2019 Internet Obsessions: The Year in Memes, Challenges & Trends
December 20, 2019 12:29PM PST
The Los Angeles Times is taking a look back at the memes, trends and other obsessions that we all enjoyed online this year. Here are the first 10 (you can see all of them at the link):
- The Egg. This Instagram post of a brown egg hoped to “set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this.”
- White Claw summer. Although it’s been around since 2016, the summer of 2019 was when the low-cal, gluten-free spiked seltzer White Claw blew up.
- Hot Girl summer. The song from rappers Megan Thee Stallion, with a little help from Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla Sign, became a bonafide lifestyle trend. As Megan put it, “Being a Hot Girl is about being unapologetically YOU.”
- Wrong answers only. This social media game was a fun distraction, with simple rules intended to generate humorous responses: Post a picture and pose a question, then demand wrong answers only.
- Bottle cap challenge. Celebs John Mayer and Jason Statham made this slow-mo video meme take off, after they posted videos of themselves roundhouse-kicking caps off bottles.
- Face app. This app was downloaded over 150 million times, and showed what you’d look like if you aged 50 years.
- “Shallow” at the Oscars. The steamy Oscars performance of the song by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper convinced social media that the two were secretly dating, despite it not actually being true. The video was viewed almost 240 million times though.
- Cheese challenge. For a few brutal weeks, people were throwing slices of American cheese at babies faces, then posting the videos online.
- Meryl Streep’s scream. The acting legend’s scream from the Season 2 premiere of Big Little Lies soon became a legendary meme generator.
- The Cats trailer. The first one took social media by storm, and not in a good way, with most finding it very unsettling and creepy.
Get the full list HERE.
