That’s exactly what happened with the “Is This a Pigeon?” meme which swept the internet in May, as two geniuses leapt at the opportunity to make insightful statements about being bisexual and trans.įirst, Amy Marvin, who teaches Trans Studies at the University of Oregon, made her point by labelling the meme’s protagonist “cis society” and the butterfly he’s looking at “trans people having a backbone about anything at all” before making him ask: “Is this destroying my free speech?” The “Is this a pigeon?” meme swept the internet this year (amyrmarv/twitter) When a top-tier meme is floating around, Queer Twitter is always ready to improve it.
The format was remixed to feature Lady Gaga, Mario and more, because the queer internet is wonderful. This year we were introduced to the superior meme, featuring a bride and groom posing by the ocean, but while the woman was looking meaningfully at the camera, her beloved was staring at someone else: a hunky man walking out of the ocean in tight trunks.
Last year, the distracted boyfriend meme-also known as the girlfriend vs the other girl-went viral, with the stock photo being reworked in a variety of ways and even being given a twist lesbian ending-but there’s like nothing like the real thing. Gay memes: The format was remixed to feature Lady Gaga, Mario and more (skylxrksays/twitter) Gay memes, like anything in culture, build on and influence each other, one using the other to inspire them to new heights. Queer love and representation: sometimes it’s more satisfying than an orgasms. “Yeah sex is cool but have you ever seen a gay couple holding hands well as the completely necessary “yeah sex is cool but have u tried gay sex” tweets, there were entries like: “yeah sex is cool or whatever but have you ever been gay and worn a jacket that smells like your girlfriend?” Gay memes: some of the ones from 2018, like this, were wholesome and uplifting (dykealectics/twitter)Īnother particularly sweet example was: “yeah sex is cool but have you ever seen a gay couple holding hands irl.” The premise was easy to follow-use the phrase “Yeah, sex is cool, but” and fill in the sentence with one or more sensations which are, in your opinion, better than sex-and the results were often surprisingly heartfelt. Sex isn’t everything, as this meme proved. “You’ll never be a proper male, your dick gonna be weird and you’ll have huge scars and a huge part of the gay community will neglect you as a sexual partner,” they may add, requiring you to interrupt, saying: “sTOP.”Īs well as transphobia, the meme was also used to tackle biphobia, with one person imagining a partner telling them: “plenty of men slide into your DMs and even ask you out on a date… but they leave as soon as you tell them you’re bisexual.” Sex is cool, but gay memes are better As you'll soon see, though, this ranking is perfect and indisputable.You might tell your partner: “I want you to hurt me,” only to be told, flat-out, that “you’ll never be the man you wish to be. (Sorry, Kilroy.) We also considered the ubiquity and persistence of a meme in determining its position on this list, which means more recent memes tend to wind up lower in the ranking, but may rise or fall in future update. We confined ourselves to the internet, so only symbols and phrases that crossed from traditional media to the web qualify.
Whether repurposed from YouTube videos, movie screengrabs, or viral catchphrases, these golden nuggets shape how we consume, criticize, and communicate through cultural touchstones.īut which ones have achieved lasting greatness? To answer that, we looked for memes with universality and malleability a dank meme exists in many permutations, and can cross cultural and linguistic barriers.
True, meme-ifying images and videos is a practice as old as humanity itself, but the advent of the internet has made that process much.