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Know Your Meme

9 terrible memes that were born and (thankfully) died in 2014

2014: The year of the internet craze.

2014 WAS THE year when memes jumped right out of the internet and into the real world.

Most were entirely pointless, some were downright dangerous, all of them are better off gone. Really.

The Mass Celebrity Selfie

self-4

OK, we’ll admit: we’ve probably never seen that many famous people in one selfie before, BUT STILL. It was everywhere for a solid two weeks after the Oscars, spawning a thousand copycats. Soon we just had to shout STOP.

Though we do still feel sorry for tiny Liza Minnelli trying to creep in at the back. Aw! Liza!

liza-2 @hclaytonwright @hclaytonwright

#aftersexselfies

aftersex2 Faces blurred out because MORTIFICATION.

The post-coital selfie began to pop up on Instagram around April, and mostly everyone was horrified.

Who are these people? Why are they doing this to the rest of us? Let’s hope we don’t have to ask ourselves these questions again in 2015.

Neknominations

empty-glasses-copy Flickr / Mark Hillary Flickr / Mark Hillary / Mark Hillary

In February, social media was awash with videos of people downing serious amounts of alcohol as part of the Neknominations challenge.

Tragically, it was only when 19-year-old Jonny Byrne passed away after taking part in the drinking game that people began to wake up to the dangers of Neknominations – thankfully this dark moment in social media crazes is far behind us.

Alex From Target

alexfromtarget Twitter Twitter

For some reason, teenagers decided to make this picture of a cute sales assistant the biggest thing on the internet for around two days. And they succeeded.

What does this say about the world? Well, that teenage girls run it.

“F*ck her right in the p*ssy”

Despite the original videos being unveiled as fake newscasts, interrupting people by yelling “f*ck her right in the p*ssy” became de rigueur in 2014.
https://vine.co/v/O67Qlt2bIPP

There is a chance we might make it to 2015 without ever hearing it again, but it’s risky, given its last appearance just last month on TV3. Please, for the good of all humanity, stop thinking this is hilarious.

#SELFIE (the song)

“But first, let me take a selfie.”

The Chainsmokers / YouTube

It started out as a pastiche of youth culture, but this song by The Chainsmokers was accepted by exactly the people it was meant to skewer and became an actual club hit. Search us.

Kim Kardashian’s bum

kimbum Paper Paper

And bums in general, to be honest. You couldn’t turn around this year without seeing an arse, whether it belonged to a Kardashian or a Minaj or an Azalea.

No more baring of bums! Please! We can’t take it.

Pharrell’s hat

86th Academy Awards Nominee Luncheon - Los Angeles AFF / EMPICS Entertainment AFF / EMPICS Entertainment / EMPICS Entertainment

Pharrell, the poor sod. He’s responsible for quite the few memes over the past year or two, most of which have ended up annoying people no end. For a solid few weeks, everyone talked about the hat, Photoshopped the hat on to other things, created their own versions…

When Grumpy Cat turned up at the MTV Movie Awards in April wearing a cat-sized version of the singer’s outsize headwear, we had to say “ENOUGH”.

Flappy Bird

flappy

The impossible-to-beat game drove just about everyone to drink back in January.

A wealth of parodies (including Flappy BOD, which replaced the bird with Brian O’Driscoll) jumped in to replace the game when the developer took it down in a fit of frustration, until finally the chains binding us to Flappy Bird slackened in around May.

Here’s what Ireland searched for on Google in 2014>

Watch London commuters break out into a spontaneous Erasure singalong on the Tube>

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