Best Meme

2018 was rife with viral meme sensations, from the deep collective desire to eat Tide pods — despite the urging of the company to not eat them and nearly 13,000 calls to poison control in 2017 in relation to laundry pods, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers — to the Laurel vs. Yanny debate in the early summer to recent memes including bongo cat, the strange “Johnny Johnny, Yes Papa” video, the obsession with moths, “let’s get this bread,” and the surgery on the grape.

Twitter and Tumblr’s meme communities are strange and expansive cultural landscapes that produce memes seemingly overnight that spread like wildfire over the platform. While most are rooted in current events or pop-culture happenings — such as the Elon Musk smoking marijuana meme — some are created from television shows prevalent in the childhood of late-90s kids, such as “Spongebob Squarepants” and “Pokémon” memes.

2018’s top meme belongs easily to the numerous “Spongebob” memes that overtook Twitter throughout the entire year. Meme creators taking screencaps of the beloved childhood show and occasionally editing them gave birth to memes that remained relevant throughout the entirety of 2018.

Following the death of Spongebob creator Stephen Hillenburg in late November, it feels only fitting that the title of Best Meme of 2018 belongs to what was created from the Daytime Emmy award winning show.

Top Spongebob memes include the Spongebob out of breath meme, evil Patrick meme, Krusty Krab vs. Chum Bucket meme, and the spinning Mr. Krabs meme.