😂 Meme Museum — Loading...
😂 Meme Museum — Doge
Doge — viral internet meme from 2013, early 2010s
2013early-2010sClassicViralAnimals
2013
Year born
48
Views
140
Likes
Doge
Origin Story
Based on a 2010 photo of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog owned by Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato. The dog's skeptical sideways glance became the subject of image macros using Comic Sans text and intentionally broken English phrases like 'much wow', 'very dog', 'so amaze'. It exploded on Reddit and Tumblr in 2013. The Doge image later became the face of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which at its peak had a market cap of over $80 billion.
Era: early-2010s
Memes went fully mainstream. Vine launched and died. Instagram filtered everything. Every major brand tried to 'do memes'. Content spread in seconds globally and the irony era of internet humor began.
😂 Related Memes — Same Era
Grumpy Cat — viral internet meme from 2012, early 2010s
Grumpy Cat
2012early-2010sClassicViral
Tardar Sauce, nicknamed Grumpy Cat, was a female mixed-breed cat whose permanently grumpy expression was caused by feline dwarfism and an underbite. Her photo was posted to Reddit in September 2012 by her owner Bryan Bundesen. She became one of the most famous internet animals of all time, inspiring a movie, merchandise, and a lawsuit her owner won for $710,000. Tardar Sauce passed away in May 2019.
Gangnam Style — viral internet meme from 2012, early 2010s
Gangnam Style
2012early-2010sViralMusic
Released by South Korean musician PSY in July 2012, Gangnam Style became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views, then two billion, then three billion. The horse-riding dance move spawned countless parodies and covers worldwide. It was so popular that YouTube's view counter was not designed to handle numbers above 2,147,483,647 and required an emergency update to accommodate PSY's view count.
One Does Not Simply — viral internet meme from 2011, early 2010s
One Does Not Simply
2011early-2010sClassicViral
From the 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, where Boromir (played by Sean Bean) says 'One does not simply walk into Mordor.' The still image became an image macro template around 2011-2012 on Reddit and 9GAG, used to describe any deceptively difficult task. It remains one of the most durable meme formats, still used widely today.