Soon we’ll be able to judge the historical value of an entire year based on the comedic purity of Internet memes it has produced.
Know Your Meme, a kind of encyclopedia of Web culture, has produced a handy guide to the top memes of 2011. These include: Rebecca Black’s Friday video, first world problems, scumbag Steve, Occupy Wall Street (“We are the 99 percent”), planking, X all the Y, Chuck Testa, Nyan Cat, and 60s Spiderman.
So how did 2011 do?
We’ll give the year a solid B, thanks mostly to 60s Spiderman, but also Nyan Cat, and first world problems. Rebecca Black and planking kept the year firmly out of A-territory, however. Another year of planking and Friday and the world may as well just self-implode of self-referential un-funny, as far as we’re concerned.
Internet, you can do better in 2012. We know it.
