The internet of 2010 is a lot different than the internet of 2019. Facebook hadn’t been politicized. Twitter wasn’t Donald Trump’s playground. Instagram was brand new and nobody was calling themselves an “influencer.” But even as a handful of for-profit platforms tightened their grip on online culture (and Netflix began using memes as a marketing strategy), it’s no stretch to say that the funniest shit of the decade
To celebrate the good in what’s often a bad place, we combed through our timelines, our camera rolls, and our Twitter likes in search of 100 extremely online things that brought us joy, bafflement, and everything in between this decade. This list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it presented in any specific order. It is, much like your timeline, curated chaos.
1. Demi Adejuyigbe makes beautiful music
Comedy writer Demi Adejuyigbe’s Twitter is always a delight, but it’s especially so when he’s got a new video to share. In recent years, Adejuyigbe’s become best known—and rightfully so—for his hilarious theme-song parodies. But real Demi-heads also love him for his annual remix of Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September,” which he’s been posting every September 21 since 2016. [Katie Rife]
2. Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris demands sex gifs
The only thing better than Dean Norris tweeting out the words “sex gifs” on May 22, 2018 is that the tweet remains there, proud and defiant, to this day. Anybody else would’ve deleted it or, like another luminary on this list, bent over backwards to explain why it’s not what it looks like. As such, we salute Dean Norris for having no shame, and we grudgingly respect his refusal to detail how he came about tweeting what was clearly meant for the search bar. We just hope that in the 18 months since his search began, he’s found what he was looking for. [Randall Colburn]
3. Slender Man rises in Marble Hornets
Marble Hornets, a spooky, DIY web series that ran from 2009 to 2014, didn’t create the Slender Man myth, but its virality and homespun iconography most certainly helped popularize it. Across 87 entries on its main channel, as well as 39 more on a separate one, creator Troy Wagner unspooled a compelling mythos that served to dovetail with the obsessions of the burgeoning Creepypasta movement. [Randall Colburn]
4. Stephen A. Smith asks us to “TAke a look, y’all”
There are some tweets that enter the canon of all-time greats the moment the author hits “send.” ESPN screaming head Stephen A. Smith’s 2015 tweet imploring his followers to “TAke a look, y’all: IMG_4346.jpeg” is one of those tweets. It is a breathtaking encapsulation of the unique blend of supreme confidence, loudness, and wrongness that has defined Smith’s career. Though some have tried, we’ll probably never learn exactly what image the man who gets paid millions to bellow about Lamar Odom allegedly smoking crack was trying to share with the world. But, like a digital version of the suitcase from Pulp Fiction, perhaps the specific content of IMG_4346.jpeg is best left to the imagination. [Gabe Worgaftik]
5. “Steamed Hams” is turned inside out
What was once an amusing scene from a golden-era Simpsons episode turned into a point of fascination for the web’s most irony-poisoned shitposters around the turn of the decade. Since then, reimagining “Steamed Hams” has turned into a challenge to see who can waste the most time breaking it into a million pixels. Our favorites? That time it met “All Star.” That time it became a Super Mario Maker level. And, of course, that time Jeff Goldblum played Principal Skinner. [Randall Colburn]
6. @Dril is the internet
There is no parody of the miserable, angry, depraved, and profane online ecosystem that can compare to @dril, an account that migrated to Twitter from Something Awful and promptly began embodying the very act of scrolling in the funniest possible way. [Randall Colburn]
7. Chuck Tingle pounds butts
Who is Chuck Tingle? He’s probably not who he claims to be, which is an “erotic author and Tae Kwon Do grandmaster (almost black belt) from Billings, Montana.” But no matter who he is, Tingle’s a sweetheart, a stalwart LGBTQIA+ ally whose catchphrase is “love is real” and who wants the deepest desires of his “buckaroos” validated by his absurdist erotic fantasies, or “tinglers.” That’s easily achieved if your deepest desire happens to be getting pounded in the butt, a favorite phrase of Tingle’s that reached its pinnacle with the e-publication of Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt in 2015. [Katie Rife]
8. Britney Spears ponders global warming, Lady Gaga in less than 140 characters
In a vacuum, this 2014 tweet from Britney Spears is astounding—a succinct encapsulation of the most boring people on Twitter (i.e., bad takes and bland observations in the same breath). The real story, which reminds us that Twitter was very different in 2014, is much less interesting. It should also absolve Spears of any dunking—in context, it’s clear she does not think global warming is a good thing. But, still, the tweet is the tweet. And, on its own, the tweet is brilliant. [Randall Colburn]
9. Mia Farrow ponders Donald Trump, Myst in less than 280 characters
While we now know the reason for Spears’ 2014 tweet, this Mia Farrow missive from 2019 remains deliciously enigmatic. It also contains a bad, if sweetly naive, take—that the world is somehow good-hearted enough to not vote Trump into office again—but it also contains a very good one as the 73-year old declares 1993’s Myst to still be “one of the BEST video games.” This, friends, is what we call a “whiplash tweet.” We can’t imagine there ever being one better. [Randall Colburn]
10. The Rap Board
Nowadays, websites all want to be the next Facebook or Amazon—media platforms, international mega-corporations, and geopolitical power players. Maybe instead more websites should aspire to be like The Rap Board, where the only thing you can do is you can click on Lil Wayne’s head and have him shout “Young moolah, baby!” The Rap Board is a throwback to a bygone era of the internet where simple diversions like soundboards flourished and the thrill of discovering odd little sites with odd little purposes was still alive. [Randall Colburn]
11. The “Rains Of Castamere” fall
The key to finding a truly great Red Wedding reaction video is to check the date it was published. If it’s on or around June 2, 2013, you’ve probably got a winner. People are still making them—some Houses never truly die—but now odds are they know something’s coming. Back then, the person who knew what was up was the person holding the camera, who’d watched already or read the book. The person watching? No clue. You can’t see the screen, but you can somehow still see the shivving of poor, pregnant Talisa on the face of the person doing the watching. Then you hear Catelyn’s body hit the floor, and our hero turns to the camera with a “what the fuck just happened?” ready on their lips. Unlike Game Of Thrones itself, the ending of a Red Wedding reaction video is likely to be very satisfying. [Allison Shoemaker]
12. The Olsen twins want pizza, eternal darkness
They knew they had written a catchy jingle, but no one involved with You’re Invited To Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Sleepover Party expected “Gimme Pizza” to have much of an afterlife. Despite the odds, it has, starting with its re-emergence on YouTube in 2008, then followed by philipmserious’ original YouTube remix in 2010, followed by thousands more chopped ’n’ screwed versions underlining the Lovecraftian horror of it all. [Katie Rife]
13. Jurassic Park meets a melodica
Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park not only boasted the most groundbreaking CGI of its time, but it was also instrumental in the rise of DTS’ digital surround sound technology. To this day, the film remains a sumptuous spectacle, a thrilling blend of jaw-dropping effects and crack storytelling. Kudos to this rebel and his garbage melodica, then, for reducing all of that grandeur into one absurdly perfect joke. [Randall Colburn]
14. Megan Amram declares “Today was the day Donald trump finally became president”
Beginning on May 15, 2017, writer-performer Megan Amram has been doing something very simple: She manually tweets out the sentence, “Today was the day Donald trump finally became president.” At first, it was the kind of generally funny observation that traded on the obvious fact that this incompetent buffoon very much did not become presidential-like on that day, or any day. But then she continued, ad nauseam, sending out the same statement, until it became a beautiful running commentary on the joke that is our political situation. An Emmy for Megan, indeed. [Alex McLevy]
15. Plums in the icebox
William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say” is a classic among middle school English teachers hoping to teach students that early 20th-century poets could be just as fantastically passive aggressive as anybody else. But who could have expected that Williams’ chilly, highly coveted produce would inspire so many gleeful literary mutations, overwhelming Twitter with tales of plums, iceboxes, and every possible permutation between them? [William Hughes]
16. “It’s fuckin’ nice out”
Young King Dave, the big, weed-loving boy, died in 2018, but the masses are still blazing big doinks in his honor. Bonus points if you’re doing it “in Amish.” [Randall Colburn]
17. We are all pizza rats
A day of navigating soupy, poisoned air and crumbling infrastructure inevitably leads us to our hovels, which we stagger into with greasy, comforting garbage dangling from our lips. How, then, could we not relate to the humble journey of the viral pizza rat? Or its cohort, trash bag rat? Or even this cockroach with a cigarette? We’re all just vermin, comforting ourselves with actual junk. [Randall Colburn]
18. Gremlins 2 gets the scholarship it deserves
In an age where you can literally get a doctorate in pop culture, why not an Institute Of Gremlins 2 Studies? Often dismissed as a mere Looney Toons-inspired romp, Joe Dante’s 1990 film is actually an ontological statement complex enough to give Heidegger an ulcer, as the Institute’s anonymous director—who describes the Institute as “more important… than any official academic institution”—has been breaking down in detail since its launch in December 2017.
19. The eternally memed life of SpongeBob
Though this particular underwater cartoon universe was already legendary in its own right, the internet has managed to solidify the immortality of Spongebob Squarepants and the entirety of Bikini Bottom. Thanks to the malleability of the beloved Nickelodeon mainstay, the decade has shown us that there is an appropriate Spongebob reaction for just about every situation. That’s certainly one way to secure cross-generational appeal. [Shannon Miller]
20. Save us from this sorority recruitment video
Sorority recruitment videos have definitely upscaled over the past few years into elaborate, long-form promos that may as well double as ads for hair extensions and canned cocktails. So now the viral 2016 video of Alpha Delta Pi Texas seems almost quaint, even as it remains terrifying. Maybe it’s the cheerful yet vaguely threatening welcome by the three recruitment captains: “We’ve been waiting for you all summer and we’re so glad you’re finally here!” who then open a door to reveal the stuff of nightmares—countless hands attempting to draw you into a Panhellenic world from which you’ll never escape. [Gwen Ihnat]
21. “Retire bitch”
For proof that Twitter’s troubles have nothing to do with a lack of sufficient characters per tweet, look no further than Danny DeVito’s perfectly succinct command to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “retire bitch.” That’s it, that’s the tweet—it’s not a plea for civility from the late Scalia or any other request for consideration beyond getting the fuck off the bench after making a career of writing invective-filled dissents on everything from marriage equality to healthcare. Twitter users continue to sound DeVito’s call; there are few shady politicians who haven’t had it lobbed at them. [Danette Chavez]
22. Mario, Luigi, and Wario get nipples, genitalia
Society’s always been horny for cartoons, but the gaming gods leaned into it this decade, forcing us to gaze at shirtless, nipple-bearing versions of Mario and Wario, not to mention Luigi’s crotch bulge. Or, hey, maybe it’s always been like this—also resurfaced of late is a comic from the ’80s proving, once and for all, that it’s’a penis beneath those overalls. [Randall Colburn]
23. 10-hour video loops push YouTube to its most absurd limits
Back in 2011, YouTube made a quiet but substantial shift in their video guideline policies, allowing an uploaded clip’s maximum length to top out at 10 hours. People soon took notice, and really, really got into abusing the privilege, first with someone looping Nyan cat for 600 minutes. Now, lo and behold, there are hundreds of inane hours available for psychological stress self-testing, from 10 hours of Psyduck freaking out to Andre 3000 yelling “Alright!” during “Hey Ya!” until your ears bleed. [Andrew Paul]
24. Fake Jon Taffer account barrels into role-play Twitter trysts
Something magical happened in March 2015: Some anonymous soul started a Twitter account that adopted the persona of red-faced Bar Rescue host Jon Taffer, then used it only to barge in on people with anime avatars having cyber-sex on Twitter. “You’re on the job! Act professional! This is freakin’ ridiculous!” shrieked the first post. Sometimes the account’s sex-hungry targets would play along, which always pleased this digital Taffer. “Thanks to my friends at Xenios, I installed a state-of-the-art 2-Touch POS System,” he told one horny account. An enigma, the account quit after just two days, but its 60 perfect posts live on. [Randall Colburn]
25. How good is Tom and Lorenzo’s costume design analysis? It’s great, Bob
In 2010, fashion bloggers and cultural critics Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez got it into their heads that they wanted to celebrate Mad Men’s impending fourth season by writing a piece about the best Betty Draper costumes of the show. But what about Joan? And Peggy? And Trudy? That initial Betty piece never happened and T Lo tackled them all—first breaking down the costumes by character and later by episode. Many, many thousands of words later, the last edition of Mad Style coincided with the series finale “Person To Person,” an episode in which a costume became key to understanding it, and thus the series as a whole. Invaluable cultural criticism, one screencap at a time. [Allison Shoemaker]
26. ol Donny Trump
Written in 2016 and relevant to this very day, writer, gamer, and Twitter menace Jesse Farrar’s (now-deleted) tweet is the decade’s most prophetic. [Randall Colburn]
27. Bee Movie sped up
The 2007 releaseBee Movie has always been super weird. But then somebody had to cut it “20000x faster” and create a new cottage industry of Bee Movie memes—“The Bee Movie But Without Bees” and “The Bee Movie But Every Time They Say Bee We Explain The Deal With Bee Movie” are but two examples. There’s also the above clip, in which some wiseass sped up the audio every time the movie says the word “bee,” which is, as you might imagine, a lot. [Saloni Gajjar]
28. Comedy has a white male problem
The brilliance of this 2016 Medium post is what lies beyond its headline, which, to be clear, is purposely calibrated to ensure people click on it with foam dripping from their bared fangs. One of the best punchlines of the decade. [Randall Colburn]
29. Gamer Grandma is the opposite of #GamerGate
Gaming, a very good thing, is consumed by lots of bad things (gatekeepers and racists, mainly). It’s good to know, then, that gentle, amiable souls like 66-year old GrndPaGaming and 82-year old Grandma Shirl are out here providing an oasis of calm for weary gamers. Grandma Shirl, whose bread and butter is the open world of Skyrim, is an especially good follow, as she’ll often treat viewers to readings from one of the many fantastical tomes littered throughout Tamriel. [Randall Colburn]
30. “Pants On The Ground”
Next to Kelly Clarkson, the best thing American Idol gifted the world is “Pants On The Ground.” Performed by 62-year-old contestant Larry Platt, he dedicated his original song to those folks who wear the pants way too low. His accompanying dance instantly went viral, and the parodies and homages came fast and furious. Fans of The Office might agree that the song was likely the inspiration for Andy Bernard’s failed audition for America’s Next A Capella Sensation. [Saloni Gajjar]
31. Prince tweets 2 u
In 2012, a few years after the Purple One claimed the internet was “completely over,” comedian and writer Jake Fogelnest channeled his inner purple one into a perfect parody Twitter account full of fake Prince tweets. Full of short statements on the topics of funk, mystery and produce easily read in Prince’s voice, it all kicked off with the initial promise: “i’m prince. i want 2 tweet 2 u. follow me in the purple afterglow.” [Kevin Cortez]
32. KFC follows 11 Herbs and Spice Girls on Twitter
Subtlety is a rarely prized quality in the world of online branded content. God bless KFC, then, for crafting the rare joke that you actually have to look for, instead of having it shouted down your throat by that hateful Wendy’s creature. Playing off one of its old slogans, the company’s official Twitter account follows exactly 11 guys named Herb, plus the Spice Girls. The joke is excellent; the restraint sublime. [William Hughes]
33. “A full-on double rainbow all the way across the sky!”
Forgive the hackneyed expression, but we must protect Yosemitebear62 at all costs. The YouTube user’s (real name: Paul Vasquez) joyful, wildly exuberant reaction to a beautiful (though not uncommon) quirk of nature is so pure, so totally lacking in cynicism, that it could induce a little second-hand embarrassment. But why be embarrassed? Sure, there’s something funny about the off-camera weeping, but it’s a good kind of ridiculous. “Double rainbow” is the double rainbow of viral videos. It’s so vivid! What does it mean?! [Allison Shoemaker]
34. The brands are tweeting about depression
It was kinda cute when the #NuggsForCarter movement went viral and Wendy’s donated a bunch of money to charity, but the stunt’s virality became co-opted by the brand, thus spawning hundreds of sub-par imitators, resulting in a world in which Steak-Umm is woke and MoonPie is a shit-poster. The whole sorry experiment reached its nadir, however, when SunnyD scrambled from the back of the fridge to declare “I can’t do this anymore.” Like capitalist vultures, other brands—MoonPie, Pop-Tarts, and Uber Eats, among others—swooped in, sensing a viral moment. But it was Little Debbie who took the, um, snack cake by tweeting out suicide prevention tips before deleting that post post-haste. Much like its preservative-packed snacks, however, the original tweet lives on. [Randall Colburn]
35. Old people writing on a restaurant’s Facebook page
In 2012, Stefan Heck created a short-lived Tumblr page that offered nothing more than what its title promised: Old people writing on the public Facebook pages of chain restaurants. From the woman demanding Red Lobster’s page “get out of my Facebook account” to the man posting “my son” on LongHorn Steakhouse’s, the 23 glorious pages of posts whisk us back to a time before our angry, befuddled elders discovered 4chan. [Randall Colburn]
36. Let the dogs drive stick
On the one hand, when you think about it, it’s sort of insane that anyone is allowed to drive a car—a big metal box you can just hop on into and hurl at 100 miles an hour in whatever direction you please. On the other hand, is there any reason dogs shouldn’t be allowed in on the fun too? Well, yeah, maybe there is, but that didn’t keep these New Zealand maniacs from teaching a bunch of dogs how to drive stick in 2012. Are they good at it? No, not really. Is there a point to this? Unclear. Do they look cool as hell? Absolutely. At the very least, they’re probably less likely than we are to refresh Instagram while changing lanes. We say let good boys roll. [Gabe Worgaftik]
37. Dang it, Bobby, these King Of The Hill and Fresh Prince glitch remixes got life all twist-turned upside down
We’re not sure which came first, but honestly, that makes sense given the warping of space and time experienced while watching these glitched-out reworkings of old King Of The Hill and Fresh Prince Of Bel Air episodes. Created by DurhamrockerZ, both video series ostensibly provide abridged episodes of ’90s nostalgia imbued with enough digital decay and ridiculous non-sequitur edits to keep you glued to your screens, trying to catch all the small bits of insanity sprinkled throughout. [Andrew Paul]
38. Cursed Images curse us with joy
Three months. 360 tweets. Each perfect. Each raising more questions than one could ever hope to answer. This account should be a museum. [Randall Colburn]
39. The “Curvy Wife Guy” celebrates body positivity in the worst possible way
At the nexus of overly enthusiastic “girlfriend guy,” body positivity, and oversharing lies Robbie Tripp—the dude who so eagerly, obnoxiously, and creepily celebrated his wife’s “curvy body” on Instagram that he became infamous for doing so. Tripp was extensively ridiculed for his decision to post a normal couples photo of himself and his wife along with a paragraph praising her features in excessive detail along with some self-pitying background about how, “as a teenager” he was “teased by my friends for my attraction to girls on the thicker side”—the kind of “girls that the average (basic) bro might refer to as ‘chubby’ or even ‘fat.’” Tripp’s tragic backstory does not compare to whatever his wife must’ve felt when everyone on the internet read her husband’s post. [Reid McCarter]
40. “I don’t know her”
This perfect quote and ubiquitous meme epitomizes two things: pettiness and celebrity drama. Now, not all feuds stand the test of time, but Mariah Carey’s delivery of “I don’t know her,” earnest as can be, about Jennifer Lopez certainly did. The beauty of this meme is that it took place in the early 2000s, before social media had the power it does today, and yet, boom, it’s one of the memes of the following decade. [Alani Vargas]
41. The young what?
What does one do when faced with a show called The Young Pope? It sounds fake, like a 30 Rock parody, but the HBO project turned out to be quite an interesting series (a follow-up is on the way). Nobody knew that, however, when the sheer incongruity of the title—popes aren’t young!—inspired a bored Twittertariat to insert the premise into just about any pop staple they could conjure. A delightful instance of infectious, inoffensive riffage. [Randall Colburn]
42. The refreshing water memes of /r/HydroHomies
Initially inspired by a shitpost on /r/4panelcringe, /r/HydroHomies evolved into a pool of Redditors who really fucking love water. It’s the superior drink of choice for all humans, sure, but for /r/HydroHomies, it’s the exaggeration of staying hydrated, the use of reusable bottles, and being a dirty slut for water that makes this normally dull topic so damn funny. [Kevin Cortez]
43. Dat Boi is absolutely that boy
The 3D image of a unicycling green frog blew up on the internet in early 2016, blessing us with a new meme that became an instant classic. A play on the phrase “that boy,” dat boi was usually followed by users asking “o shit waddup.” The main idea is to express chillness that matches the frog’s expression. Or as it says in the New York Magazine’s in-depthTomato Price Crossing Rs 100 Per Kilo Has 'Inflated' the Internet With Memes The 100 best, worst, and weirdest things we saw on the internet in the 2010s have 3990 words, post on aux.avclub.com at November 8, 2019. This is cached page on Talk Vietnam. If you want remove this page, please contact us.