The Know Your Meme Staff's Favorite Memes Of 2024

Know Your Meme Staff's Favorite Memes Of 2024.
Know Your Meme Staff's Favorite Memes Of 2024.
By Owen Carry
1935 views
• Published about 16 hours ago

Published about 16 hours ago

"Oh my God … What year is it?"

The Know Your Meme staff members look around, pulling cords out of their backs, checking which among them have also emerged from the cozy vat they once occupied.

It was another dizzying year to be chronically online and getting paid for it. With all the insane stories, incomprehensible slang and a site update we've all come to love, being a meme addict has changed forever.

While the council (you) has already spoken on the top memes of the year, we lowly staffers get to have our say too. We've been cosplaying as the unemployed friend for so long, we've forgotten that we're employed.

"Yes, Grandpa," you say, "go to bed … But first, tell us what happened in the year 2024."

Owen

The Rizzler

Even if he's not the reincarnation of Lil Peep, The Rizzler is still the greatest soul to spawn into Gen Alpha. When he first cameoed in a Boom Meter video, he absolutely mogged everyone and made them the supporting cast.

Christian and his dad are class acts. They set an example for an authentic father-son influencer duo that even A.J. and Big Justice have a hard time replicating. Don’t even get me started on Baby Gronk and his dad. Nothing's made me more mad (even in my real life) than when those two frauds challenged The Rizzler with some half-hearted trash-talking.

Dan Hentschel

The man, the myth, the legend… Dan Hentschel is the undisputed Shitpost King of 2024.

Even though he first went viral last year, when he pretended to be a crazed, fed-up therapist, Hentschel elevated his troll game across multiple viral moments since January. Who could forget Cocky Want Boing Boing? Or maybe, more importantly, who can forget Cocky Want Boing Boing, because Dan can't even keep a job at Target anymore.

This man's devotion to the bit is unreal. I salute you. Drink up as much as you want my guy.

Way To Go Squidward. You Ruined His Favorite Fucking Holiday For Him

As a kid, I always wanted to live in Bikini Bottom. And although I wouldn't have been friends with SpongeBob or that luddite Patrick, I at least wouldn't have tolerated Squidward's incessant humiliation rituals of his, albeit cringe, coworkers.

Okay… Maybe you're right. I probably wouldn't have stood up for SpongeBob, but that's why the writers included this lesser-known character's monologue, right?

No, this isn't a lost episode. It's a crude greenscreen reimagination created by one of my favorite meme creators, Nass. I just love the self-insert. It's so casual. It's raw. I've been quoting this on and off for months now.


Zach

A Circle?? In The Triangle Factory??

It’s always really difficult to pin down my three favorite memes of the year, but putting the Triangle Factory on here was an easy pick. Exploitable formats like this are always among my favorites, as well as things like redraws, but I Guess We Doin Circles Now was the strongest one of 2024 in my opinion. It was just so adaptable and could be used for such a wide variety of jokes and references. While this one might’ve been a bit more niche than some stuff this year, I think it was the best exploitable that really stood out to me.

500 Cigarettes

I had a much more difficult time picking my last two choices while flipping between Pedro Raccoon and Cerveza Cristal, but 500 Cigarettes makes my cut for my top three this year for a few reasons.

For one, I am admittedly not a big Star Trek fan, but this scene from the parody show The Orville on its own is hilarious and highly relatable just outside its memetic usage. When it did become a meme over the summer, it felt like one of those memes that I found funny initially and then just kept finding humorous without it getting beaten to death and becoming overused. One of the other main reasons I’ve picked it is because it was just good, dumb fun and reminds me of old YTPs from a simpler time on the internet that I miss a lot nowadays.

J.D. Vance Couch Cushion Hoax

Despite this one being a bit political and NSFW, the whole saga of the J.D. Vance Couch Cushion Story was undeniably one of the single funniest moments of the year to me.

I loathe politics for the most part, and this election was particularly loathsome in terms of covering internet culture, but J.D. Vance's supposed "love" of couches was hilarious to watch unfold as it went from innocuous one-off tweet to viral piece of misinformation that even forced respectable places like the AP to cover and debunk it.

I think the original tweet was just believable enough that it sounded legit. It was really entertaining to see it being discussed in the MSM and have people reaching out to me IRL to ask if it was real early on.

Sakshi

TikTok Rizz Party Boys

It’s hard to explain my obsession with the inner dynamics of a group of sweaty tween party animals to someone unaware of TikTok Rizz Party lore. I thought the video of some friend group tearing it up at a birthday party was pretty funny, to begin with, but the second people started doing close readings of the text and investigating the power dynamics between key characters like Blue Tie Kid and Turkish Quandale Dingle, I was so hooked.

I think my favorite part of this meme was all the edits people made, especially the ones that made it seem like the boys were vying for the attention of their "group leader." A classic meme that I will reference for years to come.

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7354504759656664336
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7354606167512894762

Mama A Girl Behind You

This meme was a viral video from 2018 that blew up on TikTok this year. It shows a woman dressed in a bright yellow outfit posing while her son tries to take a photo of her. For some reason, the camera is set to Snapchat and the woman’s little knee-height Bitmoji confuses her son enough for him to stammer, "Mummy, mama a girl behind you."

I’m sure someone could argue that the video got ran into the ground as part of the "Great Content Sloppification of 2024," but I loved how FlopTok and its adjacent TikTok communities carried the mantel of surreal nonsensical humor this year.

@floptok.me a girl behind YOU💜 #fyp #foryou #floptok #floptok😍😍😭😌🤞💅💅 #mamaagirlbehindyou ♬ mommy… mama a girl behind YOU – floptok🇲🇪

Elon Musk Jumping / Torture Edits

Hating on Elon Musk is my favorite past time but this year I was rewarded for my unwavering conviction with meme edits of the billionaire being drawn and quartered in various torture contraptions. Musk had this bizarre recurring bit this year where he would come on stage for some event or the other and then start jumping up and down — his arms wide open and his shirt flapping in the wind to reveal his pale, pudgy underbelly — all with the most ridiculously self-satisfied expression on his face.

Philipp

Nothing Ever Happens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age when nothing ever happened. The mantra of status quo enjoyers and nonbelievers in anything major ever happening ever again has been 2024’s unsung leitmotif, and if anyone thinks that surely some things have happened over the past 12 months, I can only advise you to consult the graphs.

The 2024 stock market crash? Didn’t happen. WW3? Didn’t happen. A potential coup in South Korea? Canceled.

With spin-off memes like All In on Nothing Happens, it feels like not only some people don’t think our world is changing in any meaningful way, but also like they don’t want it to. But listen, are we really meant to spend our lives in one eternal moment of endless stagnation, forever scared of any meaningful change? Surely, not all things that could happen, both in our personal lives and in the world around us, are all that terrible after all.

Friendpilled Visitmaxxer

There have been many amazing meme formats that comic artist Fallenchungus and his alleged clone LiquidChungus gifted us in 2024: I Though I Hired Goons, Literal Coolest Thing Ever, Ever Heard of Dark Humor — the list goes on. But while great, none of them can really compare to Bro Visited His Friend, aka Friendpilled Visitmaxxer, a format that showcased how conversation stoppers can be an art form. "Oh, you visited your friend? Friendpilled visitmaxxer. Not beating the friend visitor allegations. Visit him … friendstyle."

Variations were many, each one of them destroying a beautiful story about an innocuous friend visit for no good reason just like Brad Pitt destroyed Jared Leto’s face in Fight Club. It wasn’t long before the format got wrapped into layers of meta and pop culture references, the only thing unchanged is bro’s nonplussed expression, a reminder of how much kids today yearn for Rage Comics.

Chiitan

Oh Chiitan, the god of advertising who was born to drive out advertising in the world! Hallowed be thy name, Japan's crazy mascot who doesn't have any products or information to recommend! Give us this day of your silly videos and laughter, and forgive the sinners who trespassed against you. We hope that you have a good day today, amen.

Now that the era of Chiitan’s advertisements randomly popping up on X / Twitter is over and we’re instead forced to witness Stake’s pathetic attempts to soil the sacredness of memes with their miasma on a daily basis, I’m coming to realize how good we all had it.

Seeing an ad from Chiitan felt like getting a funny video shown to you by a good friend, your laughter — their best reward. Chiitan was ready to attempt her crazy tricks and fail miserably a thousand times just to get that, and I hope she knows that we truly appreciated that.

Maybe one day she’ll come back and bless our timelines with her antics once again — I, for one, will be patiently waiting.

Andy

Costcoverse

Yes, they're cringe, but they’re bringing the BOOM!

The Rizzler is the undeniable breakout star of this group —
and I could have easily just picked him for this spot — but you’ve got to give it up for A.J. and Big Justice for eating chicken bakes and double chunk chocolate cookies while shopping at Costco.

You know, I’m something of a Costco guy myself. I’d say about half of my wardrobe is from there and you gotta love the $4.99 giant rotisserie chickens injected with god knows what. I’m watching an interview with A.J. right now where he’s explaining how they turned down a reality show. That’s too bad.

Also, boo on Jimmy Fallon for disrespecting The Rizzler.

Anyway, the Costcoverse isn’t going anywhere and I’m here to see what happens to these folks in 2025.

What Would You Do With This Space?

I kinda want to put Cerveza Cristal here, but I can’t have two duplicates! I mean, I do have some of my own original thoughts sometimes. I love the "What Would You Do With This Space?" memes because there are an infinite amount of possibilities and so much creativity involved in these.

I mean look, you can put a Chilis in the staircase cranny or a Chili's at the top of the inaccessible foyer landing.

I'm honestly surprised that no one has put a Chili's in the floor cranny yet, so I guess I’ll have to do it myself.

This is a trend that can just keep going and going. All of these spaces should be put into a video game as levels or stages or maybe they should be put into Cerveza Cristal commercials. CERVEZA CRISTAAALLLLL!

Four Seasons Orlando Baby

I have a baby and he has yet to express any interest in going to the Four Seasons Orlando. I'm actually kind of depressed. Is Orlando even that great anyway?

Oh well, it's hard not to love the Four Seasons Orlando Baby. This fully conscious child didn’t just say "me" like any other dumb baby. She raised her hand with the authority of a seasoned executive ready to close a deal.

The best memes are the ones imagining her as a tiny intellectual with a taste for the finer things in life. "I would be delighted, mother, to accompany you to the Four Seasons Orlando. I am most assuredly prepared to embrace the refined pleasures it has to offer."

@aivideolab 👶 #fullyconsciousbaby #fourseasonsorlando #me #aivideolab ♬ Fully Conscious Baby – AiVideoLab

Ariah

Unhinged Home Design

There is something about these videos that I find so enrapturing and so perfectly funny. I’m all for the engaging visual hook of a home makeover how-to. Space-saving hacks that you theoretically could accomplish but never will? I’m already sucked in.

At first, these felt almost subtle – nearly adjacent enough to the content they’re parodying – until completely absurd elements, like children riding tigers through the walls start dripping in, eventually devolving into absurd premises, like housing one billion children. Recurring characters like poor little Johnny blatantly defying physics all to casual AI narration. This meme was the perfect storm of engaging and absurd, which is a meme sweet spot, in my opinion.

@homedesign369 Small bedroom design for 2 kids #decor #decorations #housedesignideas #housedesign #interior #interiordesign #bedroom #smallbedroom #smallbedroomdesign #smallbedroomdecor ♬ Way Back Home (DJ热播版) – 南辰Music

@dy02449xjp A room designed for a billion kids. #fyp #homedecoration #decoration #trend #viral #foryoupage #tiktok #bedroom ♬ original sound – balla

Quirk Chungus

I love this meme because I find it incredibly triggering, which means it's doing something very right. As a *cough* Millennial *cough* woman I … unfortunately check off some of these boxes, as do a great many of my peers.

Missed out on being a whore? I’m a Millennial and I work here so, you do the math. Fails to realize she has already become her mother? No comment.

Will I ever actually admit to being a Quirk Chungus? I would rather choke on "doggo" excrement, but this one's definitely stuck in my brain and pops back up to warn me any time I’m tempted to declare I "did a thing." A good meme comes from a good observation, and this one was well observed.

Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience

This was beyond a meme. This was a cultural moment. What else do you call an event that creates such memorable pop culture characters as The Unknown or Meth Lab Oompa-Loompa — both of which I saw handfuls of on Halloween.

It had the best of the over-promise, under-deliver (à la Fyre Festival) jokes, while also creating a new world for us to imagine where instead of everything actually being candy, everything is actually shit.

Mateus

Just Put My Fries In The Bag Bro

The lackluster ending of My Hero Academia at least served some good memes, like the Quirkless Deku working at McDonald's. This brings me to the Just Put My Fries in the Bag Bro meme, a catchphrase that grew popular in comedy skits on TikTok in June and always made me burst out laughing at my screen.

Symphony Dolphin

I have a bias when it comes to Zara Larson. I’ve been a stan of her work since early 2017. So seeing one of my favorite songs from her go viral in 2024 feels really amazing. The juxtaposition of cute dolphins and the most unhinged phrases ever made this trend the exact type of humor I like. 10/10 meme for me.

@oleki_vfx late for trend sorry #transition #fyp #vfx #edit #symphony ♬ Symphony – Clean Bandit,Zara Larsson

Brat

Brat Summer was inescapable and I was there for it. A refreshing and hilarious statement of how Charli XCX's fans turned her already amazing career to new heights. All the derivate memes born from brat were incredible to watch. Every time that the meme felt like it was sinking, a new format appeared and kept the momentum going, which is a 0.001 percent in-a-million achievement in today’s fast-paced content-absorbing culture.

John

The Grimace Effect

LET’S GO METS!

While they didn’t win the World Series, the 2024 New York Mets may have had the most memeable season of baseball ever since Bartolo Colón wore the blue and orange. That title could have been earned when they invited Haliey Welch, aka the Hawk Tuah Girl, as well as The Rizzler as special guests (or maybe it was having a Latin pop musician in their ranks). However, it was McDonald's mascot Grimace that sealed the deal.

Sure, it was a marketing gimmick like Grimace's Birthday Shake, but it somehow turned the struggling Mets into a powerhouse team, leading them on an incredible winning streak that opened the door to an incredible Wild Card walk-off win and an NLDS win over the heavily favored Philadelphia Phillies.

They ended up losing the NLCS to the eventual 2024 World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers (who also had a meme-worthy Hololive Night this past season), but not without claiming two wins in the series. The New York Yankees only won one game against the Dodgers during the World Series, and that was with the help of some Yankees fans stealing a ball from a player's glove.

While the Mets have been a tough team to root for sometimes, this was not one of those years. The 2024 New York Mets will be remembered as a team that defied expectations both on the field and off. Here’s hoping for a repeat of the Grimace Effect in 2025!

Cerveza Cristal

Let’s be real — we hate ads (except for the ones that support our website).

At best, they offer a creative and silly distraction from whatever it is you're trying to watch. And the jingles in those commercials? Feel free to revisit the Kars4Kids jingle if you want that song stuck in your head again.

So what if you could integrate your ads "seamlessly" into whatever you are watching and have a simple jingle that people actually enjoyed and sang along with? That’s what Chilean beer brand Cerveza Cristal did with a televised screening of the original Star Wars trilogy.




You would think that cutting away from iconic Star Wars lines like "I am Your Father" and "It’s a Trap!" would be quite the nuisance, but Twitter had a field day with the marketing gimmick. Perhaps Cerveza Cristal could collab with the team behind the Dune 2 Sandworm Popcorn Bucket next?

And before you think my top memes of 2024 only contain marketing-related entries, I got a feel-good cute animal for ya …

Pedro Pedro Pedro




Who wouldn't want to jam out with Pedro (real name Ginger)?

While there have been plenty of cute animals this year (like Moo-Deng and Pesto), Pedro captured my soft spots for raccoons and EDM music. The dance moves are simple, the rotating camera adds drama, but the small raccoon with eyes wide open remains a cute focal point to bob along with.

Despite my love for EDM music, I'm not into clubbing. I’ve seen many times where, "In da clurb, we all fam," was not something everyone agreed with. But if I could go to whatever club Pedro is going to, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

Phillip H., aka PHam

Imagine If Ninja Got A Low Taper Fade

There’s just something inherently memeable about Ninja "Fortnite" Blevins. His iconic, cringe floss during New Year's Eve is seared into the minds of millions, and his contributions to the Ligma meme cannot be ignored. And who could forget his "braless wife" tweet, which, in my opinion, still stands as the greatest tweet ever twote.

But this year, Ninja inspired the Imagine if Ninja Got a Low Taper Fade meme, which started when hyperpop artist Ericdoa (check him out, he's good) randomly sang the line during a livestream. It's a silly meme that you might initially think holds no weight. But then, Ninja embraced the meme and started dragging it out, giving it an uncannily long lifespan rivaled only by the likes of Hawk Tuah.

It was clear that Ninja really, really, really likes the meme and just won’t let it go, and bless him for that because months later, I still get a laugh out of it whenever I see it referenced.

So please, do yourself a favor this Christmas and imagine if Ninja got a low taper fade. What else have you got going on?

Hawk Tuah & Talk Tuah

Aah, Haliey Welch. What is there to say about 2024's undisputed queen of the internet that hasn't already been said a million times over? We could have easily let Ms. Welch fall into obscurity 15 minutes after her Hawk Tuah video went viral, like so many thought would happen, but it turns out that we as a society are better than that. Instead of hawk tuah-ing her to the curb, we let Haliey build an entire career around a single joke, giving us one of the most groundbreaking and heavy-hitting talk shows of the past 100 years: Talk Tuah.

Without Haliey, who else would be willing to talk tuah people like Whitney Cummings and *flips through notes* Jake Paul in such a raw, unfiltered manner? Nobody, that's who. It's been magical to see Haliey somehow take a single viral video and expand it into something substantial and I will never get tired of seeing the piles of ironic memes she's brought us.

Sure, Haliey arguably scammed a lot of people out of their life savings recently with that meme coin. But at the end of the day, doesn’t she deserve your money? Wouldn't it have ended up in her pockets anyway somewhere down the line? Remember, we almost made her the first write-in President of the United States! As far as I see it, this is just the first step towards total Hawk Tuah supremacy, and I, for one, welcome our new southern belle overlord.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: four more years of Hawk Tuah, please. Four more years of spitting on that thang. Do your thing, internet.

Foghorn Leghorn Rambling

Foghorn Leghorn is an S-tier Looney Tunes character. He's always been an S-tier Looney Tunes character, but he didn't really get the love he deserved (at least, in a meme sense) until earlier this year when his iconic speech pattern became one of the biggest Twitter memes of 2024.

The big Southern rooster’s hilarious way of talking has been a meme-in-waiting for years, and now that it's finally happened, I'm kind of sad it's over. For a few glorious weeks in April, users were photoshopping Foghorn into every scenario possible and writing pitch-perfect parodies of his ramblings.

We had Foghorn cussing out anime characters, Foghorn scolding
Walter White in place of Mike, Foghorn chewing out Squidward for ruining SpongeBob's April Fools, and that’s only a small selection of the examples that came from this format.

The possibilities are truly endless for the Foghorn Leghorn meme, and I wouldn't be surprised if it comes back in a big way in the next few years. At the very least, can somebody get this guy a meme coin? (that's a joke, please don't invest in any Foghorn Leghorn meme coins).

Jaimie

Moo-Deng

Picking out my top three memes of the year was not an easy task. This year has been filled with so many iconic memes that have touched on so many topics, both lighthearted and serious. I decided to go with the memes that really stuck with me throughout the months. If there was any meme that really stuck with me through it all, though, it's the beloved Moo-Deng, the baby pygmy hippo.

Moo-Deng came out of nowhere but very quickly took the internet by storm. Her playful and chaotic nature, paired with her very relatable attitude, had so many people awaiting her next move. From the moment that blurry photo of her being ambushed by water emerged, I was hooked. She is a true diva, and probably one of the most wholesome things that happened this year.

AI Interrupting Memes

Everyone knows that AI was a major topic this year. Although it's a technology that has been advancing greatly over the years, this year, the world saw some serious changes and developments because of it. While the use of AI is highly debated for many things, there was one meme where it kind of succeeded.

The AI Time Travellers Interrupting Memes was something to be remembered. This moment was like a combination of thousands of memes into one. Not only was it a throwback to many old, classics, but it also imagined a world where these incidents never happened.

This trend brought joy and nostalgia, but it also made people think deeper about how such small events can change the timeline so much. Of course, sometimes AI gets things wrong, so something even more entertaining was when AI made the meme even more abominable without even meaning to. All in all, a less-remembered, but great meme this year.

@jnaz.official Another meme interrupted by ai #aimeme #aitimetraveler #timetravelermeme #timetraveler #memes #interruptedmeme #fyp ♬ MARKING TIME, WAITING FOR DEATH – Shiro SAGISU

@smileythebott

♬ original sound – .

Pepe The King Prawn

My final contender is kind of a recent one. Over the past few weeks, Pepe the King Prawn graced everyone's feeds. He didn't come alone, though. Pepe came with traumas and repressed memories.

To the Deadpool and Wolverine rendition of Madonna's "Like a Prayer," people have been retelling traumatic and unhinged stories through text on top of a very disheveled Pepe the King Prawn.

Personally, I think this is the perfect meme to end the year. In a way, everyone is being brought together by bonding through old, embarrassing, and subdued stories, isn't that what this time of the year is all about? Making connections? Nostalgia? Some of these stories are truly insane — disturbing, even — and I can only hope there are more to come.

Don

Aella’s Birthday Gangbang

As one of the biggest lolcows on X, Aella has a long history of making herself a spectacle for the entire internet. From her beginnings as an NSFW shitposter on Reddit to her bizarre Twitter surveys and disturbing showering habits, she has captured the attention of social media for many years.

But this year she really outdid herself. Back in February, she hosted a gangbang for her 32nd birthday after taking applications for participants from a Google Doc posted on her X account. She turned the whole event into a social media firestorm, which culminated in a very bizarre Sankey Diagram about how the event played out.

To this day, jokes about the chart continue to circulate online, with most referencing one particularly odd data point she made sure to meticulously document.

We Hebben Een Serieus Probleem

I'm a big fan of Dutch translation memes, so when the Dutch politician Geert Wilders tweeted out, "We hebben een serieus probleem," I couldn’t help but find it absolutely hilarious. The memes with Jar Jar Binks really kicked this one up a notch for me as well. What can I say? I'm a simple man.

Gen Z Boss and A Mini

I'm mostly amazed at just how much this video exploded and remains a staple on X to this day. What started as just another version of the Boots and a Slick Back Bun TikTok trend, this time featuring a group of young women from the company tbh skincare dancing in their office, quickly eclipsed the original in viral dominance and spread wildly across multiple platforms.

While it's true that most of the video's reach was due to people absolutely hating it for being too cringe, they were incredibly good sports about the whole thing and did a video reacting to all the hate comments. This should be shown in textbooks on how to properly handle attacks on the internet.

Looking for more of this year's best viral phenomena and memes? Be sure to check out our other 2024 meme roundups below:

Tags: staff picks, staff, picks, 2024, know your meme, know your meme staff picks, list, kym, review, 2024 review, 2024 kym staff picks, kym staff picks, editorial,

Related Entries ( 38 )

Categories

Interviews (148) In the Media (164)
White Papers (21) Episode Notes (1)
Behind the Scenes (10) Meme Review (368)
Collections (7082) Poll (133)
Guides (2369) Meme Insider (329)
Insights (25)

Comments ( 1 )

Sorry, but you must activate your account to post a comment.