Vogue Best Memes of The Year

and Why They're Wrong

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I’m not going to do this for every best memes list of the year but it’s November and it’s Vogue. Two things that make this best memes list completely uncalled for. Every best memes list by a major publication is so that the semi online can keep up in conversations about the internet. If you repeat anything they said in this article, you will be laughed out of the room. The seriously online want fresh hot takes and I’m sorry but you’re not getting it by saying your favorite meme was the Suez Canal Blockage. 

Here is the article. Follow along while one by one, I say all the ways they are wrong, and there are several. 

First of all, I know this is not an accepted j

ournalistic standard but don’t embed stuff! Screenshots, people, screenshots! Tweets get deleted all the time. Contrary to what Rooney Mara said in the social network, The internet is not written in ink! It is a series of files hosted on a server and all of them could be gone if someone trips on a cord! What is the point of all this journalism if we’re not going to give the only part of the internet that brings us joy anymore it’s due diligence. Screenshot the tweets and save the videos. We want to save at least part of it for posterity.

1. For the better right? 

This meme was funny for one week, if that, before everyone went absolutely overboard with it. We can’t trust Star Wars fans with anything. This meme was also so simple and easy to replicate that it became anything. The author states that this is good for the meme and I have to disagree. I think we did not go far enough but we also could not go far enough. The meme is too basic to do anything with. This is a meme for normies and not even one of the good ones. To that extent, even the normies have soured on it. That’s not a reason to hate something but I think it’s good to know when saying it’s one of the best memes of the year. If you say this meme is your favorite, you better be ready to defend yourself. 

2. No Bones

I’ve said all I have to say on No Bones. It’s for children and millennials. It’s not the best meme of the year. It’s not even in the top ten. It’s just popular right now.

3. The Suez Canal

The Suez Canal was funny. I will not argue with anyone on that. However it hurts my heart to put a “I can’t adult today” spin on the giant boat being stuck. I can explain why the Boat being stuck was funny and it’s not because it’s relatable. It’s funny for the same reason Ted Cruz liking porn onto the timeline is funny. The system shouldn’t fuck up like this. All of these people are trying to convince us they are serious and they should be in charge. We are supposed to believe that the world is safe and the best people for the job are doing said jobs. When those fuck ups happen, it pays to point and laugh. The emperor has no clothes. The world's shipping lanes are run by people who drew a dick with their boat and then ran it into the ground. We all knew this on some level but it needs to be pointed out every once in a while in new and different ways. Also, i’ve taken enough comedy writing classes to say with authority the phrase “Boat Stuck” is easy money. That hard K sound kills every time. 

4. Sea Shanty Tiktok 

Why is the example for the TikTok trend a tweet?? First of all, rookie mistake. Second of all, we legitimize Twitter in a way that we don’t with TikTok and it’s absolutely absurd. Tiktok has more than earned it’s keep as a legitimate social network where both serious and unserious people hang out. There’s more useless doofuses on Instagram and they can’t even “dance”. Now as for the meme itself, I do have to commend them. Sea Shanty memes predate Memeforum so I don’t have a take on these ready to go. They do bring out my least favorite kind of person on the internet though. The kind of person who thinks that anything that happens is so weird. The unoriginal, unfunny, what kind of drugs are you on?-person who thinks they are on the wrong side of the weird internet divide. They’re the most annoying kind of normie and everyone but them knows it.

5. Bernie Sanders Mittens 

Ok when they’re right, they’re right. 

6. The French Dispatch at Cannes 

This one was actively bad and everyone hated it, including me. The only people that liked it were the most annoying kind of blue check journalists. Not even film twitter got behind this one which is how you know it’s bad. It’s got a real study abroad in France vibe, which simply everyone hates and is indefensible.

7. Bean Dad 

Not a meme. Bean Dad was Twitter’s main character of the day which is different from being a meme. No one talked about him after his day of reckoning beyond the way we talk about all of these people, with a wistful remembrance of a simpler time. If they don’t have a single iconic phrase of their own writing that is repeated ad infinitum, with or without their context, they’re not a meme. 30-50 Feral Hogs guy is both a meme and a former Twitter main character. Bean Dad is what we call this guy but no one is still paraphrasing his tweets so he’s not a meme. No one is creating new Bean Dad content. There’s a desire to call anything we talk about on the internet with no real life counterpart a meme, but that’s not true. A meme needs standards and constructs with which each author works within. Each of these can be changed from author to author but not all of them. There needs to be recognizable symbols carried over from repetition to repetition. Bean Dad was just a thing people were talking about. Not all jokes are memes and not all memes are jokes. 

Now I’m going to do the classic walk back that is popular on tiktok. No hate to Vogue. I’m not trying to call out or start beef with this writer. I love the work you’re doing and at least somebody is giving your readers a low down on memes in a semi serious way. I would hate for anyone with a Telfar to be reading Buzzfeed. However if you’re looking for reporting and critique on memes, good and bad, from someone who is also an acolyte of Joan Didion, I suggest you look elsewhere. Why not this very publication? 

If you’re getting your best memes of the year takes from Vogue, you’re already behind. Your boyfriend’s friends, the weird girls you want to be friends with but can’t seem to impress, your younger cousins, all of these people will have hot takes on memes and you have to be able to keep up. Memeforum keeps you locked and loaded with takes and even if you disagree, you can just say the opposite of whatever I said and your point will still sound well thought out. 

Remember, If you’re on the internet, you should be reading Memeforum.