICSC report.

It also works in reverse. After spending $100 in a physical store, the average customer spends $167 online with the same retailer, according to the study.

“Though many are inclined to pit e-commerce against physical retail, those retailers that offer their customers both options – a choice of shopping online and in stores – tend to boost sales in both arenas,” ICSC reported.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/01/24/store-closings-2020-macys-jcpenney-bed-bath-beyond-express/4540886002/

Sahred From Source link Technology

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2RLpwtN via IFTTT

[giancarlonicoli]

Please see the comments. Here and on the source page.

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.Reporting of the historic Singapore Summit between President Donald J. Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has been fascinating. The lead story in Pyongyang has been on the Supreme Leader’s Singapore walk around, and his desire to learn about economic development from the Singapore Strategy. In the western press, however, Pyongyang’s lead story is nowhere to be found.Kim Jong-un is clearly onto something. As anyone watching telecasts from Singapore during the past few days could observe, Singapore appears to be very prosperous. And it is. Measured by per capita income, Singaporeans are some of the richest people in the world. The economy is capitalist, and capitalist on steroids. That’s why Singapore has shot up from the depths of the Third World, at its founding, to the upper reaches of the First World, today.Singapore gained its independence in 1965, when it was, in effect, thrown out of Malaysia. At that time, Singapore was backward and poor — a barren speck on the map in a dangerous part of the world. If that wasn’t enough, it was experiencing race riots, which came close to igniting a civil war. Singapore’s per-capita income in 1965, adjusted for inflation, was roughly equivalent to that of poor countries like Albania, Angola, Armenia, Guyana, Kosovo, and Mongolia, today.But, at its founding, Singapore had a leader, Lee Kuan Yew. He had clear ideas about how to modernize the country — a strategy which I have dubbed the “Singapore Strategy.” This strategy contained the following elements:The first element was stable money. Singapore started with a currency board system — a simple, transparent, rule-driven monetary regime. Currency boards operate on autopilot, with automatic adjustments keeping the system in balance. Accordingly, currency boards deliver discipline to the spheres of money, banking, and fiscal affairs. For Singapore, the currency board provided stable prices and free convertibility of the Singaporean dollar, which was fully backed by foreign reserves and gold, at a fixed exchange rate. This established confidence and attracted foreign investment.The second element was that Lee Kuan Yew ruled out passing the begging bowl. Singapore refused to accept foreign aid of any kind. This is a far cry from many developing countries, where, when you pick up the paper, all you see are politicians and bureaucrats trying to secure foreign aid from someone, be it an NGO, a foreign government, or an international financial institution, like the World Bank. By contrast, signs reading “no foreign aid” were hung figuratively outside every government office in Singapore.The third element was that Singapore strived to have first-world, competitive private enterprises. This was accomplished via light taxation and light regulation, coupled with completely open and free trade — in short, policies that enabled Singapore to become one of the Asian Tigers.The fourth element in the Singapore Strategy was an emphasis on personal security, public order, and the protection of private property.The fifth, and final, element in the Singapore Strategy was a “small,” transparent government — a minimalist government that avoided complexity and “red tape”.To execute the strategy with precision, Singapore appoints only first-class civil servants and pays them first-class wages. Today, for example, the Singaporean Finance Minister’s annual salary is 1.3 million dollars (USD). In exchange for these high salaries, the Singapore Strategy demands that the government runs a tight ship, with no waste or corruption. By embracing Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore Strategy of stable money, no foreign aid, first-world competition, law and order, and a government that is free of waste and corruption, Singapore has transformed itself from a poor, barren speck to a global financial center.It should come as no surprise that Singapore today is one of the freest, most flexible, and prosperous economies in the world. Kim Jong-un clearly has his eye on a winning strategy. Maybe the Supreme Leader is a bit more clever than most western observers give him credit for.This piece was originally published on Forbes.com

Comments

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                        peddling-fiction

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:35  

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Socialists take note. Chuckle.

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                        LadyAtZero

           peddling-fiction

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:41  

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I visited Singapore about a year ago.

It absolutely hums.

Busses are full of commuters at 6:30 am.

Streets are clean.

Restaurants operating and full.

Nice, warm evenings to walk around in and we felt really safe.

A very nice place to visit.

In reply to Socialists take note… by peddling-fiction

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                        Bay Area Guy

           LadyAtZero

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 20:40  

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I've been to Singapore probably 2 or 3 times a year for the past six years. I love the food there, particularly in the hawker centers.  My wife has relatives there, so we are able to see quite a bit of everyday life, as opposed to staying on the tourist circuit.

A lot of what Lee Kwan Yew accomplished is slowly being dismantled by the current Prime Minister, who happens to be LKY's son.  Little Lee embarked on a growth at all costs platform and brought in quite a large number of foreign workers, displacing Singaporeans in the process (sound familiar?) and courted mainland China money to such an extent that a great many PRC's (as the locals now call mainland Chinese) came to the country.  The locals hate them and they hate the, mostly, Indian laborers that were brought in on major projects.

I first went to Sing in 2010 and I was greatly impressed by how happy the people were, in general.  As the years have passed, I am seeing fewer and fewer people with smiles on their faces and I'm seeing little cracks in the LKY legacy.  People are cutting lines.  The maintenance on the MRT system has gotten pretty bad, with frequent breakdowns on the older lines.  And where you would never hear any complaints from the old time locals, now the complaints are more than just whispers.

Don't get me wrong.  I still love going to Singapore.  But I'm afraid it is going to turn into just another one of the cleaner dirty shirts of the world.  It's fast getting far too crowded for its own good and that is going to be Little Lee's legacy.

In reply to I visited Singapore about a… by LadyAtZero

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                        RafterManFMJ

           Bay Area Guy

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 21:13  

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Been there a 3 times since 2010 and yeah - the big change is people want OUT - Australia is a big draw and many people I talked to were slaving to earn their way into leaving S'pore

Too many im'grants driving down wages and people with options are exercising them

Spent the last week with a S'porean expatriate and she has no plans to go back voluntarily. It's a pressure cooker where the citizens have been sold the fuck out by the devil government - sound familiar?

In reply to I've been to Singapore… by Bay Area Guy

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                        BarkingCat

           RafterManFMJ

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 00:26  

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Sounds sad.

To take something so good and drive it into the ground is inexcusable.

In reply to Been there a 3 times since… by RafterManFMJ

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                        giovanni_f

           BarkingCat

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 00:50  

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singapore is a idiosyncratic mix of capitalist, socialist, authoritarian, monarchical elements, none of them necessarily bad. It is always nonsense to compare city states with large national states. In a city state it is absolutely obvious if a ruling clan/figure/oligarchy with dual citizenships messes things up. That's why they usually behave. Now compare this to the Ukraine or US.

I found that expats are usually not a good source of infomation as they mostly live in a parallel universe with little or only superficial knowledge of how local people live.

In reply to Sounds sad. To take… by BarkingCat

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                        thisandthat

           BarkingCat

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:06  

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There's "meritocracy" for you: soon it turns into nepotism, cronyism, greediness, kleptocracy and despotism and debt indenture. Nothing new or surprising, but there's a sucker born every minute...

In reply to Sounds sad. To take… by BarkingCat

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                        Lost in translation

           BarkingCat

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:39  

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US did the same with CA, precisely as you describe it.

In reply to Sounds sad. To take… by BarkingCat

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                        Lost in translation

           RafterManFMJ

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:33  

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I’m unclear as to why so many foreigners believe that “my gold is safely stored in Singapore,” when the US military maintains a base there, and warships of the US Navy are a regular sight.

http://east-usa.com/us-military-bases-in-singapore.html

In reply to Been there a 3 times since… by RafterManFMJ

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                        lakecity55

           RafterManFMJ

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 04:46  

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So, Singapore let (((Them))) in?

In reply to Been there a 3 times since… by RafterManFMJ

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                        Lost in translation

           Bay Area Guy

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:19  

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How can you handle that flight?  LAX/HKG just kicks my ass.

In reply to I've been to Singapore… by Bay Area Guy

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                        OZZIDOWNUNDER

           LadyAtZero

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 06:00  

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- -and hideously expensive! Like A$12 can of beer.

In reply to I visited Singapore about a… by LadyAtZero

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                        Walking Turtle

           peddling-fiction

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 20:59  

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US Dems take note.  Weep while another Deplorable One chuckles right along with peddling-fiction.  Even Huey Long agrees, all the way from his grave, ffs!  Now grow a pair, spit on your hands and take up with some HONEST work, y'bumz!

{Teehee!}  Tol' y'so.  Y'Demz all pelted Yours Truly with tinfoil in return.  Ergo Trump and no turning back.  And that is all.  0{;-)o[

In reply to Socialists take note… by peddling-fiction

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                        quesnay

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:38  

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It's difficult to imagine North Korea going from extreme totalitarian regime that controls every aspect of it's citizen's lives and restricts, controls and monitors all communication to the extreme, moving to "light taxation and light regulation, coupled with completely open and free trade". You can't even own a computer without permission from the state, so how exactly are citizens going to transform themselves into modern free-market entrepreneurs with those kinds of road-blocks?

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                        css1971

           quesnay

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:55  

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A single generation.

In reply to It's difficult to imagine… by quesnay

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                        peddling-fiction

           css1971

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:52  

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The public caning will find common ground.

Law and order.

Maybe some westerners need a good caning as well.

Chuckle.

In reply to A single generation. by css1971

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                        TahoeBilly2012

           peddling-fiction

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 18:01  

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Asians adapt fast, look at China.

In reply to The caning will find common… by peddling-fiction

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                        peddling-fiction

           TahoeBilly2012

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 19:19  

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We adapted some folks.

In reply to Asians adapt fast, look at… by TahoeBilly2012

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                        MrButtoMcFarty

           css1971

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 02:44  

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And then nine more back to mediocrity.

In reply to A single generation. by css1971

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                        Scipio Africanuz

           quesnay

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 16:51  

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You underestimate Kim Jong Un, he'll get it done! Trump can help him, and perhaps, long after they're both gone, candles and incense will be lit for their souls....

In reply to It's difficult to imagine… by quesnay

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                        vato poco

           Scipio Africanuz

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 19:02  

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wait, where are all the liberal pussies complaining about Singapore's stifling conformity and how all that neatness and law & order and them parks and businesses prospering and kicking ass and low taxes makes it a cultural and artistic backwater?

whyyyy, Singapore will never become a world-class city like san francisco THAT way!

In reply to You underestimate Kim Jong… by Scipio Africanuz

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                        spieslikeus

           vato poco

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 21:38  

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The real question is are the bathrooms gender neutral?

In reply to wait, where are all the… by vato poco

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                        hxc

           quesnay

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:53  

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Pinochet saved Chile from the exact same fate, got it done quick with a few helicopters.

In reply to It's difficult to imagine… by quesnay

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                        roddy6667

           quesnay

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 22:27  

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A lot of Americans would consider Singapore extreme. Vandalism of public or private property is punished by flogging. This is a severe beating administered by a wooden stick that removes skin and flesh from your back. Chewing gum and a lot of other common Western practices are illegal. Chewing gum is seized at customs. Crime is almost non-existent because it is punished by extreme measures, even for small offenses. This does not meet most Westerners definition of "small and light government." Libertarians would freak out.

In reply to It's difficult to imagine… by quesnay

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                        vaporland

           roddy6667

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 00:16  

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flogging taggers? sign me up for that.

In reply to A lot of Americans would… by roddy6667

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                        Lost in translation

           roddy6667

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:22  

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Singapore is often touted as “how to make multiculturalism, work.”

Curiously absent from any discussion, however, is the amount of State force that is required to keep such a society, running.

In reply to A lot of Americans would… by roddy6667

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                        lakecity55

           roddy6667

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 04:50  

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Bath House Barry would enjoy the caning part.

In reply to A lot of Americans would… by roddy6667

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                        SergeA.Storms

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:41  

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Yep.  And to add, considered one of the safest cities in the world.  How are they doing with diversity and importing MENA refugees?

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                        besnook

           SergeA.Storms

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:08  

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there is a big difference between asian diversity (singapore is very diverse including religious diversity) and western diversity among a bunch of barbarians.

In reply to Yep.  And to add, considered… by SergeA.Storms

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                        rf80412

           besnook

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:50  

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Singapore keeps its diversity in check by rejecting identity politics, to the point of equating it with sedition.  There are no laws or internal policies that favor one group over another, though it's predictable that many people think this is itself unfair.

The West suffers because it's elevated identity politics to a moral imperative, which invites people to strive to regulate every aspect of life according to some racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, etc. scheme.

In reply to there is a big difference… by besnook

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                        Lost in translation

           besnook

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:35  

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Not sharing an open border with Latin America surely helps.

In reply to there is a big difference… by besnook

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                        nickt1y

           SergeA.Storms

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:03  

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Diworsity above all else. After all that's what really counts

In reply to Yep.  And to add, considered… by SergeA.Storms

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                        SergeA.Storms

           nickt1y

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:11  

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Someone can read /s.  Sometimes I think I need to /s tag everything for the literalists here.

In reply to After all that what really… by nickt1y

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                        mo mule

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:52  

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Well if NK can get the US to buy all their nukes, they would have the monies to start a new world order.....LOL

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                        ToSoft4Truth

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:04  

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NK will always be an American dog exploiting their citizens for our cheap products of amusement - like X-mas decorations.

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                        Pernicious Gol…

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:30  

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Kim went to school in Switzerland. He's seen cities outside Korea and China.

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                        ALANBEEKMAN

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:34  

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Some Singapore laws would give SanFran libtards

nightmares. No spitting on sidewalks, no gum chewing,

no graffiti (that one will get you caned), no public

urination and horror of horrors, no homosexual relations.

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                        morongobill

           ALANBEEKMAN

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:13  

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Caning is the answer to a lot of societal problems.

In reply to Some Singapore laws would… by ALANBEEKMAN

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           morongobill

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 01:24  

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Yep.

In reply to Caning is the answer to a… by morongobill

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                        Ethelred the Unready

           ALANBEEKMAN

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:37  

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You left out pooping on the sidewalk - "Pooparoni, the San Francisco treat"  - aka Sidewalk Surprise.   Also San Franciscans love to smash car windows, enabling them to access any valuables within.   The resulting shower of tempered glass on the pavement gives the city an almost fairyland-like look.  Especially around sunset.

In reply to Some Singapore laws would… by ALANBEEKMAN

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                        PacOps

           ALANBEEKMAN

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 19:46  

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We (expats) used to joke that if you liked Nazi Germany you would love Singapore.

That was back in the late 60's.

Had an apartment in S'pore early 70's. Just a great place to live and play. I imagine still is.

In reply to Some Singapore laws would… by ALANBEEKMAN

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                        RafterManFMJ

           ALANBEEKMAN

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 21:16  

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Wait - can I not shit on the sidewalk in Singapore? As an Indian H1b it is my cultural heritage

In reply to Some Singapore laws would… by ALANBEEKMAN

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                        BarkingCat

           RafterManFMJ

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 00:48  

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You can still shit in the bathroom sink and wash your face in the private porcelain bowl.

In reply to Wait - can I not shit on the… by RafterManFMJ

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                        radbug

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:30  

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Deng Xiaoping noted that as well and we all know what happened next in China.

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                        Chief Joesph

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 18:03  

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America would do well to follow Singapore's lead.  I have been there 7 times to know how well off they are, compared to the U.S.,.  It's really like the difference between day and night.  But, the U.S. has always dragged ass at adopting anything, just like health care.  Its been 106 years since Teddy Roosevelt had introduced Universal Health care to America, and America still don't have it yet. Singapore does!    Or like 100 years after the civil war to institute civil rights, or takes 30 years to get legislation for an 8 hour work day, or 129 years before women got the right to vote. For America to adopt a model government and economy, like what Singapore has, would take them at least 200 years, if ever.

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                        vato poco

           Chief Joesph

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 19:04  

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well, ya gotta understand Singapore is blessed by not having to work around a bunch of indians on welfare - 29 year old grandparents, etc - sitting around their reservations and whining about what happened 2 centuries ago - before getting shit-faced hammered by noon

In reply to America would do well to… by Chief Joesph

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                        RafterManFMJ

           Chief Joesph

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 21:19  

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Spent three weeks there in Jan 2017 ... Know what? In three weeks I saw cop cars exactly twice, and saw another cop patrol at the airport - 2 cops and a dog that I presume was sniffing for narcotics or a real boss chili oil.

Asked some locals - where are all the cops?

Basically they sit in their station until called, or until you stop by for a complaint

Imagine that

In reply to America would do well to… by Chief Joesph

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                        roddy6667

           RafterManFMJ

                 Tue, 07/10/2018 - 22:37  

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China is the same way. You usually only see cops at the large intersections directing traffic at the rush hours. They don't walk beats. They don't patrol neighborhoods. They don't carry guns. They don't even drive fast. If you call them, they will come out from the station, and most things cops do in America are not even police issues in China. There are twice as many cops per capita in America as in China.

The first thing I notice when I visit America is the overwhelming presence of police.  American have gotten used to the police running their country.

In reply to Spent three weeks there in… by RafterManFMJ

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                        BarkingCat

           roddy6667

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 00:55  

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One of my cousins came for a visit about 20 years ago. He said the US looked like a police state to him.

The other thing was all the wooden telephone poles.

He said that it's like a 19th century throwback.

In reply to China is the same way. You… by roddy6667

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                        MrButtoMcFarty

           BarkingCat

                 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 02:48  

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From?

[caveartfair]

Missing Monet Discovered in Louvre Storage Space—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

01 A Claude Monet painting lost during World War II was discovered rolled up in a Louvre storage space.

(via artnet News)

The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo announced on Monday that Water Lilies: Reflection of Willows (1916) will go on view at the institution after undergoing major conservation efforts. The painting was discovered by a French researcher in 2016; it was heavily damaged after spending six decades in storage at the Louvre, artnet News reported. Japanese collector Kojiro Matsukata had purchased the piece in the 1920s, one of roughly 25 Monet paintings owned by the businessman who had hopes of opening a museum of Western art in Japan. That dream was dashed by a series of catastrophes, including a London fire that destroyed 400 works owned by Matsuka and stored in the city. His collection in Paris, however, remained under the care of an art advisor until being “sequestered” by the French government during World War II, artnet News wrote, and while much of it was returned to Japan in 1959, Water Lilies: Reflection of Willows had been missing for nearly six decades.

02  A £112.7 Million Picasso spending spree buoyed big sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London.

(Artsy)

The 2018 auction season season appeared to begin with a bang as the Impressionist and Modern evening sales at Christie’s came squarely within its estimate and Sotheby’s surpassed its high estimate, thanks to sales of work by that longtime industry stalwart, Pablo Picasso. A portrait of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter sold for £49.8 million ($69.2 million) at Sotheby’s on Wednesday, making it the most expensive painting and the second-most expensive artwork ever sold in Europe. The 1937 painting Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) was purchased by a client on the phone with Lord Mark Poltimore, deputy chairman of Europe for Sotheby’s. According to industry newsletter the Baer Faxt and Bloomberg, the client on the phone was the London advisory outfit Gurr Johns, whose executive chairman Harry Smith had already calmly snapped up nine Picassos at Christie’s on Tuesday and finished Wednesday with three more on top of the portrait of Marie-Thérèse, a total of 13 works in two days for a combined £112.7 million ($155.2 million). It is unclear why the advisor was snapping up so many canvases by Picasso—Gurr Johns did not respond to emails and calls—but Smith was bidding on every single one. There was more good news for Sotheby’s this week when the auction house reported better-than-expected earnings in the fourth quarter and strong full-year profits thanks to higher auction sales, robust private dealmaking, and a growing presence in Asia.

03 The Richard Avedon Foundation claims an unauthorized biography of the photographer includes hundreds of factual errors.

(via The Art Newspaper)

On Wednesday, a banner appeared at the top of the Richard Avedon Foundation’s website: “Foundation pushes Spiegel and Grau to immediately cease publication and correct the record; publisher says facts don’t matter.” The text refers to Something Personal, an unauthorized biography published by a Penguin Random House imprint, Spiegel and Grau, last year. The account of Avedon’s life—described as “part memoir, part biography and part oral history” by the book’s dust jacket—was penned by the photographer’s former studio director Norma Stevens and long-term book publisher and editor, Steven M. L. Aronson. But the Foundation is arguing that, despite Stevens’s close relationship with the artist, just one-third of the account contains about 200 factual errors. Some major points of contention are whether or not Avedon shared an intimate relationship with Marilyn Monroe, and if Avedon himself made an unsolicited call to the Smithsonian museum to offer a donation of his prints and negatives. While the Foundation’s list of errors is likely to grow with the help of an online correction submission system built into the site, the publisher’s lawyer, Matthew Martin, recently told The Art Newspaper that disagreements have emerged due to Avedon being “well known for embellishing stories or simply fabricating,” and that the Foundation has “no evidence” to back their accusations.

04  A mobster suspected of having ties to the notorious Gardner heist will serve 11 months on gun charges.

(via The Hartford Courant)

Robert “The Cook” Gentile, an 81-year-old Mafia gangster, was sentenced Tuesday to a 54-month sentence for gun charges, of which he has already served around 35 months while awaiting sentencing. Since 2010, Gentile has been suspected of involvement with the 1990 heist in which two thieves, disguised as police officers, made off with 13 paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. According to the Courant, “When the FBI searched Gentile’s house in 2012—the first of four searches—agents found police hats, badges, $20,000 in cash stuffed in a grandfather clock, what a judge called ‘a veritable arsenal’ of weaponry and, significantly, a list of the stolen Gardner pieces accompanied by possible black market prices.” Two years prior, the widow of one of his mob partners had told FBI agents she witnessed her husband give Gentile two of the stolen paintings roughly a decade prior. Gentile told the Courant he did not have any art, “but probably obtained the list in connection with a plan to swindle someone who was trying to buy it.”

05 Malaysian artist Fahmi Reza was sentenced to one month in prison for his political cartoons of the country’s prime minister.

(via Artforum)

41-year-old Fahmi, a political cartoonist, is known for portraying Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak as a ghostly clown with arched eyebrows and scarlet lips. Najib, who faces a general election this summer, remains tainted by a 2015 scandal over siphoning millions from Malaysian investment funds. This week, a court in the northern city of Ipoh sentenced Fahmi to one month in prison and demanded $7,700 in fines for his cartoons of the embattled prime minister, who is still expected to win the upcoming election. On Twitter, the artist wrote that his portraits are an “act of protest against this corrupt government that uses the Sedition Act and other draconian laws to silence dissenting voices.” The Sedition Act, a law enacted in Malaysia by British colonial administrators in 1948, prohibits any publication, action, or language displaying disapproval of the government. While Fahmi was able to raise funds to cover the entire amount of his fine, the artist’s lawyer, Syahredzan Johan, says they plan to appeal.

06  The 2017 NBA champions, the Golden State Warriors, toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture on their trip to Washington, D.C.

(via The Washington Post)

The Warriors had been disinvited by U.S. President Donald Trump from visiting the White House, a customary honor for a championship team, after their star Stephen Curry said he wasn’t interested in going. Instead, the team went to the city’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institution, with a group of kids from Prince George’s County, where fellow Warriors star Kevin Durant grew up. Durant told the Washington Post he was thrilled to be able to provide the opportunity for those young people to hang out with him and his teammates. “To be able to provide them that type of experience, it’s going to do a lot for those kids,” Durant said, crediting his teammates and the team’s general manager for having the idea. Durant said he found inspiration in the museum’s displays, and is looking forward to returning on his own. “It was just impactful. There was so much that you hear and I learned in elementary school, and through school, but just some of the photos…my mom, my parents, they wouldn’t let me see as a kid,” he said. “Some of the stuff you probably had to wait until you were older to see. It was good to get that history.”

07  The Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery in The Hague is using advanced new technology to uncover the secrets of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.

(via The New York Times)

Johannes Vermeer’s 1665 painting, which has been on view at the museum since 1881, will come off the wall and out of its frame for the first time in decades, as a team of researchers from conservation institutes and universities use advanced X-ray and optics technology to analyze the masterpiece down to each coat of paint. Experts will create computer visualizations and dive deep into the pigments’ minerals to better understand how Vermeer created the glowing hues of the woman in a turban, without having to physically touch the work. To appease the tens of thousands of visitors who come to the museum to see Vermeer’s painting, the project will take place not in a restoration studio but in the museum, where attendees can see it being studied through a glass partition. And the whole thing will wrap-up quickly to get the famous work back on the wall; as paintings conservator Abbie Vandivere told the New York Times, “We’ll see how much information we can gain with the technology at our disposal in a very short period of time—two weeks, working 24 hours a day, day and night.”

08 The National Gallery of Victoria has terminated its relationship with Wilson Security following criticism of the security contractor.

(via The Guardian)

Wilson Security has come under fire for allegations that its employees repeatedly breached ethical standards at several Australian offshore detention facilities where the firm operates, including those located on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Following public reports that guards subjected asylum seekers and detainees to sexual, physical, and mental violence, a group of artists formed The Artists’ Committee to protest the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)’s employment of Wilson Security. The Artists’ Committee’s actions have ranged from placing a veil branded with Wilson’s logo over Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman (1937), which is held at the museum, to dyeing the gallery’s moat and “water wall” blood red. Last August, 1,500 people from the arts community signed an open letter calling for the gallery to cease its contract with Wilson Security. On Wednesday, the NGV released a statement with no mention of the protests or petition. However, it stated that Wilson Security was “the NGV’s interim security service provider while we were in a Victorian government procurement process to secure a long-term security services provider,” and that “we have commenced the short transition to our new provider.” The NGV’s new contractor has not been publicly announced.

09  A New York judge appointed a new executor for the estate of Chinese artist and collector C.C. Wang.

(via ARTnews)

The new executor will be the artist’s daughter Yien-Koo Wang King, who succeeds the artist’s grandson Andrew Wang. Andrew stands accused of stealing over 20 paintings and has been linked to the “suspicious dealings in the sale of nearly 100 works,” ARTnews reported on Tuesday. An earlier trial had found that Andrew had manipulated C.C., who suffered dementia towards the end of his life, into making Andrew and his father the executors of an estate once valued at $60 million before C.C.’s death in 2003. C.C. was a collector of Chinese art as well as an artist, and ARTnews reported that “The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired various works from Wang over the years and went on to stage a 1999 exhibition of objects from his collection.” The judgment from the Manhattan Surrogate Court came earlier this month.  

10 A member of the mafia has claimed that a stolen Caravaggio painting was sent to Switzerland.

(via The Art Newspaper)

While testifying to the Italian parliament’s standing commission on organized crime, mafia member Gaetano Grado claimed that a missing Caravaggio painting, Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (1600), was handed off to a Swiss art dealer after it was stolen in 1969. The theft of the painting from a Baroque chapel in Palermo, Sicily, has remained on the FBI’s list of top 10 art crimes. Grado said that the original thieves were petty criminals, but after the uproar following its disappearance, the mafia realized the painting’s worth, and it was handed over to the head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission, Gaetano Badalamenti. Badalamenti sold the work to an art dealer from Switzerland and, Grado claims, decided to cut the painting into pieces in order to transport it. This is not the first time a wild claim has been made about what the mafia did with the painting––according to TheArt Newspaper, previous mafia members have alleged that the painting was “stored in a stable and eaten by mice,” and even “used as a bedside carpet by a mafia boss.” The name of the Swiss dealer has not been released, but the head of the government commission on organized crime, Rosy Bindi, is following the lead and hoping for international cooperation.

from Artsy News

[tn10y]

Two months ago when these two sides came off the field at East End Park, the Pars leaped frogged the buddies to the top of the table at the end of match day six. Since then they have fallen outside of the Premiership Playoff places and the Paisley outfit have maintained their position as title challengers.

It is remote that the Fifers can finish second, and minute with anything less than a win tomorrow. Recovering from this dip in form to sit fourth after 18 games would still signify a good start to the season.

A win in Renfrewshire for the homers would leave them going into the last game of the first half against Queen of the South with the ability to put some distance between second and third. 

Kickoff time, ticket prices and where to watch

Ticket prices:

Match information:

Saturday 16th, 15:00 at Paisley 2021 Stadium.

Team news

St Mirren:

Stelios Demetriou (suspended).

Dunfermline Athletic:

Aaron Splaine (injured).

Referee

Craig Charleston.

Previous games refereed involving either team this season:

St Mirren 3-1 Heart of Midlothian U20 (2Y)

What St Mirren are saying

On signing Danny Mullen: “We have been actively looking for somebody to give us more strength in attacking areas – those front four positions that we play with. I think it was evident a couple of weeks ago when Cammy Smith was out injured, how that can affect the dynamic of our team. Danny is a player that I have tracked for a long time, all the way back to when I was at Dumbarton and he was breaking through with Livingston as an 18-year-old. I have watched his career because I rate him really highly and I am surprised that he has not had opportunities higher up the levels but I think that will come for him – and hopefully with us.” (Jack Ross, manager)

What Dunfermline Athletic are saying

“We need to learn the ugly side of the game, we have to defend and it is not all about being on the ball and playing nice passes. You have to be organised defensively and we certainly need to improve on that this weekend because St Mirren have got some really good players none more so than Lewis Morgan.” (Allan Johnston, manager)

Line ups last time out

Table

Complete fixture list

Former St Mirren players

Allan Johnston (2009-10) John Potter (2005-11)

Former Dunfermline Athletic players

Gavin Reilly (2016-17) Josh Todd (2016 trial) Gregor Buchanan (2014-15) Jack Ross (2010-11) Jamie Langfield (2004-05)

Last five meetings

Championship:

24/06/16. Dunfermline Athletic 4-3 St Mirren 19/11/16. St Mirren 2-0 Dunfermline Athletic 14/01/17. Dunfermline Athletic 1-1 St Mirren 11/03/17. St Mirren 0-0 Dunfermline Athletic 16/09/17. Dunfermline Athletic 3-0 St Mirren

Keys to the game

Jack Ross seen fit to change his formation to a 4-2-3-1 after suffering a heavy defeat to the Pars in September. Since then they taken 20 points from a possible 30, winning three of the last four. Allan Johnston had not varied from his 4-4-2 formation until a fortnight ago when he opted for a 4-1-4-1 against Dundee United and a 4-3-3 against Queen of the South. Neither yielded a difference in outcome as the winless run is now approaching two months.

Lewis Morgan and Ryan Williamson have shared the pitch for the Scotland U21s and will now face each other in a positional battle. The Buddies left winger has been rumoured of moves to Celtic and south of the border to the Championship, and that is of little surprise to the best young talent this division has to offer. Williamson will have his work cut out to contain him, as defending is not his strong point. However, he can put Morgan under pressure by pushing up the park and cutting crosses back into the box, a trait that he excels at as one of the big creators in the Pars squad.

Prediction

St Mirren 1-2 Dunfermline Athletic

Odds

St Mirren: 1.00

Draw: 3.20 Dunfermline Athletic: 3.00

Best bet

Over 2.5 goals: 0.78

You can follow @MichaelWood_SJ on Twitter.

  Match preview: St Mirren versus Dunfermline Athletic Two months ago when these two sides came off the field at East End Park, the Pars leaped frogged the buddies to the top of the table at the end of match day six.

[hugugele-blog]

When it comes to online dating sites, race matters

Look no further than Where White People Meet, a new dating website marketed toward (you guessed it) white people. "I am sure some of you are wondering about the concept and need for a dating website titled Where White People Meet.Com," founder Sam Russell says on the website. "Our answer to that would be why not? There are various dating websites that promote and cater to just about every origin, race, religion and lifestyle out there. So again, why not Where White People Meet.Com?" The website became the target of mockery after the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a story about it, accompanied by a photo of a promotional billboard showing a white couple embracing. The company is based in Utah, which is 88% white, according to U.S. Census data. Reactions varied from amused to bewildered. Doesn't majority-white America offer opportunities for white people to meet each time they leave home? Amid debate over its offensiveness, the billboard came down on Tuesday, the company said on Twitter. "It was NOT our decision to pull the billboard. 'Compass Billboards' in Utah pulled it due to complaints. What a shame. Will have another soon," the company said. Data indeed suggest that users of online dating sites tend to favor people of their own race -- and not just white people. Hence the popularity of dating sites targeting niche interests and lifestyles -- farmers, pet-lovers, Democrats, Christians, baby boomers, divorcees and millionaires -- as well as various races and ethnicities. The trend continues in marriage. About 10% of heterosexual married couples in 2010 had partners of a different race or ethnicity, more than ever before, according to U.S. Census data. The percentages were higher for unmarried heterosexual couples, at 18%, and unmarried same-sex partners, at 21%. It may not sound like much, but those numbers are a good sign "considering we're talking about couples that face more marginalization than the rest of the population," said H. Colleen Sinclair, an associate professor of psychology at Mississippi State University whose research focuses on interpersonal relationships and social influence. What's more, the numbers are changing rapidly. Households with interracial or interethnic heterosexual married couples grew by 28% in just 10 years, from 7% in 2000 to 10% in 2010. Despite the odds, an emerging body of research shows that interracial couples report significantly higher http://www.mamba.ru/ relationship satisfaction compared with those in intraracial relationships. All of which makes Where White People Meet puzzling to psychologists, social scientists and relationship experts. As long as whites are the majority race in America, the odds favor them in just about any dating scenario. "It's redundant. The reason why we don't need Where White People Meet is the same reason we need (other race-based) dating websites," said Christelyn Karazin, founder of Beyond Black & White, a blog about interracial relationships aimed at black women. It could be a byproduct of racial tensions in the United States, Sinclair said, with "competitive victimhood" playing out among parts of the white population as minorities gain ground in arenas such as politics and corporate America. "It means they probably don't have a real understanding of the racial dynamics of our country," she said. Social segregation, also called social homogeneity, is a universal American experience, whether you're white, black or Latino, and it has a greater impact on who you're likely to end up with than personal choice, Sinclair said. "You end up with who you have access to, which is about proximity, opportunity, familiarity and all these things that are a function of our environment rather than explicit attitudes," Sinclair said. Online dating has the potential to create a more diverse pool of potential mates to draw from by 52Burritodates.com removing the structural and environmental barriers entrenched in our communities. However, data show that social homogenization is showing up in online dating platforms through racial preferences and the proliferation of niche dating sites, even as the rate of online daters who say they "strongly prefer to date someone of their own race" decreases. Studies show that African-Americans are at the greatest disadvantage on major dating sites, especially black women. Within this gap, some enterprising matchmakers see a business opportunity.One of those people is 24-year-old Gianni Coleman, a recent graduate of the University of Southern California. He's the co-founder of Soul Swipe, a location-based mobile dating app targeting black singles. Coleman launched Soul Swipe in March with the tag line "Black Dating, Done Right." With its match, chat and swipe-left or -right functionality, it has the feel of Tinder and other location-based dating apps -- but with more black people. Similar to Where White People Meet, the website says anyone can join, but typical users are is black women and men "looking for love or others with a desire to meet black singles," Coleman said. "We recognized there needed to be a specialized service for this community," he said. "Data from our app and other dating sites show that African-American females are more active and feel more comfortable when dating within the African-American community." Karazin, founder of Beyond Black & White, agrees that black women need a place where they know the odds are in their favor. "They may not like you, but they like people like you," she said. "Everyone wants that, a place where you can find like-minded people." The same could be said for white people. In the end, science says that most of our actions and interpersonal relationships are motivated by those same old biases that nearly everyone displays, whether they know it or not. As the tongue-in-cheek saying goes, "everyone's a little bit racist." If white people really want their own dating site "let them have it," Karazin said. "It's not racist. It's just obnoxious." http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/13/living/where-white-people-meet-feat/index.html

[biofunmy]

100 Best Memes Of The Decade

Debora Westra for BuzzFeed News

This decade, memes became something not just for a handful of internet nerds who lurked on message boards; memes are now for everyone. The online culture of this decade hasn’t just changed the words we use, it’s changed how we express ourselves. Huge technological shifts of the 2010s led to this: widespread smartphone adoption and the rise of newfangled social media platforms like Vine. Memes also became a business — brands used meme-speak and accounts like @fuckjerry made big bucks by reposting memes.

To determine the ranking of this list, we considered the overall popularity of a meme, its longevity, and historical importance — what kind of impact it had on other memes and internet culture. Here they are:

100.

Yodeling Walmart Kid

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

In 2018, 10-year-old Mason Ramsey sang a Hank Williams song in a Walmart, and the internet went nuts. But this time, the reaction to a precocious kid singing somewhat oddly (a sort of yodeling) was very different than it was in 2011 when Rebecca Black sang “Friday.” Instead of mocking the kid, the internet loved him, declaring the clip a “bop” that “slaps.” This is the change that happened over the decade: Instead of relishing cringe, the more memetic and ironic thing to do is embrace and love something like a child yodeling in a big-box store. Ramsey has gone on to have some version of mainstream success, performing country music to live crowds, and, well, good for him. —K.N.

99.

Moth Memes

Twitter: @thebobpalmer

Much like a moth is drawn to a flame, we were drawn to memes about moths and their unquenchable thirst for lamps in summer 2018. They got their start with a Reddit post that July, a close-up photo someone took of a moth, which people soon began captioning and photoshopping until it took on a life of its own as a meme. There’s really not much you can say about moth memes, besides that they are funny and good and I will love them until I die. —J.R.

Every generation has its subcultures, and in 2019, Gen Z’s was undoubtedly VSCO girls. The aesthetic comes with a number of signifiers: scrunchies (piled high on the wrist), Hydro Flask water bottles (covered in stickers), puka shell necklaces, oversized T-shirts, Crocs, Fjällräven backpacks, metal straws (save the turtles!), Carmex lip balm, and the ubiquitous catchphrases, “sksksk — and I oop.” The easy-breezy look, named for the photo editing app VSCO, was essentially “Tumblr girl” meets “basic white girl.” Though the style became trendy in earnest through Instagram and internet stars like Emma Chamberlain, it catapulted to popularity (and mockery) on TikTok. —J.R.

97.

Duck Army

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Kevin Innes, a Norwegian twentysomething, was in a store with his girlfriend one day when they came across a bin of squeaking duck-shaped (technically, the toy is a pelican) dog toys. To embarrass his girlfriend, he pressed down on the whole bin, and an unholy cacophony that sounds like the wheezing sum total of human misery was released. Innes posted to Facebook, then YouTube, and then someone else ripped his YouTube video and posted it to Vine, where it went viral. The beauty of this 2015 meme was a perfect Vine: absurd, easy to understand, surprising, and based on something that happened in real life. —K.N.

96.

Deep-Fried Memes

reddit.com

You might not even know what they’re called if you saw them, but a deep-fried meme is one of those pictures that has been screenshotted, edited, and reuploaded across Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit so many times that has started to degrade in quality. At first this deep-frying process was largely genuine, kids refiltering and remixing each other’s images. But as the phenomenon became more known, a second wave of ironically deep-fried images started to appear. It’s a fairly silly thing on its surface, but it also speaks to the innate desire for people to share stuff online. If Instagram had a share button, there’s a good chance this sort of thing would have never started happening in the first place. The walled culs-de-sac of proprietary platforms will never be able to stop the world’s teens from sharing a picture of Peter Griffin from Family Guy smoking a huge blunt. —R.B.

95.

Twitter Sign Bunny

|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣| vaccines save lives you stupid motherfucker |＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿| (__/) || (•ㅅ•) || / 　 づ

02:12 PM – 01 Dec 2019

A series of ASCII image memes popped up on Twitter this decade: “Howdy, I’m the sheriff of,” “In this house we…” “got dat” cat, a stick figure falling off a building, or even the simple ¯_(ツ)_/¯ or (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. These work in part because they visually take up a lot of space on the Twitter timeline, making them stick out and be more likely to be interacted with or remembered. Plus, there implies some element that the poster has some technical abilities to be able to summon the ASCII. But it’s the bunny that’s had staying power over those other ones. —K.N.

94.

Doggos and Puppers

This is Rey. She’s a very puptective doggo mommo. Will grrbork bork at any potential threat. 13/10 heartwarming as h*ck

12:00 AM – 20 Oct 2017

Dogs have been man’s best friend for thousands of years, but only around 2015 did they evolve into “doggos” and “puppers.” “Doggo-speak,” as NPR called it, arose in Facebook groups like “Dogspotting” before exploding on Twitter with the @dog_rates Twitter account. The lingo is characterized by cutesy nicknames for dogs (Samoyeds are “floofs” or “clouds,” corgis are “loaves,” any huge fluffy dog is a big boofin’ woofer) and onomatopoeia (a doggo can “bork,” or stick their tongues out and do a “blep” or “mlem”). To me, it’s a fascinating as “h*ck” thing that an entire dialect, with all its own grammar and syntax and vocabulary rules, could spring up in an organic way online. —J.R.

93.

Planking

CC BY-SA 3.0 / Donkey100 / Via commons.wikimedia.org

In 2011, everyone was taking pictures lying facedown on the ground, rigid as a board. It was a thing, and that thing was called planking. Plankers would assume the pose in unexpected places — atop a car, inside a supermarket freezer, even across two camels — then get a buddy to snap a picture. The trend got so big The Office even did a cold open about it. Soon, it spun off into other photo pose trends, including owling and leisure diving, but it also sadly led to at least one death.

Eight years later, these photo memes can feel a bit old-school, but they represent a key moment when ready access to cameras (both the digital kind and iPhones, which were still pretty new) was still a novelty, and people were leaning into ways to use it creatively. —J.R.

The point of bros icing bros was simple: At any point during the day, present a warm bottle of Smirnoff Ice to your bro, and he has to get down on one knee and chug the cursed beverage. However, if he produces his own bottle immediately, he is exempted, and it is you who must chug. This prank was the peak of IRL-memeing in 2011. Smirnoff denied any sort of marketing stunt, which makes sense if you consider that the central conceit is that being forced to drink a Smirnoff Ice is a form of punishment. The meme threatened a resurgence in 2017, but never really caught on again. —K.N.

91.

Bone App The Teeth

In 2016, someone posted a pic of white bread just absolutely smothered in corn and captioned it with a phrase that ignited a million memes: “bone app the teeth.” Those four words — sometimes edited to “bone apple tea,” “bone ape tit,” or even more bonkers iterations — became the battle cry for shitty food porn posters everywhere. It’s a pretty simple meme, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at a picture of Goldfish sushi or a chicken noodle watermelon without completely losing it. —J.R.

90.

Clowns

Instagram: @davie_dave

Remember that brief moment in fall 2016 when towns around the US were overtaken by mass hysteria over scary clowns being spotted in the woods (which then immediately stopped being a concern when Trump got elected and everyone suddenly had other stuff to worry about)? Yeah, that was a thing that happened. Clowns had quite a ~moment~ in the latter half of the 2010s. Less than a year after the clown sightings, a remake of the horror movie It came out, prompting a ton of memes of Pennywise in the sewer and dancing (and, of course, people wanting to fuck the It clown). The clown memes just kept going from there, with clown photos being used as reaction images to illustrate our most dumbass moments. Sometimes I wonder if those clowns are still in the woods. I hope they’re happy. —J.R.

89.

Kim Kardashian Breaks the Internet

Jean-Paul Goude / papermag.com

In November 2014, Kim Kardashian appeared on the cover of Paper magazine bearing her whole entire ass. It went massively viral, and people immediately got to work photoshopping it into a centaur, Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” (which had just come out), the turkey in a Norman Rockwell painting, you name it. The phrase on the cover “break the internet,” would go on to become timeworn, but it all started with Kim K and her big, glossy butt. —J.R.

88.

Bed Intruder

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

In July 2010, Antoine Dodson appeared on the local news in Alabama after a home invader attempted to assault his sister, saying: “He’s climbin’ in your windows, he’s snatchin’ your people up… So y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife…” The news clip went viral, and a few days later, Dodson’s words were remixed into the Auto-Tuned “Bed Intruder Song,” which made it onto the Billboard 100 charts and become the most-viewed YouTube video of 2010.

“Bed Intruder Song” captured two powerful vectors that would come to define the rest of the decade: a normal person being propelled to some sort of viral fame, and a critical backlash over the exploitative race, gender, and class dynamics. At the time, some people pointed out that turning a video of poor black man expressing anguish over the attempted sexual assault of his sister was problematic. Years later, this feels even more true. Dodson went on to a strange post-virality career, with a reality show that never got off the ground, celebrity boxing matches, controversial statements about being gay, and a Trump endorsement. —K.N.

87.

Alex From Target

Alex LeBoeuf / Twitter: @auscalum (deleted)

In November 2014, a young woman tweeted a photo of a teenage checkout clerk at Target with Alex on the nametag. Her tweet was simply, “YOOOOOOOO,” signaling that, well, this teen boy was cute. The tweet went viral, and people fell in love with this mysterious Alex from Target, creating memes and tributes in his image, leading anyone over the age of 23 to wonder: What the fuck is happening here?

There was some legitimate confusion over how and why Alex’s photo blew up. An internet marketing company stepped forward, claiming that it had gotten the original girl to tweet the photo of Alex as a viral marketing stunt, and seeded the meme with inorganic retweets and promotion. But the woman who made the tweet (whose Twitter account is now suspended) said she had never heard of the marketing company, and that she just randomly found the photo on Tumblr and tweeted it out, and it seems that the marketing company was trying to claim stolen viral valor.

But the ending wasn’t so great for the guy at the center of it. Alex LaBeouf, who went by Alex Lee as a stage name, eventually dropped out of high school because he had missed so many days to fly to Los Angeles for appearances on talk shows. He was homeschooled and joined the 2015 DigiTour, a tour for social media stars, mainly Vine stars at the time. In a 2017 video, he said that his managers at the time had stolen $30,000 from him, and since then he’s abandoned his public social media accounts. —K.N.

86.

Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles”

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

The music video for “Miracles” debuted in April 2010. The song had been kicking around since 2009, but the video is what really did it. It’s been viewed 18 million times — and watching it back in 2019, it is still just as deranged as it was when it debuted. A lot of the meme songs on this list exist in that uncanny valley of like “misunderstood banger.” I want to be clear: “Miracles” is not that. It is a nonsense song. And while it’s best remembered for its “fuckin’ magnets, how do they work” and “Magic everywhere in this bitch” lines, I would argue the best part is the line about pelicans: “I fed a fish to a pelican at Frisco Bay / It tried to eat my cellphone, he ran away / And music is magic, pure and clean / You can feel it and hear it but it can’t be seen.” Damn, that’s real. —R.B.

85.

First-World Problems

Thinkstock / Twitter: @ughshaye

When you’re eating nachos and one stabs the roof of your mouth, when one pillow is too low but two pillows is too high; these sorts of issues — annoying, but generally indicating your life is pretty easy and privileged — were best summarized by the early-2010s macro image “First-World Problems.” A lot of things feel dated about “first-world problems” memes, ranging from the style of the image all the way to the use of the concept of countries being first world vs. third world. But the meme was also one of the first concerning social privilege, which many people would learn about for the first time in the 2010s. —J.R.

84.

Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge

vine.co

Kylie Jenner dominated the 2010s, particularly with the launch of her Kylie Lip Kits in 2015. The now-billionaire’s lips had been the subject of gossip and envy that year when she suddenly debuted thick, pillowy lips (the result of lip fillers, though she denied it until two years later). The star kicked off something of a lip-plumping craze, and teens starting trying to plump their own lips by sticking them in shot glasses and sucking till they swelled up. Needless to say, it did not come doctor-recommended.

The rise in popularity of injectable fillers and the instabaddie takeover are inextricably linked to the Kardashian/Jenner family’s influence. Each trend made way for the other, clearing the way for a bunch of teens to damage their faces to score Kylie-level lips. —J.R.

83.

Sad Keanu

nerdlikeyou.com

Keanu Reeves kickstarted the decade as a meme after a paparazzi photo of him eating a sandwich on a park bench was shared on 4chan. “Instead of Chuck Norris, let’s make Keanu Reeves a meme,” one redditor wrote as the image started to spread. Which is interesting to think about — that this particular decade, one so heavily shaped by increasingly radicalized social media platforms, began with users of heavily male communities like 4chan and Reddit deciding to abandon an aggressively masculine meme like Chuck Norris and instead embrace a picture of disheveled loneliness. Splash News, the agency behind the photo, has attempted to remove the picture from the internet via DMCA takedowns, but Reeves and his sandwich have proved too popular (and photoshoppable) to really scrub away. As for how Reeves feels about the whole thing, at the time he told the BBC, “Do I wish that I didn’t get my picture taken while I was eating a sandwich on the streets of New York? Yeah.” —R.B.

82.

“Haven’t Heard That Name in Years”

Twitter: @goIfkart

As you read this list, you’re probably at various points looking at a meme, taking a drag on a cigarette, and saying, “Gangnam Style? Haven’t heard that name in years.” —K.N.

If you dumped a bucket of ice over your head in summer 2014, it was probably to raise money for ALS research in the Ice Bucket Challenge. The challenge involved participants dousing themselves in ice water on video, then nominating others to either do the same or make a donation to fund ALS research. Many did both, using the viral videos to promote the cause, and the ALS Association wound up raising more than $100 million in a month. The rare meme that did demonstrable good. Sadly, the man who inspired the meme died in December 2019. —J.R.

80.

“I’m in Me Mum’s Car, Broom Broom”

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

A Vine of a British girl in her mum’s car (broom broom) was a perfect Vine: It makes no sense, it doesn’t follow any known comedy format, it’s vaguely cringe, and yet it’s so silly it’s guaranteed to make you laugh. The brief and glorious life of Vine thrived on these moments of surprising and unexpected humor. TikTok is the closest thing we have now to Vine, and yet it requires a certain knowledge of its memes and tropes to “get” it. “I’m in me mum’s car, broom broom” only requires you to be a human with a pulse to find Tish Simmonds’ 2014 masterpiece funny. —K.N.

79.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

Kathy Kmonicek / AP

The thing about Jimmy McMillan’s slogan for the 2010 New York gubernatorial campaign is that he’s absolutely correct: The rent IS too damn high, and he was accurately predicting the coming housing market crisis in New York City. McMillan was a minor local politics figure, having run for mayor a few years earlier. But it was the televised debates for the governor’s race in 2010 that brought him national fame for his flamboyant facial hair, gloves, and his one-issue campaign platform. He was parodied on Saturday Night Live, and a meme was born. —K.N.

78.

“What Does the Fox Say?”

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Few music videos of 2010s hit it bigger than one by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis, as they tried to answer a perplexing question: What does the fox say? The video — which featured a cast of people dressed up in animal costumes and a whole slew of sounds a fox might purportedly say — was named the top trending video on YouTube in 2013. It’s a video that feels definitively old, and it’s hard to imagine it coming out now and being earnestly enjoyed, but we were doing lots of things more earnestly back then. And I’d bet you anything you still know the words. —J.R.

77.

Hot Dogs or Legs

times-new-romann.tumblr.com

Showing off your tan in 2013? The trendiest vacation humblebrag in 2013 was snapping a pic of your thighs and captioning it “hot dogs or legs.” The meme first went viral on Tumblr but had a long life on Instagram afterward. This was mostly annoying, unless it was actually hot dogs, which was pretty funny. –J.R.

76.

Darude’s “Sandstorm”

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One of the bright spots about the 2010s is the way that young people immediately understood and identified the parts of shit culture of the ’90s and ’00s, and mercilessly mocked it. Guy Fieri, Shrek, Bee Movie, and the hit 1999 techno song “Sandstorm” by Darude. To be fair, “Sandstorm” is probably the best and most well-known trance song, but still, it’s incredible silly. It also became a huge meme to namedrop the song in the comment sections of random YouTube videos. What’s silliest about it is the idea that it has lyrics (it does not), and they’re simply dun dun dun dun dun dun DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN dun dun dun dun. —K.N.

75.

*Record Scratch*

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

03:44 PM – 25 Aug 2016

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. I’m a meme you could not stop seeing all over your feed in 2016. The meme was based on the clichéd movie trope in which a protagonist would begin to explain how they got themself into a ~wacky situation~. The meme spread quickly, with Twitter users aligning the text with all sorts of images. This was not the first text-based Twitter meme, nor would it be the last, but its takeover was so big it eventually became a Twitter trope in and of itself. —J.R.

74.

Double Rainbow

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What makes Paul Vasquez’s effusive awe at seeing a double rainbow distinctly from 2010 as opposed to 2019 is how it’s barely what we’d call a “meme” now. It’s a viral video, sure, and it was one of the first truly huge and popular ones. In many ways, even though it happened in 2010, it resembled the memes of the 2000s more: It went viral after Jimmy Kimmel’s show account tweeted it, and it spread over email and Gchat from person to person.

The things we think of as memes now are mostly defined by being iterative: a photo you can write new captions over and over ad nauseum and can mean a million different things. But “Double Rainbow” is just a funny video – you watch it once, you laugh, and that’s it. It’s more of the Tosh.0 version of the internet where there are funny things to be found than the Distracted Boyfriend or Pepe the frog version where there are existing memes that we make our own meaning out of. The monetization of the video was also (by current standards) primitive: He appeared in a Microsoft ad. —K.N.

73.

Mannequin Challenge

There were a lot of dance crazes and video fads in the 2010s — the suddenly widespread use of phones with cameras made it possible — but few grew as big as the Mannequin Challenge of 2016. The videos involved standing as still as a statue, usually with the song “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd playing. The meme’s origins lie with a group of Florida high schoolers, and within just a few weeks there were Mannequin Challenge videos from pro sports teams, then– presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and quite possibly your family on Thanksgiving. The Mannequin Challenge went viral because it was the stationary dance craze version of the “Cha Cha Slide” — it was family-friendly, everyone could catch on pretty quickly, and it was something that could bring everyone together. —J.R.

72.

“Harlem Shake”

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In early 2013, a dance meme was born. Set to the techno song “Harlem Shake” by Baauer, the premise was to start off dancing very mildly, and when the beat drops, all hell breaks loose and a large group of people dance wildly. It’s stupid, I know. As quickly as the meme came to life, it died: A few days after the first few videos went viral, BuzzFeed’s office did a version (Ryan is in the horse mask; I run and hide into a conference room), and six days after that, the Today show anchors did one, which seemed to everyone to signal the end of the meme. But the real nail in the coffin was in 2017 when FCC chair Ajit Pai did a video to help explain the end of Net Neutrality. —K.N.

71.

Bottle Flipping

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If you were a teen in 2016, you probably flipped a bottle or two. The trend really took off when high school student Mike Senatore executed a flawless flip at his school talent show to rapturous applause. After that, everyone was flipping bottles, and a “replica bottle” signed by Senatore himself fetched over $11,000 on eBay. Teens do all sorts of kooky things, but to this day, it’s hard to watch a video of a perfect bottle flip and NOT feel unbridled joy and triumph. —J.R.

70.

Bronies

Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News

The world first learned of bronies when in 2011 Wired wrote about the adult men who loved the rebooted My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic show. For the next five years, bronies seemed to dominate every aspect of internet culture — they were rampant on Reddit, 4chan, DeviantArt, Twitter, Tumblr, and even IRL conventions (and of course, horrible, horrible version of pony porn, known as “clop”). The fandom morphed through every phase of an online community, including a small faction of fascist bronies, creating fan art of the colorful horses in Nazi uniforms.

No group since furries has been as routinely mocked as the bronies. And yet, now that they’ve sort of faded away slightly, we sort of miss them. —K.N.

68.

Bee Movie

quilavastudy.tumblr.com

According to all known laws of memes, there is no way Bee Movie should have been able to go viral. And yet, posting the entire script to the 2007 movie somehow became a big Tumblr meme. The reasons for this semi-flop movie becoming a meme aren’t totally clear. Perhaps it was the realization of how grotesque the plot is (a bee and a human woman fall in love), perhaps it was that star Jerry Seinfeld was having a moment. Or maybe because it was just because it’s random and shitty movie, which is inherently funny. Unlike beloved childhood characters Shrek or SpongeBob, Bee Movie’s mediocrity is what makes it memeable. The crummier, the more nonsensical the meme, the better. The layers of ironic detachment have to be so thick that to pretend to love Bee Movie and post its entire script is something only someone with a truly online brain in 2015 could be capable of. —K.N.

67.

¯_(ツ)_/¯ (Shruggie)

Fun fact: The symbol in the center of the shruggie is a Japanese Katakana character called “Tsu.” It’s commonly used in Japanese fiction to represent the end of a line of dialogue. Kind of perfect right? Nothing left to say? Shruggie time. The shruggie was the perfect emoticon of the Obama era: a slightly worried-looking, yet pleasantly numb smirk, throwing its hands up at everything’s lack of meaning. Also, it just looks really cool! Things are going to probably only get worse over the next decade, so I say we bring the shruggie back. Let’s all really get into casual nihilism. I mean, everything’s fucked, so why not, right? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ —R.B.

66.

Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”

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The infectious pop song became a hit in early 2012, and by late spring, the distinctive rhyme scheme of the chorus had become a meme. Example: This still of Marty McFly and his mom in Back to the Future: “Hey I just met you / and this is crazy / but I’m from the future / and I’m your baby.” Or a tweet by @jwherrman: “HEY, I JUST MET YOU / AND MY DOG IS CRAZY / WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF / HE HAS RABIES.” —K.N.

65.

Dashcon

notsafeforweabs.tumblr.com

There was a time right around the middle of this last decade where the internet was a largely more innocent place. Nerdy fandom subcultures built around TV shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Supernatural weren’t quite in the mainstream yet, nor did people fully understand the realities of what happens when you bring a bunch of people from the internet together in real life. That giddy naivete died with Dashcon. The unofficial Tumblr-based convention wasn’t quite a Fyre Festival–level disaster, but the level of secondhand embarrassment it generated seems to have killed an entire mode of internet use. One could even argue that Tumblr — the little social network that could — lost its last bit of grip on the larger culture of the internet. From the sad photos of cosplayers sitting in a weird ball pit to the haunting photos of empty of showrooms to accusations later of fraud, for fandom internet there was a before and after Dashcon. Based on things like Tanacon and Fyre Festival, though, it seems like those who do not learn from Dashcon are doomed to repeat Dashcon. —R.B.

64.

Galaxy Brain

reddit.com

This 2017 meme has staying power because it’s so simple and applies to so many things. The format shows several different concepts in increasing order of brainpower, culminating with something ridiculous. It speaks so perfectly to how we argue and discuss any topic online: a basic idea, a smarter take, slowly devolving into anarchy. —K.N.

63.

Loss.JPG

cad-comic.com

There’s really no way to sugarcoat what loss.JPG is. It’s a four-panel web comic about a miscarriage that has evolved into some weird Where’s Waldo? game played on social media. The story behind the infamous comic is that Ctrl-Alt-Del creator Tim Buckley wanted to make his series more mature. His audience recoiled at the mature storyline and found the whole thing incredibly lame. To make matters worse, the text-less comic was uploaded to the site with the filename loss.JPG. There’s a good chance you’ve come across loss.JPG parodies and never even realized that’s what they were. Buckley has spoken a bit about the meme over the years. “Perhaps I had miscalculated my demographic’s ability/willingness to approach such a sensitive subject matter,” he said. “As much as I hate to admit it because I certainly don’t want to make light of the subject matter itself, I found them quite amusing.”

But still the meme remains. And there’s a good possibility it will continue to stick around well into the next decade, if only because it’s too tasteless to ever really address directly. —R.B.

62.

Baby Shark

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The origins of why a techno version of a public domain campfire song became accurately described as “‘Sicko Mode’ for babies” isn’t totally clear. Normally, internet culture has no interest in what the parents of young infants and toddlers are doing (gross, old people). And yet somehow the catchy story of a multigenerational shark family (doo doo doo doo) meant for babies became inescapable. In a review for the live stage show of Baby Shark, the New Yorker wrote, “It wasn’t Disney or Nickelodeon executives who plucked it from among the millions of other videos on YouTube. Instead, babies themselves made it a juggernaut, by relentlessly clicking Play on their parents’ phones. It might be the first genuine example of baby pop culture.” —K.N.

61.

Infinity War Memes

yoongis-home-moved.tumblr.com

TV shows and movies that become their own sort of visual meme language all tend to come from the same place emotionally. There seems to be a certain secret sauce for cracking through the zeitgeist, and it largely comes down to particular kind of glee people get from taking the piss out of something serious. Avengers: Infinity War wasn’t the first Marvel film to get memed (Bruce Banner’s “That’s my secret, Cap” line from The Avengers was the first big one), but Infinity War hit in a big way. I’d argue that all came down to its shocking ending where literally half of everyone’s favorite superheroes all died horribly. First were the Infinity War spoilers-without-context posts, followed by the “I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark” memes, and then there were even thicc Thanos memes. Ultimately, Infinity War memes didn’t have a huge staying power, but it seems to have rewired the way audiences digest big blockbuster movies; if you jump on Twitter right as you get out of the theater and start retweeting memes, you suddenly don’t feel so silly for crying when Spider-Man dies. To be honest, thicc Thanos is much more traumatizing. —R.B.

60.

Binders Full of Women

bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com

Mitt Romney made a truly weird gaffe in a 2012 debate when he answered a question about pay equality — describing how, as governor, he asked to see more women candidates for Cabinet positions and was shown “binders full of women.” Twitter, in peak parody account mode, immediately latched onto this weird and vaguely sexist turn of phrase. A parody Tumblr was made that posted photos of binders. People flocked to Amazon listings of binders to write funny reviews.

Now it seems laughable that this was the biggest gaffe of the election, the most shocking thing a politician said. Yet in the 2012 internet ecosystem, this perfectly played out a cycle of political memes that we don’t really have the stomach for anymore. No one’s making a “grab them by the pussy” Tumblr. —K.N.

59.

“Gangnam Style”

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Here’s the thing about Psy’s 2012 hit: It’s extremely good. The song is catchy, but it’s the visuals in the music video that propelled it to an international hit and the most-viewed YouTube video for years. It’s a video you want to watch more than once, one you want to show it to your friends. The fact that it was by an artist unfamiliar to most people outside of South Korea didn’t matter. The videos that would later best its YouTube record — “Despacito,” “See You Again” — did so more because of how long their respective songs stayed at the top of music charts than the nature of the video itself.

But “Gangnam Style” is a wildly entertaining as a video. The sets and backup characters change constantly, Psy’s style of deadpan serious rapping while lying on an elevator floor with a man in a cowboy hate gyrating over him is funny. Psy’s pony-riding dance is funny. It was the dance, of course, that people did at weddings and high school dances and flash mobs. —K.N.

58.

Forever Alone

knowyourmeme.com

Constructing a linear narrative out of internet content is extremely complicated — things connect across time and space in ways that make a traditional retelling almost impossible. That said, if there is a story of the internet in the 2010s, I’d argue it’s about loneliness and the bizarre and surreal ways people try to overcome it. So perhaps it’s fitting that this decade started with FunnyJunk user Azuul’s May 2010 rage comic “April Fools” — the first appearance of the phrase “forever alone.” Azuul’s swollen-faced character has more or less gone extinct, but the phrase, and more importantly, the meaning behind the phrase, have gone on to define the core irony of the internet: We are deeply isolated, yet connected enough to each other to commiserate about it. —R.B.

57.

Wholesome Memes

Twitter: @tenderfiresign

Ah, wholesome memes. In a decade in which things online (and offline!) tended to be pretty bleak, wholesome memes were a salve. In these memes, the punchline lies in the genuine surprise of an online joke actually being pure and good — particularly about “loving and supporting” one’s friends, significant other, or yourself. —J.R.

56.

There’s Always a @dril Tweet

Without a doubt, @dril is the most important person on Twitter of the 2010s. He has a specific absurdist take on living in some modern digital hellworld where his boss doesn’t let him kiss his ferrets at work, people keep asking him about fucking the Betsy Ross flag, and his candle budget is out of control. He never breaks character — there’s never a “but seriously folks, I’m sorry about that last tweet” — and has, miraculously, nearly maintained his anonymity.

@dril’s fans have taken some of his tweets and turned them into specific terms for online existence: “Corncobbing” is when someone has been owned and refuses to admit it; “help my family is dying” is a reference to the candle budget tweet.

During and after the election, people noticed that often there was an old Trump tweet that said something almost the opposite of what he had just said, coining the phrase “there’s always a tweet.” Soon people started to notice that Trump’s tweets had an odd similarity to @dril tweets and that you could often find an old @dril tweet with a parallel message. —K.N.

55.

Game of Thrones Memes

reddit.com

Like Infinity War, Game of Thrones became its own genre of meme. It wasn’t the first peak TV drama to do so — I’d argue Breaking Bad set the stage for it — but GoT did something both Breaking Bad and movies like Infinity War didn’t: It got much worse over time. Game of Thrones, especially in its early seasons, was an outrageously grim, dark show full of sex and violence, which made the memes it generated feel even more fun and risqué to share. But as the show’s ratings increased and its digital footprint became nearly unavoidable, it also became a much stupider show. Somewhere in that uncanny valley of extremely serious and incredibly stupid was the perfect breeding ground for memes. Much like the army of White Walkers pouring into Winterfell in an episode shot so dark people had to desperately try to readjust their TV settings, once internet users smell blood in the water, they’re going to swarm. —R.B.

54.

You Know I Had to Do It to Em

Twitter: @LuckyLuciano17k (deleted)

There’s something so visceral about the YKIHTDITE photo. You either get why it’s funny, or it’s just a random photo. I also think people notice things about this photo in different orders. For instance, I notice the sock tan lines and the diamond earrings first. The tweet also begs us to answer the question of what exactly “it” is that he had to do to ‘em. Luciano’s pose — hand in hand, loafered power stance — has evolved into something akin to an internet-wide Where’s Waldo? with people photoshopping him into anything they can. People even go on pilgrimages to where the photo was taken (it’s in Florida, obviously). Like I said, I can’t explain why it’s funny, but it is. Maybe that’s the “it” that he’s doing to ‘em. —R.B.

For a brief time in early 2017, people were transfixed by Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, who would slice steak and sprinkle salt on it, but, like, in a sexy way? (See #13) A still image of “Salt Bae” tossing on the salt like it’s fairy dust became a meme representing any time we’re being our most extra selves. (Oh yeah, and then he hugged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at his restaurant and Marco Rubio doxed him for it. Becoming a meme is a rich tapestry.) —J.R.

52.

Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams

timmie-cee.tumblr.com

The theory that 9/11 was an inside job, as evidenced by the fact that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, was floated in the 2005 documentary Loose Change, which, despite being Alex Jones–level conspiracy theory, became incredibly popular on YouTube. It takes countless levels of irony to use the phrase (along with “Bush did 9/11”) as a joke. On some level, it’s not unlikely that a young person has been exposed to Loose Change or some other truther and perhaps believes it a little bit. On another level, they’re making fun of boomers and truthers who actually believe it. And then there’s the gallows humor of laughing at a tragic event that only those too young to remember could exhibit. It’s not callousness that made this a meme; it’s a reaction to the noxious conspiracy theories that flourish online and the disillusionment of an event that led to a war that’s lasted the entire lifetime of the young people who make the joke. —K.N.

51.

Cringe

knowyourmeme.com

True cringe is something posted in earnest, and being earnest is the enemy of internet culture in the 2010s. Irony is the online currency. Cringe as a concept started on Reddit, where r/cringepics and a YouTube-focused version posted awkward and embarrassing earnest photos and videos taken from social media. R/CringeAnarchy, a more cruel board that tended to make fun of women and minorities, was banned in 2019 by Reddit (other forms of cringe boards are still active).

“Cringe” became a catchall for something embarrassing and uncool. Hillary Clinton tweeting in meme-speak was cringe. Your old LiveJournal is cringe. BuzzFeed is cringe. Everyone has posted cringe; it’s universal, and that’s why we’re so obsessed with it. —K.N.

49.

Drake/”Hotline Bling”

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Drake has been a massively popular and famous rapper for the entire decade, and there’s always been memes about pop stars. But Drake has managed to be more memeable than his musical peers, except for maybe Kanye West. There’s been the “In My Feelings” dance challenge, where people dance out the side of a moving car to his 2018 hit, the “hope no one heard that” lyric from “Marvins Room,” Drake’s myriad of faces and expressions while he watches basketball games, images of his character from Degrassi: The Next Generation, and the handwritten scrawl of the cover art for his album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.

But it’s the video for “Hotline Bling” that was memed a million times. The Day-Glo colors and goofy dancing made for perfect GIFable moments. The meme was nearly killed when Donald Trump danced to it on Saturday Night Live, but a version managed to live on: Drake shaking his finger to one thing, and smiling in acceptance to another thing. —K.N.

48.

Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life”

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“Bring Me to Life” is like the goth cousin of “All Star.” It works for the same reason. It’s from that ridiculous Ben Affleck Daredevil movie. It has a call and response. Its sadder lyrics definitely fit my general mood about all of life right now. Also, Amy Lee can sing! This song is a genuine banger. When is the Evanescaissance coming? —R.B.

47.

Ryan Gosling

feministryangosling.tumblr.com

Hey, girl. Ryan Gosling was more than just a Hollywood heartthrob in the 2010s — he was also the basis of multiple memes. First came the Tumblr “Feminist Ryan Gosling,” in which photos of the actor were superimposed with quotes that mixed feminist texts with shit your imaginary hot-yet-sensitive boyfriend might say (this was 2011, so the sheer concept of a man openly calling himself a feminist was still a Big Deal and kind of a pantydropper, which is bleak in retrospect!!).

On a completely different note, the actor became an online sensation again in 2013. In the Vine series “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal,” creator Ryan McHenry would feed real-life spoonfuls of cereal to an onscreen Gosling, who would “reject” the bite by turning away or appearing to slap away the spoon during intense movie moments. In 2015, McHenry died of cancer when he was just 27 — and in his memory, Gosling made a Vine of himself actually eating cereal. —J.R.

46.

ASMR

me drinking iced coffee on an empty stomach knowing it’s going to make me feel like shit

05:00 PM – 11 Aug 2018

One of the decade’s hottest trends was getting a bunch of tingles down your spine. Among the biggest genres on Youtube, “autonomous sensory meridian response” videos usually involve people whispering, tapping on a glass, or even crunching on pickles straight from the jar. For some, the sounds provoke a sensory response that feels extremely calming and euphoric, and may help listeners go to sleep. Though many had long experienced the strange tingly feeling, it wasn’t until recently that people knew what to call it. Following conversations on message boards about the nameless sensation, a woman named Jennifer Allen coined the term in 2010 and made a Facebook group in its name.

From there, it entered the popular consciousness, becoming gradually more well-known over the decade. Many enjoyed it in earnest, but it also was widely parodied. There were celebrity ASMR videos, and ASMR creators became YouTube celebs in their own right. One of the biggest ones, a teen girl named Makenna Kelly, became the basis for a ton of memes. Some of these YouTubers became famous for their funnier themed ASMR videos, such as “1300s A.D. ASMR: Nun Takes Care of You in Bed (You Have the Plague).”

Self-care and wellness were major buzzwords in the 2010s, which helped popularize the relaxing videos. But perhaps the most interesting part is how social media helped many people name the bizarre neurological phenomenon they’d experienced their whole lives and find out they weren’t alone. —J.R.

45.

Cropped Gay Porn

Instagram: @http://bit.ly/2ElyLuw

Porn! It’s the central driving force of the internet (see #13). So much of the web culture created in this last decade has been defined by an explosion of diverse and global points of view suddenly entering the mainstream (and the conflicts that sometimes rise up when that happens). So it makes sense that most defining porn meme of the 2010s is cropped gay porn. It’s cheeky, it’s wildly inappropriate, and, fuck, it was so big. The meme really climaxed with the “Right in front of my salad” clip, where two adult film actors interrupt a woman peacefully eating her salad by having sex behind the kitchen counter. It’s sort of nice to think that no matter how crazy things get, there’s one thing that can still bring us all together online, and that’s porn. —R.B.

44.

Cash Me Ousside

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Imagine you’re Dr. Phil. Having helped families and individuals through countless crises on your television show, you’re feeling pretty good about your abilities. There is nothing you, a couch, and a camera can’t fix. Then one day, a 13-year-old Floridian named Danielle Bregoli comes on set and rocks your world. After she calls your audience a bunch of hoes, you repeat the accusation, just making sure you heard right. When she confirms, the audience goes berserk, and Bregoli gets upset. You hear her say “Cash me ousside, howbow dah?” five magical words used to challenge the audience to a fight. The phrase lives on in infamy. And now you, Dr. Phil, are part of one of the decade’s greatest memes. —Alex Kantrowitz

43.

Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man

ABC / MARVEL

It’s simple: Spider-Man points at another Spider-Man. What’s not to get. It’s us, looking at ourselves. Iconic. —K.N.

42.

Nickelback

youtube.com

The Canadian band has miraculously remained untouched by the trend of critical reassessment and appreciation of pop music. They occupy an uncanny valley of being wildly popular AND wildly reviled by anyone who considers themselves a person of taste. For a while, they occupied a space as the punchline to something bad (there was a time in 2014 where you could use a Facebook graph search to find which of your friends “liked” Nickelback and unfriend them).

But it was the still from the video for “Photograph” where singer Chad Kroeger holds up a photo, along with the memorable lyric “look at this photograph,” that blew up in the second half of the decade. The meme ultimately died when President Donald Trump tweeted a version where the photo Kroeger holds is of Joe Biden golfing with his son and another American who also served on the board of a Ukrainian company at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Nickelback’s label filed a copyright claim, and the video has been removed from Trump’s tweet. —K.N.

41.

Rebecca Black

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It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday! In 2011, then–13-year-old Rebecca Black made her debut with “Friday,” and looking forward to the weekend was never again the same. The music video went enormously viral, but it was widely dubbed the “worst song ever.”

Still, it was also a hit, and the song debuted at No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was covered on Glee, and Black even appeared as herself in Katy Perry’s music video for “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.).” Two years later, Black got in on the joke, releasing a sequel to “Friday” — named, of course, “Saturday.” Whether you think “Friday” slaps or is a nightmare, I’d bet you anything you’ll know all the words until you die. —J.R.

40.

“Come to Brazil”

diorc.tumblr.com

If you’ve ever clicked through on a tweet from any sort of celebrity, chances are you’ve seen the phrase “come to Brazil” written over and over in the replies. According to Know Your Meme, the first time the phrase was tweeted at a celebrity was April 2008. Then, when Justin Beieber joined Twitter in 2009, it exploded in popularity. I once asked some members of BuzzFeed Brazil why exactly it was such a common occurrence among Brazilian internet users. I was told the answer is actually pretty simple — American musicians rarely tour Brazil. But to really best understand why Brazilians mass-send it though, on a deeper level, you probably need to know the concept of “zuera,” Brazilian slang for “zoeira” which means “heavy fun.” It basically means that moment when a meme becomes a meme and spirals completely out of control. COME TO BRAZIL, MIGAAA. —R.B.

Guns or glitter? Touchdowns or tutus? One of the most inescapable party themes of the 2010s was that of the gender reveal. At gender-reveal parties, expecting parents and their loved ones gather to find out what kind of genitals their unborn child will have. This is often accomplished by cutting a cake, with pink or blue frosting revealing whether it was a boy or a girl.

Party planners tried to one-up each other, sometimes executing the big reveal using explosives — which, as you might guess, often had disastrous results. In 2018, a father-to-be accidentally ignited a wildfire in Arizona. The following year, a grandmother was killed in an explosion, and there was even a gender-reveal plane crash.

As our understanding of gender (and how it was not the same thing as sex) evolved over the decade, so did criticism and mockery of gender-reveal parties. And some people had changes of heart; in 2019, Jenna Karvunidis, the lifestyle blogger who had the first viral gender reveal in 2008, criticized the parties, which she said put “more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby.” She added, “PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” —J.R.

38.

*tips fedora*

Twitter: @MoonOverlord

One of the most magical things about the internet is when we all collectively realize something is a thing. For instance, sometime between 2010 and 2012, everyone on the internet realized that every town has a couple weird guys who wear fedoras, trench coats, fingerless gloves, have terrible facial hair, and talk to women like they’re 12th-century knights. Long before these dudes turned into violent incels, there was just a really nice moment where we could all agree that these dudes were goofy and awful and fun to rag on. Swag is for boys; class is for gentlesirs, m’lady. —R.B.

37.

This Is the Future Liberals Want

36.

Ted Cruz, the Zodiac Killer

During his run for president in 2015 and 2016, a widely circulated, joking conspiracy theory accused Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of being the Zodiac Killer, the unidentified serial killer who murdered at least seven people in California between the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Cruz was born in 1970 — after the first killings — so he is probably not the Zodiac Killer, in my expert journalistic opinion. But for many people he just…seems like kind of a weird dude, right? He pretty much made the perfect candidate for a bonkers conspiracy theory about a decades-old serial killer.

It seems like Cruz got a kick out of it eventually, though. He later acknowledged the meme, tweeting an image of the Zodiac Killer’s cypher on two separate occasions. —J.R.

35.

Confused Math Lady

TV Globo

If there was one dominant theme in the 2010s, it was “I have no idea what’s going on right now.” This was expressed in a bunch of different ways, from the fact that teens and the internet curled up with increasingly obscure memes and terms meant to confuse the Olds (the boomers don’t know what “sksksksk” is) to the rise of explainer journalism like Vox or email newsletters/catch-you-up-quick news like the Skimm. We are all confused. We have no idea what’s going on. If you take the time to catch up on one story, you’ll miss what’s happening elsewhere.

Hence, Confused Math Lady, a meme featuring an actor in a Brazilan soap opera looking confused, spread on Brazilian internet. By 2016, the GIF of the confused woman became a four-panel comic with various math symbols over it, suggesting she’s trying to solve some complex calculus problem. Confused Math Lady is us, trying to understand it all. —K.N.

34.

“Old Town Road”

youtube.com

Country music fandom went mainstream in the 2010s, and with it came the rise of the “yeehaw agenda” at the end of the decade. The term described a reclamation of country aesthetics among black Americans, who have long been erased from extremely white cultural depictions of the Wild West (despite the fact that 1 in 4 cowboys were black).

The concept exploded in popularity at the end of 2018 when rapper Lil Nas X released his breakout hit “Old Town Road,” a country rap song that became one of the biggest singles of the year — only getting bigger after being disqualified from the Billboard Hot Country chart over claims that it did “not embrace enough elements of today’s country music.” In response, the artist released a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, practically daring critics to say it wasn’t country enough.

The song was a viral hit, and videos featuring it — particularly one of Lil Nas X surprising a bunch of elementary school superfans, and countless transformation TikToks — only boosted it more. The song broke records as the longest-running No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, and Lil Nas X became the first openly gay black artist to win at the Country Music Awards. —J.R.

33.

American Chopper Yelling

vox.com

Paul Teutul Sr. and his son, Paulie, were the stars of American Chopper, a 2000s reality show about their custom motorcycle shop. Not infrequently, they argued. The show was popular at the time, but not particularly cool or internet-y during its run. So it was slightly surprising when in 2018, stills of a scene of an argument between father and son became a meme. The more esoteric the argument — the role of media communication in science, Lord of the Rings plot holes, linguistics — the better. Part of the joy of the meme was seeing macho men argue about anime, but also acknowledging that a lot of our online lives is over-the-top screaming arguments about trivial things. —K.N.

32.

Brands Acting Like People

At the end of the day, consumers are people. And people crave authenticity. It’s what they look for in their relationships, their entertainment, and, yes, their brands. Which is why the orange juice account pretends to have depression now, and everyone likes it, and it’s good.

05:06 PM – 04 Feb 2019

Largely inspired by the Denny’s Tumblr in 2013, brands’ tweets over the decade have steadily grown to become surreal, humanoid, and Extremely Online. As the companies tried to figure out how to navigate their role in online spaces, there were missteps (who could forget the SpaghettiOs tweet about Pearl Harbor, or the time DiGiorno used a hashtag about domestic violence to make a pizza joke?). Eventually, many came into their own with genuinely fun and bonkers tweets, with MoonPie, Steak-umm, and Wendy’s being standouts. But in early 2019, things kind of jumped the shark when SunnyD just really went for it with a full-on depression tweet.

“I can’t do this anymore,” SunnyD tweeted in February. Immediately, all the other memey brand accounts got in on it, basically staging an intervention for the orange drink brand in crisis. “Hey sunny can I please offer you a hug we are gonna get through this together my friend,” Pop-Tarts tweeted. “Buddy come hangout,” tweeted Corn Nuts. It was pretty bleak, and many saw it as making light of mental illness and suicide. Most recently, brands started, uh, acting horny, in a nightmare Twitter thread started by Netflix. Who knows what other horros we’ll see in 2020? Brands! —J.R.

31.

Arthur’s Fist

The children’s show Arthur turned 20 in 2016, and with it came a ton of Arthur memes. But none had nearly as much staying power as a still image of Arthur’s clenched fist. Just a flat cartoon image of an aardvark’s curled-up hand, it somehow embodied such passion, such fury, that the meme became instantly relatable. —J.R.

30.

Florida Man

Florid Man Charged With Assault With a Deadly Weapon After Throwing Alligator Through Wendy’s Drive-Thru Window http://bit.ly/2Ppcn9P

11:48 PM – 08 Feb 2016

A meme that mocks someone’s shoes might seem to be more mean-spirited than other memes of the decade. It’s a catchphrase to laugh at someone for wearing ugly footwear, after all. But the most effective examples of the meme, including the Instagram video (and then Vine) that started it all, are always about punching up — taking a small shot at someone more powerful, like a teacher, a celebrity, or even Jesus.

But like “on fleek” and other viral catchphrases and memes, the “what are those” meme spread without any control from its creator, Brandon Moore. In a 2018 interview with HuffPost, Moore said that he “felt sick” when he heard his catchphrase in the movie Black Panther, because it was a reminder of how he had missed a chance to copyright or watermark his video and had seen his creative work monetized by others without him benefitting at all. Six months after the interview, Moore died in his sleep at age 31. —K.N.

28.

Kanye West

Twitter: @kanyewest (deleted)

Is Kanye West a meme? Is he a collection of memes? Is he the original material that gets remixed into memes? Is he all of these things? Perhaps. Kanye’s “Imma Let You Finish” moment happened in September 2009, but was still humming along by the time the decade started (the internet was slower then). For a while, his Twitter account was an endless source of internet content: “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.” Damn. Huge mood. And then, of course, like many memes, he went full MAGA after the election of Donald Trump. For much of the decade, it seemed like all of culture either flowed from or through West. Based on the reviews for his newest album, Jesus Is King, and the general lack of buzz around his Sunday Service project, that might be something we’re leaving in 2010s. Although, he did just bless us with Silver Kanye, so who knows really. —R.B.

27.

Dat Boi

ppt.wz51z.com

In the same way that a bunch of the X-Men are all blue for some reason, the internet really likes green frogs. Sadly for Dat Boi, he hasn’t had the same staying power as Pepe or Kermit. The version of Dat Boi that we all know was first posted in April 2016. In many ways, he’s the last meme specifically from Tumblr — a nice, wholesome shitpost featuring a picture stolen from an AP physics textbook that doesn’t really make any sense but is just kind of funny. Dat Boi, in my opinion, is the platonic ideal of a meme: It’s funny, it works as a cute little wink for superusers, it doesn’t make a lot sense, and it disappears before getting turned into some dumb brand tweet. —R.B.

26.

Harambe

On May 28, 2016, a gorilla who went by Harambe was fatally shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after attacking a 3-year-old boy who had climbed into the enclosure.

The incident absolutely dominated the news cycle, and it quickly spawned a ton of memes. People made videos of Harambe’s banger of a funeral, paid homage in their yearbook photos, and even painted street art in his memory. All across the land, dicks were out for Harambe.

It’s more than a little dark for a dead gorilla and an injured toddler to become meme fodder, but that’s exactly what happened. Harambe memes should not be funny, which means they totally, always will be. —J.R.

25.

Damn Daniel

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

High schooler Josh Holz loved taunting his friend Daniel Lara by following him around, filming him, and commenting on his sneakers. When he compiled the videos and tweeted it, the world loved hearing a creepy voice saying “Damn, Daniel, back at it again with the white Vans.” The teens boys went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and received a lifetime supply of Vans. In 2019, both Daniel and Josh are in college. Josh is studying fashion and works for, you guessed it, Vans. —K.N.

24.

Tiffany Pollard

Vh1

A still of Tiffany Pollard, best known as New York from the VH1 dating show Flavor of Love, lying on a bed in her clothes, hands folded in her lap, sunglasses on, seeming to stew in quiet anger, became a meme in 2015 and continued for the rest of the decade. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Pollard described what she was actually feeling in that moment: “I just remember being so alone, so pissed off; I wanted to get away from those girls … I was really having a rough time in that moment and I think me sitting there was actually me just trying to center myself, centering myself through this bad energy I was dealing with.”

Pollard’s memeability goes beyond that one image of her lying on the bed. Her over-the-top personality is what made her a standout reality star in the ’00s, and that same quality made her perfect for reaction GIFs in the ’10s. —K.N.

22.

Blinking White Guy

Drew Scalon / giantbomb.com

One of the biggest reaction memes of the decade, the “blinking white guy” perfectly summed up when you truly just could not believe what you were seeing. The man is Drew Scanlon, and the specific blink came from a gaming video he appeared in in 2013, though it wouldn’t become a meme until early 2017. It’s a simple reaction, but it seemed to say it all at a time when the world was a confusing mess and people were feeling pretty dang incredulous a lot of the time.

“As long as they’re not mean, I don’t have a problem with the tweets,” Scanlon told BuzzFeed News in 2017. “I think we need more positivity on the internet these days.” —J.R.

21.

Minions

Universal Pictures

Ah, yes, the official mascots of every boomer’s divorce announcement Facebook post. These little bastards took over the internet with a speed that was honestly unparalleled. Their disgusting yellow bodies flooded news feeds like a DDoS attack. I think to understand exactly how the great Minionfication of the internet happened you have to separate it out into two movements. First, there were people genuinely posting Minion memes. Then came the second wave, where people started using Minion memes to make fun of the people who posted Minion memes. I’d love to say that we’re in the clear now and we can leave these beasts in the 2010s, but Minions: The Rise of Gru is coming out on July 3, 2020, so get ready, everyone. —R.B.

20.

Milkshake Duck

The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist

08:07 AM – 12 Jun 2016

Coined by @pixelatedboat, a milkshake duck is some person or entity that enjoys a viral moment and then is swiftly exposed as problematic. The ultimate example was Ken Bone, a man in a distinctive red sweater and mustache who asked a question during a presidential town hall debate in 2016 — who after becoming the meme of the night, was discovered to have a spicy sexual Reddit user history. Cancel culture may not be real, but milkshake ducking certainly is. —K.N.

19.

Gavin

Twitter: @gavinthomas

There’s a good chance you know Gavin’s face even if you don’t know Gavin’s name. It’s sort of incredible to include Gavin Thomas on this list because he was literally born in 2010 at the start of the decade. He first went viral when his uncle Nick Mastodon started putting him in Vines. Gavin really solidified himself as a meme when he turned 5 years old. Suddenly, he was everywhere. He had this extremely relatable confused grimace that really seemed to capture the zeitgeist in 2015 and 2016 (not totally sure what was going on at the time that would explain why). He’s 9 years old now and has a million followers on Instagram. For all the cautionary tales out there about what life after being a meme is like, so far it seems like Gavin’s doing all right. His family seems to be looking after him and, more bizarrely, it also feels like the internet at large is looking after him. He grew up on social media, and it does feel like we’re all invested in making sure he ends up OK. —R.B.

18.

Shrek

Dreamworks / reddit.com

Even though the first Shrek came out in 2001, it took a few years for the internet to really embrace the green Scottish ogre. Ever since, it feels like he’s buzzed just below the surface of mainstream internet culture — always there, always talking about onions. My theory as to why he’s stayed so popular? Aside from maybe a postmodern riff on the extreme overcommercialization of children’s entertainment (see Minions), I think there’s actually something really relatable about a big, fat ogre who doesn’t want to leave his swamp. It’s the perfect metaphor for being online. —R.B.

17.

“Do It for the Vine”

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Vine shut down on my birthday, and because of that, I’ve always felt a weirdly intimate connection to Vine. A good friend once told me he thought of a Vine as one sentence in the visual grammar of video. Everything you need to convey one idea in a video you could do in a six-second Vine. It was a revolution and you could argue it has had a more profound legacy on how we create and share videos than bigger platforms like YouTube or Netflix. For a long time, I, like many people, believed that Vine was shut down too soon. Now, I think it actually shut down exactly when it should. Social networks probably shouldn’t last! It’s weird that we still use Twitter.

The phrase “do it for the Vine” comes from a song created by YouTuber Kaye Trill and it immediately became the anthem of a summer full of people doing extremely outrageous things. Many of the original great “do it for the Vine” posts have been deleted, sadly. But, luckily, we’ll always have the YouTube compilations. —R.B.

16.

Real Housewives

Bravo / Instagram: @smudge_lord

Memes are often tied to some technological advance, such as the six-second looping video or the quote-tweet format. At the start of the decade, animated GIFs were actually hard to make. You needed Photoshop, which is expensive and hard to use. Sourcing high-quality video to turn into a GIF was also harder. In a pre-Giphy world, truly good animated GIFs were prized and hoarded, saved in folders on a desktop to use in reactions. On Tumblr, the main source of GIFs, there was a vast gulf between the number of users actually making GIFs and the amount of people reposting them. One of the early and prolific makers of high-quality reaction GIFs was the RealityTVGIFS.tumblr.com, made by a man named T. Kyle McMahon (who now works for Bravo), who pumped out GIF after GIF from the Bravo universe, particularly the Real Housewives series. Because of the format of the show, where the women were literally asked to react directly to the camera, the Housewives were perfect for emotional reaction GIFs.

The enduring power of the Real Housewives through the decades was proven in 2019 by the popularity of an image of an early season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where one Housewife is yelling while another holds her back, juxtaposed with a white cat named Smudge scowling at a dinner table. —K.N.

15.

The Joker

The Joker obviously existed long before social media, but the character’s glee-filled take on chaotic nihilism has, for better or worse, become inseparable from how we imagine a very specific kind of kind internet user: angry, insular, often violent, male.

Over the last decade, a symbiotic relationship has evolved between new Hollywood iterations of the Joker and the internet’s digital underbelly. Starting in 2008, Heath Ledger’s anarchist, anti-capitalist Joker became the unofficial mascot of 4chan’s Anonymous hacktivist movement. The idea of a nameless grungy psychopath burning piles of dirty money, throwing a city into chaos to satisfy his twisted rage, was a perfect avatar for a generation of Occupy-adjacent millennials graduating into a global economic recession and harnessing technology to claw back control of their own lives. Jared Leto’s 2016 take on the Joker, even though none of them would ever admit it, mirrored the rise of Gamergate somewhat perfectly, giving the world a sniveling misogynist covered in face tattoos, singularly focused on controlling the anatomy of Suicide Squad’s standout woman character Harley Quinn. All the clown prince was missing was a vape to better embody late millennial toxic masculinity. So it’s fitting, then, that we close out the decade with Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, a chain-smoking, self-described mentally ill loner who hijacks mainstream media via an act of extreme violence and sets off a reactionary protest movement.

The Joker isn’t always a serious meme, like with the most recent Joker film giving us the scene of Phoenix dancing down a flight of stairs in Harlem. Instead, it’s something closer to SpongeBob, a visual and emotional language we use to express a part of ourselves online. As for whether the Joker will continue to evolve alongside social media, well, there are rumors already circulating of another Phoenix-led Joker film, so it’s likely he’s not going away anytime soon. —R.B.

14.

Why You Lyin’

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

The beauty of Nicholas Fraser’s Vine in his backyard singing “Why you always lyin’” over the music of “Too Close” by Next is that it makes no sense for why it exists. Why is his shirt open? Why is there a toilet in the yard? Who is lying and why is he so seemingly happy about accusing someone of lying? And yet, it turns out 2015 was the right moment for this meme to exist and serve as the perfect totem for the impending post-truth internet. Now, replying with a screenshot of Fraser’s smiling face is internet shorthand for “this is a lie.” —K.N.

13.

Being Horny

.@tedcruz my young daughters and sons follow you for good wholesome content can you please explain this???

04:40 AM – 12 Sep 2017

If you think about it, being horny is like when content trends before it becomes a meme (sex is the meme). And whether it’s Ted Cruz faving a porn tweet on 9/11 or Kurt Eichenwald screenshotting Chrome tabs full of hentai, if someone is online long enough, they will be caught being horny and it will be embarrassing. The only silver lining is that it can happen to any of us. My hope for the next decade is that we all just accept that most of the time people are online, they’re also probably looking at pornography or sexting with each other. That’s what this whole thing was made for! Horny users of the web, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! —R.B.

12.

Distracted Boyfriend

Stock photo memes had a moment in 2017, but none became as big or enduring as the one that became known as “Distracted Boyfriend.” The photo depicted a man checking out a woman while his own girlfriend glared at him with disgust. It quickly became a meme, though photographer Antonio Guillem told the Guardian at the time he “didn’t even know what a meme [was] until recently.” The photo has now been around a few years, but it’s still a classic, popping up as a meme pretty often and perfectly embodying so many emotions: deception, distraction, heartbreak, loss, and hope. —J.R.

11.

Doge

shibaconfessions.tumblr.com

The only meme of the decade to inspire an actually used form of blockchain currency, Doge was a breath of fresh air in 2013 when people were starting to feel burned out about what the first iteration of what “memes” were. “Memes” now means something different — funny tweets screenshotted and posted to Instagram, or absurd teen humor. But in a darker, earlier time, “memes” were something like rage comics or the Forever Alone Guy. They took themselves seriously in a sense, and were the domain of redditors or angry 4chan guys, or something a brand used in a Super Bowl ad to seem relevant. Then, a friendly Shiba Inu appeared with funny language and words around him, just being amused and delighted by the world. This wasn’t FFFFUUUUUUU, it was such wow. Doge was here to make us happy. Of course by now, the phrase “such wow” is cringey and outdated, but it had a good long run. —K.N.

10.

Kermit

Lipton Tea

The lovable green amphibian became one of the most memeable nonhuman characters of the decade, next to perhaps only SpongeBob and Shrek. Two massive memes, Kermit sipping tea and Evil Kermit, earned the Muppet his place in meme Valhalla, and made a bunch of smaller memes (Sad Kermit puppet, Kermit in the car) take off. There’s something deeply funny about children’s characters behaving like naughty adults, by the idea of Kermit having shady opinions about others while he sips his tea or encouraging you to do something dangerous or sexual or drug-related. Part of the joy of Kermit memes is that everyone knows Kermit; he’s not obscure or niche. And yet someone, the official Twitter account for Good Morning America to be precise, called the Kermit-sipping-tea meme “tea lizard.” —K.N.

9.

Reaction GIFs

NBC / Via giphy.com

It’s hard to remember a time when reaction GIFs weren’t ubiquitous, but they really rose to prominence in 2012 with the launch of the Tumblr blog #whatshouldwecallme. The blog posted GIFs paired with ~relatable~ captions — for example, the GIF of Homer Simpson disappearing into the bushes, captioned, “When I’m in an argument with someone and realize I’m completely wrong.” This blog was a huge deal at the time, inspiring countless spinoffs, particularly at colleges. Though it was a pretty fresh meme format at the time, #whatshouldwecallme posts just look a lot like the way we communicate online today. —J.R.

8.

Guy Fieri

Fun fact: Guy Fieri is so ubiquitous and embedded in the language of American social media that we basically got to the very end of making this list and realized he didn’t have his own entry, even though he’s referenced throughout. Becoming a meme these days is pretty easy: You do something or appear in a piece of media, people latch onto it because of some innate and relatable reason, and voilà, you’re viral. But to stay a meme is a much harder feat. Usually it involves a bizarre and inexplicable alchemy of having chaotic high/low culture energy and a total lack of self-awareness. Memes can’t know they’re memes. Guy Fieri is embodiment of this. He looks like a failed ‘90s energy drink marketing campaign, he drives around in convertibles eating absolute garbage (he literally has a recipe for nachos made in a trash can) and seemingly cannot fathom that his entire persona is ridiculous. Even when he does lean into his memeness, he still doesn’t really seem to get it, like with his recent Baby Yoda photoshop. Whether Gen Z continues to latch on to the Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host is unclear. Only time will tell whether or not Flavortown can survive the ages. —R.B.

7.

The Dress

Cecilia Bleasdale

“Black and blue or white and gold?” was the question that seemingly everyone on earth was asking on one day in early 2015. A woman in Scotland showed her friends a photo her mother took of a dress she planned to wear to a wedding, and a friend of the woman posted it to Tumblr, asking for help — “what colors are this dress?” She submitted it as a question to BuzzFeed’s Tumblr, and former BuzzFeed employee Cates Holderness reposted it to our account. From there, it blew up as a fun visual gag that was infuriating and odd.

The Dress was posted to BuzzFeed the same day two llamas escaped in Arizona, and a live TV police chase of the two animals enthralled the internet as adorable mayhem broke out. In retrospect, that two such happy, carefree, unproblematic things took over the internet on the same day seems like wild serendipity. It also feels like the last day the internet felt purely joyful, before the onslaught of the 2016 election took place and things took a darker turn.

The dress is, indeed, black and blue, even though over two thirds of the millions of BuzzFeed readers who voted said they thought it was white and gold. In 2018, a similar sensory illusion, this time auditory, went viral over whether a voice was saying “yanny” or “laurel.” But somehow, the special feeling just wasn’t there again; it felt like trying to recreate some old magic that was lost, like kids who have graduated hanging back at high school. —K.N.

6.

“This Is Fine” Dog

K.C. Green / Via kcgreendotcom.com

The dog engulfed in flames, denying that anything is wrong, is from a 2013 webcomic Gunshow by K.C. Green. In the full comic, the dog’s face eventually melts, while he continues to drink his coffee and insist he’s OK, but the version that became a symbol of the decade is just the first two panels where he says “this is fine.”

The meme has been used a lot to describe various political situations: The official @GOP Twitter used it once, and a senator even described the comic on the House floor while describing how Russian election interference was not fine. But the staying power of the dog is about how we all grin and bear it through everything that’s happened over this decade that feels like the house is on fire — the climate crisis, elections, the disappointing last season of Game of Thrones. There is nothing that captures the 2010s more than “this is fine” dog. —K.N.

5.

Smash Mouth’s “All Star”

me.me

Like Shrek, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” is another one of those millennial nostalgia points that has evolved into something bigger than itself thanks to the internet. It’s lasted for several reasons: One, it’s just a damn good song; two, the lead singer of Smash Mouth looks like Guy Fieri; three, it was on the Shrek soundtrack; four, it’s a cheery song about how shit everything is — which is exactly how it feels to be online. —R.B.

What makes “on fleek” a crucial meme for understanding the 2010s is not simply why the meme was catchy, but what happened to the meme after it left the hands of its creator and what that says about the commercialization and monetization of memes — i.e., who gets paid and who gets credit. Kayla Newman, who goes by Peaches Monroee online, was a teen when she posted a Vine musing that her eyebrows were “on fleek” because she thought she looked good. The Vine caught on because it’s simple and fun and enjoyable. Soon, brands were using the phrase on their social media. IHOP tweeted “pancakes on fleek.” Denny’s tweeted “Hashbrowns on fleek.” JetBlue and Taco Bell also used it, and the phrase all of a sudden seemed inescapable in marketing. Corporations were using Newman’s invention of a phrase without giving her any credit or compensation.

In the Fader, Doreen St. Félix wrote how “on fleek” is an example of an endless trend of black teenagers creating the memes, lingo, and jokes that make up internet culture, and how those black teens are often uncredited and don’t profit when brands use their creative works. This is in contradiction to a handful of white teens who also went viral around the same time: The “Damn, Daniel” boys got free Vans and appearances on talk shows; the Walmart yodeling boy got a record deal, as did Danielle Bregoli, the “cash me ousside” girl.

In 2017, Newman started a GoFundMe campaign to launch a beauty line, but it only raised around $17,000 of the $100,000 she was hoping for. In a 2017 interview with Teen Vogue, Newman said if she had known the phrase would catch on like it did, she would’ve been more aggressive about it, adding that she was trying to trademark the phrase. —K.N.

3.

Pepe the Frog

Matt Furie

None of us wanted to write about Pepe. What’s even left to be said about him that hasn’t been said already? He started as a chill frog in a 2008 comic by artist Matt Furie. He then became a consistent, but largely forgettable fixture of 4chan in the early part of the decade. The first time I saw him was in a meme that read, “We are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore Earth, born too early to explore space.” I thought it was pretty funny. Sometimes he’d be in memes about blasting the toilet bowl with piss to clean it. He’s something different now — a literal hate symbol that is still being used by far-right extremists and white nationalists.

In the course of his transition from slacker goof to hate symbol, he’s taught us a lot about symbols — not just how the internet works — but he’s also maybe revealed something deeper about how symbols work. Furie has famously tried to litigate Pepe away from fascists, but it hasn’t really worked. Pepe’s effectively theirs now. It’s a grim, but important reminder that all culture can be hacked and warped and poisoned. All speech, online and off, is political. And all symbols, even chill frogs, require protection and upkeep. Feels bad, man. —R.B.

2.

Crying Jordan

Stephan Savoia / AP

Michael Jordan wept during his 2009 induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, but it wasn’t until at least 2012 that the still of his face, red-eyed with tears streaming down both cheeks, became a meme. It started with sports fans but soon spread to become an enduring and universal image for faux sadness. It’s a bit of an anomaly for a celebrity photo meme; Michael Jordan isn’t particularly memey otherwise, and although he was one of the biggest celebrities in the world in the ’90s, he hasn’t been in the spotlight this decade. Perhaps his role in the movie Space Jam has lent him some level of internet irony that makes the meme so satisfying. Jordan has said through a spokesperson that he doesn’t mind the popularity of the meme, so long as it’s not used for commercial purposes. However, his former teammate and friend Charles Oakley did tell TMZ that Jordan actually isn’t amused. That feeling Jordan may have — a moment of vulnerable emotion being plastered all over the internet for laughs — of course would be best depicted by, well, the Crying Jordan meme. —K.N.

1.

SpongeBob

Nickelodeon / dearnville.tumblr.com

Did anything result in as many memes in the 2010s as SpongeBob? The show, which started in 1999 and is still going 20 years later, is so deeply entrenched in pop culture it would be hard to count how many memes have come out of it. But let’s try: There’s been caveman SpongeBob, mocking SpongeBob, tired naked SpongeBob, “ight Imma head out” SpongeBob, traveling SpongeBob, Krusty Krabs vs. Chum Bucket, evil Patrick, blurry Mr. Krabs, sleeping Squidward, and so many more.

The meme’s staying power can be attributed to a few things. It was an enormously popular show with a nearly universal sense of nostalgia for millennials and Gen Z’ers, who are the most prolific of meme creators. The simple art and animation style also beget some of the most instantly understandable reaction memes. May SpongeBob memes continue to prosper until [SpongeBob narrator voice] one eternity later. —J.R.

CORRECTION

Dec. 14, 2019, at 19:59 PM

T. Kyle MacMahon’s name was misstated in an earlier version of this post.

Drake starred in Degrassi: The Next Generation. An earlier version of this post misstated which Degrassi series he was on.

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