Is this meme dead? Here is the short test: if a brand has used it, it is dying; if a parent has used it, it is dead; if it has been used in a wedding speech, it is a fossil. Everything else is detail. Our dictionary rates every headword as alive, dying, dead, undead or fossil, and those ratings come from a slightly longer version of the same test, which this article lays out with worked examples for Skibidi, Rizz and Very Demure.
The point of having a test is that "dead" is not a feeling. A meme you personally find tiresome may be thriving among fourteen-year-olds; a meme you have never seen may have died in 2022. The test is about who is using it, not about you.
Step 1: Know the lifecycle
Memes go through the same stages in roughly the same order. The speed varies; the order does not.
Stage 1: Origin
Someone posts something. Nobody notices, or a small community does. This can last a day or a decade. Chill Guy sat unnoticed for a year.
Stage 2: Spread
The community's regulars adopt it and it starts appearing outside its home platform. This is when it is funniest, because everyone using it chose to.
Stage 3: Peak
It reaches the general feed. Everyone has seen it, most people have used it, and the explainers start. This is when a dictionary or newspaper writes "what does X mean?".
Stage 4: Overexposure
Brands, politicians and morning television. The original community stops using it, or uses it ironically. Our "dying" rating starts here.
Stage 5: Death
Nobody uses it sincerely. The last users are people who learned it from an explainer. Our "dead" rating.
Stage 6: Afterlife
Some memes come back as nostalgia (Rickroll, Doge) or settle into ordinary language (Mid, Lowkey). We call the first group undead and the oldest of them fossils. Most memes never reach this stage; they just stay dead.
The critical thing to notice is that the death happens at stage 4, not stage 5. A meme is effectively over the moment its original users abandon it, which is usually months before the wider internet notices.
Step 2: Run the tests
The brand test
Has a company used it in an advert or a social post? Search the meme's name plus "ad" or look at the replies under the largest brand accounts. If you find it, the meme is at stage 4 at least. On Fleek failed the brand test in 2015; Very Demure failed it within three weeks in August 2024; Six-Seven failed it in late 2025. This is the most reliable single indicator, because brands arrive precisely when a meme is big enough to be safe and, by arriving, make it unsafe.
The parent test
Has someone's parent used it, unprompted, in a text message? This is stage 5. The parent learned the word from an explainer, which means the explainers have been running for months, which means the original users left long ago. If you have received "you have rizz" from a parent, Rizz is dead for you, whatever the dictionary says.
The explainer test
Search the meme's name with "meaning" or "explained". Look at the dates on the results. If the first wave of explainers is more than a year old and there is no second wave, the meme peaked over a year ago and is probably dead. If explainers are still being written, it is still at stage 3 or 4.
The irony test
Find recent uses of the meme by people who were early to it. Are they using it straight, or as a joke about the meme itself? "Skibidi" used in 2026 by anyone over twelve is ironic; that is a dying meme. A meme that can only be used ironically is a meme whose sincere life is over.
The replacement test
Has something else taken its job? Memes are functional; a reaction image does a job and gets replaced when a better one arrives. Huh Cat replaced Confused Math Lady for a while; Thinking Cat is now replacing Huh Cat. If you can name the replacement, the original is at least dying.
The Facebook test
Is it on Facebook? Specifically, is it being shared by Facebook Mom accounts and minion-image pages? Facebook is where memes go about two years after they die everywhere else, and a meme circulating there in its original form (not as a reference) is a dead meme.
Step 3: Worked examples
Skibidi: dying
Skibidi comes from Skibidi Toilet, first uploaded in February 2023. Peak: 2023 to 2024, when it was the most-searched meme among children. Brand test: failed by 2024 (it appeared in adverts, and a film deal was announced). Parent test: failed by 2025, when "skibidi" was in every parenting explainer. Irony test: among teenagers, entirely ironic by 2025. But among children under ten, the series is still watched and the word is still used sincerely, which is why we rate it dying rather than dead. A meme with a live audience of eight-year-olds is not dead; it is just dead to you.
Rizz: dying, arguably dead
Rizz appeared in Kai Cenat's streams around 2021, spread on TikTok in 2022 and was Oxford's Word of the Year in 2023. Brand test: failed in 2023. Parent test: failed in 2024. Explainer test: the first wave is from 2022 to 2023 and there has been no second wave. Irony test: mostly ironic since 2024. Replacement test: partial; Aura took over some of its job. So why "dying" and not "dead"? Because it is settling into the language. "Rizz" is being used straight, as an ordinary word for charm, by people who do not think of it as a meme. That is the Mid path rather than the On Fleek path, and it makes the status genuinely arguable. If you say it is dead, we will not fight you.
Very Demure: dead
Jools Lebron posted "very demure, very mindful" on TikTok in early August 2024. Peak: the second half of August. Brand test: failed within about three weeks; by late August it was in posts from airlines and cosmetics companies. Parent test: failed in September. Irony test: ironic by September. Explainer test: one wave, all from August and September 2024, no second wave. Lebron herself said it was over by the autumn. This is the cleanest possible example of a meme that lived and died in one season. Status: dead, and a useful benchmark for how fast the 2020s cycle runs.
Chill Guy: dead
Peak November to December 2024. Brand test failed within weeks; the creator began filing takedowns. Almost no sincere use in 2025. Dead, though its face persists as a reference to its own death.
Hawk Tuah, Moo Deng, Labubu: dead
Three 2024 memes with different shapes. Hawk Tuah (June 2024, a street interview) burned out by autumn and then had a second, uglier chapter in trading-chat circles that ended it for good. Moo Deng (the baby hippo, September 2024) was a wholesome flash that faded within months. Labubu (the plush toy, big through 2024 and 2025) is a case where the object outlived the meme; people still own them, but nobody posts them. All dead.
Doge, Rickroll, Pepe: undead
Doge (2010 photo, 2013 meme) should be dead by any test and is not; it comes back every year as a reference. Rickroll (2007) is a permanent institution, revived whenever someone new discovers it. Pepe the Frog (2005) has died and returned at least three times. These are undead: not in sincere everyday use, but not gone, and immune to the brand test because they have survived it many times.
This Is Fine, Surprised Pikachu: alive
Two older memes that are still alive by every test. This Is Fine (2013) and Surprised Pikachu (2018) are used sincerely, without irony, by people of every age, because they have become vocabulary rather than reference. They pass the brand test because brands using them look like people using them. The lesson: a meme that becomes a word cannot die the ordinary way.
Step 4: Recognise the exceptions
Kids' memes
A meme can be dead for adults and alive for children, and the children are the ones who decide. Skibidi and Italian Brainrot both fit this. Our rating tries to reflect the whole audience, which is why "dying" is often the honest answer.
Nostalgia revivals
The Harlem Shake (2013), Ice Bucket Challenge (2014), Dabbing (2015) and Fidget Spinner (2017) are dead, but every few years someone does a "remember this?" version and it briefly looks alive. That is the afterlife, not life. The test is whether anyone under twenty uses it without a reference to its age.
The word path
Some memes stop being memes and become words. Mid, Cringe, Fell Off, Washed, Cooked: these were all slang with a meme moment and are now just English. They are "alive" in our ratings, but not in the sense of being current; they are alive in the sense that a word is alive.
The reset
The period from late 2025 into 2026 has been called the Great Meme Reset: a moment when most of the big formats of the past two years died at once and no dominant replacement appeared. In a reset, "is this meme dead?" is easy (yes, almost all of them) and "what replaced it?" is hard (many small things). Expect our alive column to be shorter than usual for a while.
Step 5: Say it out loud
The last part of the test is to make a call. A meme is alive, dying, dead, undead or a fossil, and hedging ("it's kind of over but some people still use it") is what every status is; the point of a rating is to pick one. If you have run the brand test and the parent test and the irony test and they all say the same thing, believe them. If they disagree, the meme is dying, which is the most common state anyway.
And when someone tells you a meme you like is dead, run the test rather than arguing. It probably is. That is fine. Something new is already at stage 2, and you will not hear about it for another six months.
FAQ
How can I tell if a meme is dead?
Run the brand test (has a company used it?), the parent test (has a parent used it unprompted?), the explainer test (are new explainers still being written?) and the irony test (do early users only use it as a joke?). Two or more failures means dead or dying.
Is Skibidi dead in 2026?
Dying. Skibidi is dead among teenagers and adults, but the series and the word are still in sincere use among children under ten, which keeps it off the dead list.
Is Rizz dead?
Dying, and arguably dead as a meme. Rizz failed every test between 2023 and 2024 but is settling into ordinary English as a word for charm, which is a different fate from disappearing.
Is "very demure" dead?
Yes. Very Demure peaked in August 2024, failed the brand test within three weeks and was over by the autumn of the same year.
What is an "undead" meme?
One that is not in everyday sincere use but keeps coming back and cannot be killed by overexposure: Rickroll, Doge, Pepe the Frog. The oldest of these (All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Leeroy Jenkins) we call fossils.
