To think that just a year ago, Manti Te’o had a real girlfriend, Miley Cyrus was mostly known as a squeaky clean Disney star and we were unaware of the true threat to global-warming: Sharknado. The Internet, which turns minor pop culture moments into full-on phenomena, had lots to work with this year. Here are our 10 favorite memes of 2013 . . .
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1. “Sharknado”
Ah Sharknado, a perfect storm, if you will, to catch the Internet’s summer attention span. The made-for-TV, intentionally corny B-movie debuted on Syfy this summer with such an absurdist premise that it became the “Snakes on a Plane” of 2013.
The Internet made its own variations on the theme, from Baboonami to Sharkalanche, and it inspired Halloween costumes, including some Barknado get-ups for dogs. A sequel, set in New York, is already in the works. The Internet’s proposed title? “Sharknado 2: After Sharks.”
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2. Unflattering Beyoncé
When BuzzFeed posted a list of the fiercest moments from Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime show, some of them proved to be a bit unflattering. The next day, Beyoncé’s publicist sent the site a letter requesting that the photos be removed. BuzzFeed complied immediately and they were never seen again. JK! The pics went viral with people Photoshopping fierce-faced Beyoncé into lots of funny scenarios. Let this be a reminder, publicists of the world: Requesting something be taken off the Internet is a sure way to make sure it stays there forever.
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3. Doge
Internet nonsense at its finest, doge, an intentional misspelling of dog, took over the Internet this year as a sort of successor to yesteryear’s LOLcats. The meme involves pictures of shiba inus dogs surrounded by grammatically incorrect captions in a comic sans font. Everything from Twinkies to Robin Thicke got doge’d this year. Such funny, so laugh.
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4. The Harlem Shake
An electronic dance music song by Brooklyn DJ Baauer went viral, not for the song so much as the crazy, manic videos fans across the world made to it. The videos start out with a slow build up, showing one person dancing before the beat drops and suddenly the room explodes, with sometimes dozens of people dancing wildly in crazy costume. The trend got so out of hand that some schools banned students from participating out of safety concerns.
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5. Miley Cyrus “Wrecking Ball”
Weeks after she shocked the world with her semi-nude twerking at the VMAs, Miley Cyrus was back with a video, this time twerking her naked self atop a swinging wrecking ball. It inspired a bevy of takes on the Internet, but our favorite has to be this simple Vine parody.
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6. Marco Rubio’s water break
The sip heard round the world! Florida Sen. Marco Rubio delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union this year, and found himself suddenly so-dry mouthed that he took, as one Twitter user dubbed, the most furtive sip of water in the history of sips of water. Rubio responded in good fun though: His Web site started selling Marco Rubio water bottles after the incident.
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7. Hadokening
Japan is so far ahead of the US when it comes to photo-based memes. While we were still stuck on planking years ago, the Japanese were innovating photo masterpieces. This year brought us Hadoukening, where a group of people act as if they’ve just been hit by a hadouken (a ball of energy from the video game Streetfighter). It takes some coordination, but the results offer special-effects-free magic.
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8. Te’oing
This year’s version of Tebowing, Te’oing took off after Deadspin revealed that star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o faked the moving story of the death of his girlfriend. In fact, the whole “girlfriend” turned out to be a fake, so Internet users had fun posing with their own “girlfriends,” a k a their imaginary friends.
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9. Menswear Dog
Shiba inus had a banner year in 2013 (see No. 3: “doge”), but so did Menswear Dog, a Tumblr blog that manages to both celebrate and spoof online fashion culture.
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10. Grumpy Cat/Tommy Lee Jones
For those of us not transfixed by felines, Grumpy Cat is just another poor animal with anthropomorphic features forced to star in endless Internet pictures and videos. But for the rest of the Internet, the big grump was everywhere from movie posters to gay marriage posts. But this screencap of Tommy Lee Jones at the Golden Globes, bearing a striking resemblance to the feline, is the coup de grâce.
