Memes

● Aliven.✎ 2

Performative Reading

Carrying a paperback — Sally Rooney, ideally, or bell hooks — as an accessory rather than a book. The reading wing of the performative-male summer, and a joke about who the book is for.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

Piper, No

A mother's one-word veto of her daughter's plan to stay in Thailand, delivered with total finality, which became the internet's way of shutting down any idea: 'Piper, no.' The White Lotus's contribution to the year's vocabulary.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Protein Girl

The 2025 wellness archetype who counts grams the way the 2019 version counted steps — 'protein girl', see also 'protein maxxing' — cottage cheese in everything, a shaker bottle in the tote, and a caption about hitting 130 grams. The record's entry for the year everything from ice cream to bread learned to say 'high protein' on the label.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Quiet Cracking

Not quitting, not quiet quitting, but slowly coming apart at work while continuing to function. The 2025 entry in the 'quiet' family of workplace words, and the only one that describes a feeling rather than a strategy.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

R.E.P.O.

A co-op horror game about carrying fragile valuables through a haunted building with physics that hate you. The small ragdoll robots, the screaming, and the moment the grand piano goes over the banister made it the year's most-clipped game.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Recession Indicators

The game of declaring any cultural sign an economic omen: Lady Gaga releasing dance music, hemlines, the return of the indie sleaze party, a good pop song. Recession pop was the soundtrack; the joke was that everyone was an economist now.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Revenge Quitting

Quitting at the moment of maximum inconvenience, on purpose, as a message. Predicted as 2025's workplace trend in January and, as with most such predictions, mainly practised by people who had already decided.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Alivephr.✎ 2

Rhymes with Grug

From a scene in The Croods where Grug names his inventions after himself: the internet's snowclone for claiming that anything at all 'rhymes with Grug'. The joke is the confidence of the false claim. Nothing rhymes with Grug.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingabbr.✎ 3

SDIYBT

'Start digging in yo butt, twin' — a robot SpongeBob's instruction to Plankton in an edited clip, shortened to an acronym and used as brainrot's most pointless command. Grew out of the 'digging in yo butt' memes of the spring and outlived them.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Saja Boys

The demon boy band from KPop Demon Hunters, whose song 'Soda Pop' and whose faces caused an internet-wide admission that the villains were the point. Fan art, cosplay, and a fake fandom that behaved like a real one.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Sandwich Guy

A man who threw a Subway sandwich at federal officers, was charged, and was later acquitted. 'Hero with a hero' — the sandwich being the hero, in the American sense — became a Bluesky rallying image and a costume by Halloween.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Saori Araki

A single photograph — a Japanese model in a grey suit, bob haircut, cheeks puffed, holding a laptop — that eighty million people mistook for the platonic salarywoman. Became a 'which way, Western man' comparison against Sydney Sweeney the same fortnight, and then a person with a song.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Saratoga Water

A blue glass bottle of spring water that became a status object overnight because a man dunked his face in a bowl of it at four in the morning on camera. The bottle is now shorthand for a whole genre of performative discipline.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Schedule I

An indie game about building a drug empire in a small town, made by one developer and played by every streamer at once in spring 2025. The customers' faces and the packaging mini-game became memes; the town of Hyland Point became a place people spoke of fondly.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Serena Crip Walk

Serena Williams crip-walking during Kendrick Lamar's halftime show, in a stadium, at the exact moment the song was about a man she once dated. Twelve seconds that the internet replayed for a month.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Signalgate

A journalist accidentally added to a government Signal group chat about air strikes. For a fortnight the internet's favourite genre was 'wrong person in the group chat', with emoji reactions treated as military doctrine. Filed for the format.

▸ 2025peak 2025†2025

● Aliven.✎ 3

Skeleton Banging on Shield

A looping clip of a Skyrim skeleton hammering its sword against its shield, overlaid with a man screaming. Used for any feeling too large for words: rage, resolve, or being asked to join a Teams call at 4:55. Know Your Meme's first Meme of the Month of 2026.

▸ 2025peak 2026still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Skinnytok

A corner of TikTok that rebranded restriction as discipline — 'you are not a dog, you don't need a treat' — and grew fast enough in spring 2025 that the platform blocked the hashtag in June. The word survives; the tag does not.

▸ 2025peak 2025†2025

● Aliven.✎ 3

Soda Pop

The bubblegum bop performed by the Saja Boys, the demon boy band from KPop Demon Hunters — 'Soda Pop' — which became the film's second earworm, a dance trend and the reason every child's parent learned the names of five animated demons in the summer of 2025. The record's entry for the villain song that was catchier than the heroes'.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Son Meme

A photograph of Anthony Mackie smirking, captioned 'son 😭😭😭' — the face of a parent who has just watched their child do something so stupid it loops back to affection. Spread as a reaction image through late 2025 and won Meme of the Month in May 2026.

▸ 2025peak 2026still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Sora Cameo

The feature that let you put yourself — or a consenting friend, or the company's CEO — into generated video. For a week the internet's main output was Sam Altman shoplifting GPUs, because he had allowed it, and the internet respects a dare.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Steal a Brainrot

A Roblox game in which players collect Italian-brainrot characters and steal them from each other's bases, which became the most-played thing on the platform over the summer. The moment brainrot stopped being content and became an economy.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Stormtrooper Vlog

Stormtroopers filming themselves on patrol like influencers — 'day in the life on the Death Star' — generated with the same tools as the Bigfoot vlogs. A whole subgenre of characters who should not have phones, with phones.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Sydney Sweeney Jeans

A denim advert with a pun — 'great jeans' — that half the internet read as a wink and the other half as a manifesto. Two weeks of discourse, a share price, and a lot of people explaining what a pun is to each other.

▸ 2025peak 2025†2025

● Aliven.✎ 2

Task Masking

Looking busy in an office you have been made to return to: the loud keyboard, the walk with a laptop, the Teams status set to 'in a meeting'. Named in 2025 as the return-to-office mandates bit.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Taylor Swift Engagement

The Instagram post of 26 August 2025 — 'Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married' — announcing Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's engagement, which became the most-liked post of the year and a template within the hour. The record's entry for the proposal that was covered like a ceasefire.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

The Life of a Showgirl

Taylor Swift's twelfth album, announced on her fiancé's podcast in August 2025 and released on 3 October 2025 with a cinema 'release party', an orange colour scheme and a week of discourse about whether 'Opalite' or 'The Fate of Ophelia' was the single. The record's entry for the album that arrived as an event and was reviewed as a season.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

The White Lotus Season 3

The Thailand season of the resort-murder anthology, which premiered in February 2025 and produced the year's most memed television — Parker Posey's accent, the incest subplot discourse, the Lorazepam, the theme-tune complaints and the monkeys. The record's entry for the eight weeks the internet argued about a bench.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Thinking Cat

A tabby cat gazing upward with the expression of an animal weighing a difficult question. A 2019 fine-art photograph that sat unused for six years until a TikTok caption — 'thinking what job imma get on the 19th' — turned it into the reaction image for every small existential problem.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Tilly Norwood

The AI-generated 'actress' unveiled in September 2025 by a London studio that claimed talent agents wanted to sign her — 'Tilly Norwood' — which produced a week of statements from SAG-AFTRA, actors and the internet about whether a composite of stolen faces could have a career. The record's entry for the star who did not exist and got more press than most who do.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Totr

Two small naked SpongeBobs marching across a floor, captioned 'тотя ❤️', over a remix of 'Stay'. Means nothing. Was placed at the end of brainrot slideshows for a season as a kind of signature, and later pitted against ПЫ, a Minion–potato.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Trump–Musk Breakup

The public falling-out between the President and the world's richest man, live-posted across two platforms and treated by the internet as a celebrity divorce: custody memes, 'who gets the rocket', playlists. Filed as a format, not a position.

▸ 2025peak 2025†2025

● Aliven.✎ 3

Umamusume

A Japanese game about horse girls — racehorses reborn as anime students — which arrived in the West in June 2025 and immediately produced a fandom, a song ('Umapyoi Legend'), and a folk hero in Gold Ship, a horse with a personality problem. The internet's summer horse.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Velvet Sundown

A band with a million monthly listeners, a back catalogue, band photos, and no members. Exposed in July 2025 as generated end to end. The first AI act to chart, and the first to be found out.

▸ 2025peak 2025†2025

● Aliven.✎ 2

Wakuku

The grinning, gap-toothed blind-box doll that rose in mid-2025 as the challenger to Labubu — 'Wakuku' — with the same queues, the same bag-charm role and a rivalry the internet treated like a football derby. The record's entry for the doll that arrived when the first one got too expensive.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Weapons Run

The way the children run in Weapons — arms straight back, faces blank, at speed — recreated on every school run, in every car park, and by every dog that would cooperate. The horror film's most stolen image.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

West End Girl

Lily Allen's October 2025 divorce album — 'West End Girl' — which laid out the end of a marriage in forensic, named-nothing detail and produced a week of 'Pussy Palace' and 'Madeline' discourse across every platform with a comment section. The record's entry for the album the internet listened to as evidence.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

White Rabbit Pointing at Clock

A 2012 drawing of the White Rabbit tapping his watch, revived as TikTok's ominous reminder that time is running out — on a deadline, a decision, a lease. Central to the 'all roads lead to Rome' trend and the phrase 'the rabbit got me'.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Wire Mother

The 2025 slur, or diagnosis, for an AI chatbot used as a companion — a 'wire mother', after Harlow's 1950s experiments in which monkeys clung to a wire frame with a bottle — deployed against people who described a chatbot as a friend, partner or therapist. The record's entry for the psychology-lecture insult that reached a comment section.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Wirkin

A Walmart bag that looked enough like a Birkin to be called one — the Wirkin — and sold out in days. The dupe as a folk hero, and the moment 'dupe' stopped being a secret and became a brand.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Workslop

AI-generated work that looks like work — the report, the deck, the six-paragraph email — and pushes the actual effort onto whoever has to read it. Named in September 2025 and recognised by every office within the hour.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

AI Slop

Generated content produced in volume and published without a reader in mind. The first coinage of this era to name a texture rather than a technology.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Anxiety (Inside Out 2)

The orange, frazzled new emotion from Inside Out 2, who became the internet's self-portrait for a summer: 'me at 3 a.m.', 'me before a text', 'me in the group chat'. Pixar's most-memed character since the sad Toy Story ones.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Apple Dance

A hand-choreography to Charli XCX's 'Apple', invented by a fan, learned by the artist, and performed by Charli on stage with the fan who made it. Brat summer's dance, and the one that Apple the company also tried, unsuccessfully.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

BBL Drizzy

A beat built on an AI-generated soul song mocking Drake, released for anyone to rap over during the beef, which produced thousands of verses and one of the first cases of a fully generated song becoming a hit. Died with the feud it was made for.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

● Aliven.✎ 2

Ballerina Farm

A Utah farm with eight children, a Juilliard-trained mother, and a newspaper profile in July 2024 that made the whole internet argue about whether she was happy. The tradwife discourse's central case, decided by nobody.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Beef Tallow

Rendered beef fat, back in fashion as the wellness internet's preferred alternative to seed oils — 'beef tallow' — with a 2024 push to bring it back to fast-food fryers and a 2025 turn as a skincare product. The record's entry for the ingredient your great-grandmother used without posting about it.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Big Back

Slang for someone who eats a lot, from AAVE, which became a TikTok trend of people stuffing pillows down their shirts to act it out. Called out for body-shaming within the month and used anyway, mostly on oneself.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up