Welcome to the 2021 Memeys! One might have thought that things would die down a bit in the meme world after the madness of 2020 and with Trump gone, but they didn’t. Covid continued, with the new addition of vaccine memes. Inflation became a major economic issue, and major foreign policy blunders and hysterical freakouts nearly every week kept fueling memes in 2021.
It’s a nearly impossible job to sift through them all, but here are this year’s winners. They will be posted here after announced on social media (Facebook, Locals and Twitter).
Worst Government Meme
The White House’s “you saved 16 cents on your 4th of July BBQ” meme easily won this category. Not only was this gaslighting, as price inflation was already significant in many areas by July, it quickly became laughably absurd.
In just another few months, the price of almost everything had risen, and the CPI was at the highest levels seen in decades. The administration then pivoted from this meme to blaming “greedy” meat producers for jacking up prices.
Most Hypocritical Meme
In 2020, The Other 98% (and many others) praised nurses as heroes, demanding that anyone who didn’t want to be locked down put on scrubs and rush to their local ER (even though that wasn’t possible).
However, in 2021 that solidarity vanished. Any nurse who didn’t get vaccinated, no matter if they already had Covid and natural immunity, was declared to be unfit and cast aside.
Best Psaki Meme
Normally, the White House Press Secretary doesn’t warrant a category, but with Biden seldom making appearances, Jen Psaki became much more visible in this administration.
Last summer, she revealed the administration was in cooperation with social media companies to fight “misinformation,” which is never a role the government should be involved in. She further added that if someone was banned on one platform, they should be banned on all. Which spawned this well-deserved meme.
Most Cringeworthy Meme
I admit that I had a brief period of optimism this summer, that once people got vaccinated they’d finally get back to normal. Unfortunately, as this meme shows, there was a strong cult-like contingent that kept the madness and panic going. As summer wore on, the masks steadily came back, and then the mandates. Even though the vaccinated no longer had anything to fear from severe illness, it didn’t seem to matter. Fauci had risen to a god-like figure for some, and they were eager to obey.
Meme that Didn’t Age Well
At the beginning of 2021, this seemed like a fiery response and powerful meme. Biden’s viral 2020 tweet that he would “shut down the virus” (not eligible for this year’s award) was still fresh, but turned rotten as the year wore on.
Indeed, significantly more deaths were tallied in 2021, and the only reason it wasn’t worse was the prevalence of vaccines for those at risk. Which Biden actually admitted the other day, when he praised the Trump Administration (& the scientific community) for developing the vaccine.
So, as Psaki would say, this meme “circled back” and fell flat on its face.
Best Vaccine Meme
It seems like ages ago when people were euphoric about getting vaxxed, posting selfies, relieved they were now protected from the virus. This was short lived, though, as the euphoria shifted to anger at those who didn’t get the shot.
Even though vaccine passports were considered a fringe conspiracy theory early in the year, they were quickly adopted in many major cities and countries. With them came the sinking feeling that there would be an endless stream of boosters. At least we still had memes in this new dystopia.
Best Inflation Meme
As price inflation reached multi-decade highs, it turned out to be the most important and talked about issue of the year. This meme used the awkward Biden-Carter photo shoot (which became a meme in itself) to great effect.
Worst Fact Check
The fact checking world has been circling the toilet bowl for years, but this year was a new low. We learned a Snopes founder plagiarized articles under a fake name and the outlet had to retract over 50 stories.
We saw Facebook argue in court that their fact checks are really just a matter of opinion. And we saw the largest fact checking sites routinely become thinly veiled propaganda outlets, using ridiculous standards in labeling.
This one was a great example of why the “partly false” ratings fuel bias. They admit the statistic was correct, but they ruled it “partly false” because they didn’t like the conclusion. That’s what “misleading” is for, so the outlet can add context and let their readers decide if there was deceit.
Ruling something false because one doesn’t like it is improper and dangerous. Particularly when these are used by social media companies as justification for removing posts and banning users. Which we saw done unfairly in spades this year over Covid claims.
The Left CAN Meme
The left gets blasted for their inability to meme, and for good reason. But every so often they get it. This one made me laugh, and sort of hits home like a good meme should.
The Left Can’t Meme
This award involves more than just being a bad or dumb meme. It means spectacularly failing to execute the very purpose of a meme, which is to make a punchy point that garners attention and gets people on your side.
This meme’s point is, essentially, that Biden is strong because he made it up a set of stairs. As opposed to falling and just lying there until someone dragged him up? The bar is embarrassingly low. Sometimes your guy just has an embarrassing moment. Own it or ignore it, don’t make a meme like this!
Best Fauci Meme
Dr. Fauci’s ongoing public feud with Rand Paul reached its most heated over whether or not the US had funded gain of function research. This meme shows Paul literally mopping the floor with Fauci after he showed how, under any reasonable definition (including the CDC’s) they had.
Stupidest Controversy
It seemed nearly weekly there was a giant freakout about something this year, but the Georgia voting law really caused some over the top reactions. One of the most hyped controversies was that it was illegal to give water.
This wasn’t even true, as the law allowed official poll officers to make water available to voters. But many other states had similar or even more restrictive laws around polling places. For instance, MN prohibits ANYONE except voters, election officials and exit pollsters from being within 100 ft of a polling place.
The Georgia law simply prohibited gifts from being distributed to those waiting in line, including food and drink. It’s doubtful that people giving things to voters are doing so out of pure altruism. Imagine your political foes doling out water in voting lines and most would likely oppose it.
But all context was omitted and the controversy continued to be hyped, as if this was so,how unique and voting was some sort of grueling, life threatening activity where people are in danger of dehydration.
Best New Meme Format
This year, the account Defiant L’s made a splash with their style of splicing two hypocritical tweets together with a face in the background. It was simple, but brutally effective at exposing political and media personalities as clowns.
Most Annoying Meme
Never before has “crossing state lines” been a thing, but all of a sudden it was uttered over and over as some scary condemnation with Rittenhouse. It was like a mass psychosis appeared, where every blue check used “crossing state lines.”
Originally, the crossing state lines accusation was in reference to the rifle, which was factually inaccurate. It was known Rittenhouse didn’t carry it across state lines a year prior to the trial, when the Antioch and Illinois authorities completed their investigation, yet this falsehood persisted.
It then morphed into just Rittenhouse himself crossing state lines, like that was some big deal. Even though he lived right near the border and it was a 20 min drive. Ironically, some of those he shot traveled further.
The Rittenhouse trial was an important lesson in how little major voices care about the facts, as nearly every aspect of the case was distorted even after the evidence was laid out. But after seeing “crossing state lines” for the 100th time, you were pulling your hair out.
Best Reoccurring Meme
This photo from Biden’s inauguration quickly went viral. While other attendees were dressed formally and celebrating, Sanders contrasted with a homely and grumpy look.
Fittingly for Sanders, the mittens were made from repurposed wool sweaters and lined with fleece made from recycled plastic bottles. It was perfect, and launched endless memes from all sides. There was even a meme with OJ wearing the mittens.
Most Hysterical Meme
In late Feb/early March there were so many memes blasting Texas for lifting Covid mandates that I referred to them as the Texas Doom memes. They were convinced it would be a disaster and likened opening businesses to brazen acts of murder. I decided to track it weekly to monitor the predicted carnage.
So what happened? Two months after the mandates were lifted the 7 day moving avg of cases were down 72%, hospitalizations down 55% and deaths were down 80%.
Of course, cases rose again later in the year, as they did nearly everywhere, but it wasn’t due to the mandates being lifted. If anything was made clear in 2021 it was that Covid rose and fell regardless of mandates and lockdowns, and that we should stop listening to the hysterics.
Most Memeable Moment
The picture of AOC with her Tax the Rich dress at the Met Gala invoked a reaction in almost everyone, left and right, launching memes and counter memes galore (libertarians even hijacked it by changing it to “taxation is theft”).
On its face it was absurd. Wearing a designer dress to a $30k/ticket event surrounded by elites while being treated like a movie star seemed more like becoming the rich than fighting them. Then, it came out that the designer was delinquent on her taxes in several states and failed to pay workers comp insurance.
Still, this didn’t seem to faze the far left, who viewed the act as brave and bringing attention to the issue. It certainly wasn’t how Bernie Sanders would go after the rich, and appealed to the Instagram generation. More importantly, it appealed to meme makers everywhere.
Dumbest Meme
It takes a special meme to win dumbest meme. It doesn’t get much worse than this.
Best Biden Meme
I didn’t expect Biden to be that memeable, considering he was largely hidden from view and I figured he’d have sort of a boring presidency. But not since Trump in 2016 have I seen so many good memes centered on one politician. They were relentless and brutal.
There were the falling on the stairs memes, the Afghanistan debacle memes and the inflation memes. But nothing compared to the Let’s Go Brandon memes in terms of impact and staying power. It spread far past social media into sporting events and everyday interactions.
Meanwhile, the left had no real answer to tame it, and the joke grew as they became more upset. For 4 years there were angry memes of “F Trump” and ad hominem attacks like Drumpf, Cheeto, overweight golfing pictures, etc. Let’s Go Brandon was simply a superior meme.
Funniest Meme
At the beginning of the year, there was a meme stock frenzy, where companies who were thought to be dead, like GameStop and AMC, were resurrected by users on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets. GameStop, in particular, reached absurd valuations, going from the teens to almost $350/share in just days.
Even though it’s well off its highs, is still up more than 724% YTD and has a market cap greater than American Airlines. It’s not technically in the S&P500, as it didn’t meet certain requirements like making a profit in the past year, but is valued more than many S&P500 companies.
I got a lot of pushback on this page when I criticized this meme stock frenzy. I still believe that it didn’t really hurt Wall Street, in fact many hedge funds took advantage of it to make money. I think that aspect was overplayed. But it’s stayed high for far longer than I thought, and this meme is certainly hilarious.
Worst Meme
This meme was shared on multiple large pages, at several times over the year. Not only was it blatantly hypocritical (those posting it would immediately turn on any scientist they disagreed with) it captured the view that is destroying science.
Like Dr. Fauci himself, this meme equivocates the word science with scientists, which are two completely different concepts. Science is a methodology, which if properly followed qua the scientific method, is a valid way for humans to gain knowledge about the world.
A scientist, meanwhile, may or may not be following the scientific method correctly. They may have biases or different contexts which cause them to see the world differently, or place more importance on certain issues than others.
While scientists might change their mind when new information becomes available, science doesn’t, it’s just a tool we use to understand the world. It would be like saying the alphabet or eye glasses learned more.
Which is why scientists often vigorously disagree with each other, not just about science, but about its application. The science on Covid is just one aspect of making a decision on closing schools or imposing vaccine mandates. As is the science on climate change on energy policy. All too often, “the science” makes disastrous public policy decisions, which is why it should be rightly questioned.
This meme showed the blind allegiance people had to “science” this year, which in practice meant not the rigorous adherence to the scientific method, but backing the orthodoxy that the mainstream outlets and government had. By elevating the latter, it destroys the former.
Best Meme
The criteria for best meme is to be simple yet brutally effective, while capturing a major theme of the year. This billboard, seen somewhere in Milwaukee, did that by bringing the Afghanistan memes out of social media into the real world.
As influential as political memes are, they’re mostly looked at by a small subset of internet users. It can’t be overstated the effect of grandma driving down the highway and seeing this meme. It would be jarring and something they wouldn’t normally see.
Prior to the Afghanistan debacle, Biden was doing ok in public approval, sort of coasting through his presidency. But the combination of the shocking and sudden collapse of that state, with his aloofness and seeming cluelessness, was a turning point.
After Afghanistan, inflation and Covid joined, creating a trifecta of debacles and the perception by many that Biden had no idea how to handle any of those issues, if he was still even running things. In the past, this might have been obfuscated by the press, but now memes mercilessly taunt ineffective politicians.
Happy New Year to all, looking forward to see the craziness 2022 brings!