Who’s to say what makes a cultural touchstone great? Ticket sales? Critics? The unwashed masses?? Of course, culture—whether it pertains to film, music, television, theater, or what have you—is very subjective, which is what we have to thank for a tongue-in-cheek new “cultural impact” meme taking over social media.
According to Know Your Meme, the cultural impact meme appears to have originated just over a year ago in June of 2018, when Twitter user @prasejeebus tweeted the following chart comparing the respective impacts of 26-year-old actress and pop singer Miranda Cosgrove to Elvis, the Beatles, and U2.
Cultural Impact:
— jon (@prasejeebus) June 10, 2018
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Miranda Elvis The Beatles U2
Cosgrove
Clearly, most music fans would take umbrage with ranking Cosgrove, who to date has released one album, Sparks Fly, which peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 chart in 2010, over Elvis and the Beatles. Or even, just Elvis over the Beatles! (On the other hand, the placement of U2 is fair, at least in this author’s opinion.)
At any rate, while the tweet went mildly viral at the time, the meme sprung up on Twitter again in the past week when @SaddestCowboy_ tweeted a similar version–this time, pitting the cultural relevance of the viral “Kombucha girl” meme, a.k.a. Brittany Broski, against the Beatles.
cultural impact:
— sad cowboy (@SaddestCowboy_) September 9, 2019
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Kombucha girl the
Brittany Broski beatles
Just a short time later, another user tweeted the cultural impact meme stacking up Avril Lavigne’s 2002 hit “Sk8er Boi” against The Beatles. The joke here is obviously that the Beatles are typically regarded as the most influential rock band of all time.
But like, to be fair, “Sk8er Boi” is also quite the banger?
As such, the earlier examples of the meme typically pitted “X,” represented by the four stacked black squares, against The Beatles, which are represented by a small, thin line.
https://twitter.com/filmazoff/status/1171046090055049216
https://twitter.com/tweetsbyrocket/status/1171141667635781638
https://twitter.com/BollyGaga/status/1171172468045897728
Many—okay, most—of the examples are spot-on and involve K-pop in one way or another, but this is Twitter and we only have so much time.
https://twitter.com/hobicuIt/status/1171337461693390848
https://twitter.com/girIsgeneraton/status/1170827451964039168
cultural impact:
— fawz⁷ (@agustranda) September 9, 2019
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jungkooks hair the
flip in mic drop beatles pic.twitter.com/gfaIxmSjqz
As the meme continued to go viral, people began dropping the Beatles altogether in favor of even more facetious versions of the cultural impact meme—such as comparing Kid Cudi to Beethoven, Family Guy to the History Channel, and so on and so forth.
cultural impact:
— Genius (@Genius) September 10, 2019
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kid cudi’s beethoven’s
hums symphonies
cultural impact:
— eric curtin (@_ericcurtin) September 9, 2019
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Family guy The
History channel
https://twitter.com/rjchietoziers/status/1171951092143468544
cultural impact:
— Caitlin Grey (@Foenix) September 10, 2019
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X-Men Avengers
cultural impact:
— The Office on Peacock (@theofficetv) September 12, 2019
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Kevin’s the entire
Famous Chili culinary industry pic.twitter.com/fPGJVKdHOh
And then there’s this example, that plays off of the shape of the blocks in the cultural impact meme as it applies to the classic puzzle video game, Tetris.
cultural impact:
— Joephizz (@Joe_phiz) September 9, 2019
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The Tetris piece The Tetris Piece
you want. you get
Ain’t that the truth, though! It’s like the game gets off on being withholding.
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