Another year, another long list of my favourite memes for the year. Last years seemed to be received well so I thought I’d make another pointless list. People did a good job of ruining memes for me this year, but the good thing about memes is that they don’t stick around for long. Unless of course you have your parents or older relatives on Facebook and they get to extend your experience, 6 months later. Or y’know the people that don’t trawl Tumblr, browncardigan and BuzzFeed all the time (like me).

This year my list is a good indication of what I spent most of my time doing while I was studying; watching TV, following American politics and watching the Olympics.

And in no particular order

Psy – Gangnam Style

Yeah I know, I know. Last year (My Top Memes of 2011) I started off the list with Rebecca Black and now I’m doing the song I’m sure everyone is sick of. But hey, this beat out Justin Bieber- Baby for the most watched video on YouTube, was the focus of  Saturday Night Live sketch with Seth Macfarlane, used for a fucking woeful Big Brother Australia advert, a zillion spoof videos and landed him a U.S record deal. The power of YouTube had become evident, a non English song had made an impact globally and even in an ethnocentric United States. Unlike Rebecca Black I have a feeling the adoration far outweighed the hate. As I write this now (13/12/2012), the video sits at 940,457,329 views.

While I’m pretty sick of the song now, the immature part of me still finds the man thrusting in the elevator funny.

Get it while you can Psy, the nations attention span for “novelty” is fleeting.

Breaking Bad Cartoons

MY FAVOURITE SHOW OF ALL TIME. Originally created by Henry Lawson in 2011, this cartoon series really picked up speed this year. It takes the reoccurring elements of Breaking Bad and simplifies it down(e.g. Jesse’s excessive use of the word bitch) while using badly drawn MS Paint pictures.  I’ll try and find some without spoilers if you haven’t seen the series yet. My best friend ruined season four for me half an hour after I told her I hadn’t seen it yet. She’s lucky that she’s still breathing.

Hurry back end of season 5!

IKEA Monkey

At an IKEA in Toronto the cutest little macaque monkey named Darwin was wondering around in a shearling coat and that was awesome. Apparently Darwin escaped from a crate in the owners car and decided to endure the hell that is IKEA. Even worse, IKEA in December.  I don’t need to go into the stupidity of owning a wild animal, because Louis Theroux has already done that, let’s just look at the pictures and appreciate how adorable he is, he even got mashed together with bad Ecce Homo restoration.

The 2012 London Olympics:
McKayla Is Not Impressed

McKayla Moroney was the favourite to win gold in the vault and when she came second, her unimpressed face became one of the popular photoshop memes to come out of The 2012 London Olympics alongside Mo Farrah Running Away From Things. Of course you can use the exploitable image and insert McKayla into any situation; the Mars rover Curiosity landing, the iPhone 5 release, Kanye at the MTV Awards… there are a bunch on the Tumblr site.

Barack isn’t impressed either.

Other notable memes that spawned from the Olympics were – One Is Not Amused, an image macro series featuring The Queen as she grumpily watches the opening ceremony.

Some of my other favourites included

Dangling Boris, the idiotic mayor of London.

and Olympics Or Gay Porn?

US Politics:

I was thinking of doing a seperate one for this seeing I have so many, but seeing as the majority of the readership is in Australia and probably doesn’t give a fuck, I’ll try not to make it too long.

First up was the Republican Presidential Primaries to find someone that could portray the increasingly religious and conservative image of the Republican party. What we got was more like a circus and the person that fucked up the least won the candidacy. Much fun was had by all, by all I mean the “liberal” media and political news satire shows such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Real Time With Bill Maher. Another TV show that really won out was Saturday Night Live, who like in 2008 with Sarah Palin, didn’t really have to tweak the actual dialogue that much to make it hilarious. After that came the presidential race which also spawned many parody videos, popular Twitter hashtags, exploitable images etc..

‘With Mitt’ iPhone App/”Amercia”

Paul Ryan Workout Photos

Binders Full Of Women

This one is obviously mixed with Texts From Hillary and you can check out the Tumblr for Binders Full of Women which was apparently a very popular Halloween costume this year.

Others included: Clint Eastwood And An Empty Chair, You Didn’t Build That, We Are the 47%, Anything that came out of Herman Caine’s mouth and countless Republican commenting on rape.

Botched Ecce Homo Painting

 

An adorable old lady named Cecilia Jiménez attempted to restore a fresco of Jesus which unfortunately for her turned into the Botched Ecce Homo Painting or Potato Jesus. The church claimed they didn’t give her permission but Cecilia said that the pastor allowed her to do so. Apparently with all the attention Celcilia was receiving caused the poor woman anxiety and sleepless night, then there was a much to do about the copyright and where the royalties should be going. But let’s just focus on the amazing artwork and all it’s variations.

 

Published on Destroy, Whiteboy – 19/12/2012