Memes

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Big Justice

The son in the Costco Guys, a child whose nickname and delivery — 'BOOM!' — made him a folk hero of the 2024 internet, and whose friendship with the Rizzler produced a summer's worth of crossovers.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Boysober

A year of no dating, no apps, no exes and no situationships, announced with the seriousness of a sobriety and adopted by a lot of women in 2024 who were tired. The word for taking a season off men.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Brat Summer

A shade of green and a permission to be a mess. Ended when a presidential campaign changed its banner to match, with the artist's blessing, which did not help.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

● Alivephr.✎ 3

But You Can't Prove It

Sergeant Doakes from Dexter, staring, captioned with the certainty that someone is up to something and the agony of no evidence. Dormant for a season on Reddit, then everywhere in spring 2025 with the Dexter theme underneath.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Bye Bye Bye

Deadpool fighting to NSYNC's 'Bye Bye Bye' in the film's opening, which revived a 2000 boy-band song, its puppet-string choreography, and the dance at every wedding for the rest of the year.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Cardboard Beds

The recyclable cardboard beds in the Olympic village, rumoured to be 'anti-sex' and tested on camera by athletes jumping on them. A meme about furniture that ran for the whole Games and was, in the end, about something else.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Cassius Thundercock

A Tennessee state trooper with a jaw like a cliff and glasses like a professor, photographed after a college football game and captioned 'new Gigachad just dropped'. The internet gave him a name, a legend and a place in the cryptid pantheon.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Chained Together

The co-op climbing game where up to four players are literally chained to each other and must escape hell together — 'Chained Together' — as the streamer game of summer 2024 and the single greatest test of friendship ever sold for a few pounds. The record's entry for the game whose whole design is 'someone will fall'.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Chopped Chin

A man's chin, edited into a flat cliff face, that circulated alongside the Eye of Rah and the Egypt property video as the raw material of 2025's early brainrot slideshows. Not a joke about anyone; a shape that got funnier with repetition.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Cooked Dog

An elderly brown Labrador closing his eyes halfway in the sunset, as if accepting whatever is coming. The reaction image for being caught, being about to be caught, or knowing the consequences are on their way. Usually soundtracked by Big Sean.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Cortisol Face

The claim that puffiness in the face is stress hormone, fixable with supplements and a morning routine. A pseudo-diagnosis that ran for a summer, and the ancestor of the cortisol-meter graphic of 2026.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Costco Guys

A father and son reviewing Costco products with a catchphrase — 'we bring the boom!' — and a scoring system of 'five big booms'. Went from a family joke to wrestling appearances, a Grammys red carpet and a genuinely enormous number of booms.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Cowboycore

Boots, hats, denim and fringe, made respectable for a year by a Beyoncé album and worn to festivals by people who had never seen a horse. The 2024 aesthetic with the best hats.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Crodie

A friend, a bro, a brother-adjacent person — 'crodie', plural 'crodies' — as the 2024 successor to 'cuz' and 'gang' in Gen Z address, especially in streamer and comment-section English. The record's entry for the word that means 'my guy' and has never once been used sincerely by an adult.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Crookie

A croissant split, filled and topped with cookie dough, baked again — the 'crookie' — from a Paris bakery into a February 2024 viral queue and every chain bakery's counter by spring. The record's entry for the pastry that answered a question nobody had asked, and sold out anyway.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

● Alivephr.✎ 2

Decentering Men

The 2024–25 self-help instruction for straight women to stop organising their lives, looks and free time around male attention — 'decentering men' — from feminist Substacks into a TikTok genre of hobbies, girls' trips and pointed captions. The record's entry for the phrase that made 'I'm just living' a political position.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Denial Is a River

The Doechii track in which the rapper interviews herself — 'girl, we've been through this' — from an August 2024 mixtape into the TikTok sound of early 2025, its call-and-response lines quoted in every 'me arguing with myself' video. The record's entry for the song that gave the internet a therapist and a patient in one voice.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Drunk Elephant

A skincare brand with bright packaging that became the badge of the Sephora kid: something to own, display and smear on a face that did not need it. Filed as a brand that became a meme by being wanted by the wrong customer.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Dune Popcorn Bucket

A sandworm-shaped popcorn bucket with a mouth, sold for Dune: Part Two, that looked like something else entirely and was reviewed accordingly by every comedian on the internet. The most-discussed cinema snack container in history.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Eclectic Grandpa

An aesthetic of cardigans, loafers, corduroy and a hat you are too young for — the grandfather as fashion icon — predicted by Pinterest for 2024 and worn by everyone under thirty for a winter. Dead by summer, when it got too warm for the cardigan.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

● Aliven.✎ 3

Espresso

'That's that me espresso' — a lyric that made no sense and was sung by everyone, from a song that ran the summer of 2024. Became a phrase for confidence, a coffee-shop joke, and the reason baristas were tired of hearing it by July.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Eye of Rah

A man edited into a cyclops with one eye and a single red dreadlock, captioned 'eye of Rah' after the Egyptian symbol, and installed as the first god of the winter's brainrot. Appeared in a thousand slideshows and one Halloween costume per city.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Freak Matching

Finding someone whose specific weirdness matches yours, and leading with it. A dating-app word from December 2024 that outlived the report it came from, mainly because it was true.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

☠ Deadphr.✎ 2

Gen Z Boss and a Mini

A chaotic office-intro video — camera shaking, everyone introduced by rhyme, 'Gen Z boss and a mini' — that was cringe in the morning and a template by lunch. Summer 2024's fastest-turned meme, parodied by every workplace with a phone.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

● Aliven.✎ 3

Ghost Jobs

Job listings that are not real — posted to look like growth, to harvest CVs, or because nobody took them down — and the 2024 realisation that a lot of the job market was them. A word that made job-seekers feel less mad.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Glicked

The attempted sequel to Barbenheimer: Gladiator II and Wicked on the same weekend, portmanteau'd into 'Glicked'. It did not take, which the record files as evidence that you cannot schedule a phenomenon.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

Gng

'Gang', shortened to three consonants and used as a term of address at the start or end of any sentence — 'nah gng', 'gng what is this' — as the 2024–25 comment-section vocative of choice. The record's entry for the abbreviation that saved one keystroke and started a thousand replies.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Grumpy Staying

Staying in a job you would leave if the market let you, and being visibly unhappy about it. The 2024 word for the mood after the great resignation ended and before job hugging began.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Haggis the Hippo

A pygmy hippo born at Edinburgh Zoo a month after Moo Deng became famous, and immediately cast as her Scottish rival. The zoo leaned in; the internet ran a fake election. Haggis lost on charisma and won on name.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

Holding Space

A journalist told the Wicked leads that people were 'holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity', one star gripped the other's finger, and the internet made 'holding space' a phrase for any solemnity about nothing. The therapy-speak meme of late 2024.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Hood Cryptids

A run of edits treating ordinary men in ordinary videos as mythical creatures — the Eye of Rah, the Chopped Chin, a state trooper as a Gigachad — with cryptid-documentary captions. The genre that turned faces into folklore in the winter of 2024–25.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Hot Rodent Boyfriend

A summer-2024 type: the sharp-featured, slightly furtive, rat-adjacent man — Jeremy Allen White, Mike Faist, Barry Keoghan — declared attractive by the internet in one week and explained by every magazine in the next. A taxonomy that lasted a season.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

◐ Dyingv.✎ 2

Hurkle-Durkle

To lie in bed long after you should be up — a nineteenth-century Scots word rediscovered by TikTok in January 2024 and used, for a season, as the cosy name for bed rotting. A dialect word that went viral two centuries late.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Hushed Hybrid

A manager quietly letting their team ignore the return-to-office mandate, while the company insists it is being enforced. The 2024 arrangement in most offices, named by journalists and denied by HR.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 2

I Bought a Property in Egypt

'I bought a property in Egypt, and what they do for you is they give you the property.' A hustle influencer's perfectly circular sentence, clipped and looped until it became brainrot's favourite piece of financial advice.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

In the Big 25

'In the big 25' — a way of saying 'in 2025' with the swagger of an era, used to condemn anything that should not still be happening: 'you're still using Facebook Messenger in the big 25?' Began in February 2024 as 'in big 2024', on a post about athletes past their peak, and re-numbered itself every January.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Kamala Coconut Tree

'You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?' — a year-old clip of a speech about context that became the sound of a summer campaign, complete with coconut emoji, brat-green edits and an entire aesthetic. Filed for the format; ended in November.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Kendrick–Drake Beef

A rap feud that the whole internet watched in real time: diss tracks dropping hours apart, allegations, an AI beat, and a song that won five Grammys. Ended, by consensus, when one side performed the diss at the Super Bowl while the other side's team watched.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2025

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

Labubu

A toothy elf hung from a handbag, bought blind. The queue outside Pop Mart was the meme; the resale market was the obituary.

▸ 2024peak 2025†2026

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Legging Legs

A term for the kind of legs that 'suit' leggings — a body standard dressed as a fashion tip — which TikTok blocked within weeks in early 2024 and redirected to eating-disorder resources. The shortest-lived body trend in the file, and the first to be moderated out.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 2

Lisan al Gaib

Stilgar's cry of prophetic recognition every time Paul does anything at all — 'as it was written!' — turned into a reaction for anyone doing something ordinary with confidence. Dune's contribution to the vocabulary of over-praise.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Lookalike Contest

A flyer-organised gathering of Timothée Chalamets in a New York park, attended by the actual Timothée Chalamet, which spawned a season of contests: Dev Patels in San Francisco, Zayns in Brooklyn, Paul Mescals in Dublin. The autumn 2024 way of being outside.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Low Taper Fade

A one-line freestyle about a streamer's haircut, sung on a Twitch stream in January 2024, that became a year-long running joke: still massive, in every comment section, until Ninja actually got the haircut. The meme that ended by coming true.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Lunchly

A lunch kit launched by three of the internet's biggest creators as a rival to Lunchables, which became a meme within the week for its packaging, its reviews, and a widely shared photo of mouldy cheese. The most-mocked product launch in the file.

▸ 2024peak 2024still up

● Aliveabbr.✎ 2

MAHA

'Make America Healthy Again' — the slogan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 political movement, folded into the Trump campaign that August and into a federal commission in 2025 — as the label under which food dyes, seed oils and vaccine debate met wellness TikTok. The record's entry for the acronym that put beef tallow on a government agenda.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Messy (Lola Young)

The raspy, sweary, self-deprecating single — 'I'm too messy, then I'm too fucking clean' — released in May 2024 and made a global number one by TikTok in early 2025, soundtracking every video about being too much and not enough. The record's entry for the song that gave a generation its bio.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Mingle

The 'round and round' game from Squid Game 2 — form a group of exactly the number called, or die — which became a party game, a wedding game, and a TikTok trend with the song attached. The show's most stolen idea.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up

● Alivephr.✎ 2

Mustard

'MUSTAAARD' — Kendrick Lamar shouting the name of his producer in the middle of 'TV Off', which became a scream people did at weddings, in cars, and on stage at the Super Bowl. A producer credit as a battle cry.

▸ 2024peak 2025still up