The Week's Best Memes, Ranked
Here at Digg, we try our best to cover the most important and confounding memes that come across the timeline. But the web is littered with tons of great memes that never quite hit the mainstream, instead bouncing around the weird corners of Twitter or Reddit.
Enter: our recurring feature, Memes, Ranked. For the week of November 18, we have a handful of contenders: Baby Yoda, Gonna tell my kids, reassuring Google Translate TikToks and the finger emoji meme.
4. Reassuring Google Translate TikToks
The meme: Typing kind words — or harsh truths — into Google Translate and making the automated voice say them back to you, over and over and over, in a barrage of either affirmation or, in some cases, insult. What's more, most of them are set to a rendition of that super sad song from "13 Reasons Why" by a violinist on TikTok.
Examples:
Verdict: This would be a playful but sort of forgettable meme if it weren't for the ones that pan to animals sitting in front of the computer, which are truly beautiful. We demand justice for the plague rat.
3. The Finger Point
The meme: The format of the meme is simple: rings of finger emojis point towards a message in the center to highlight the significance of said message. The contextual interplay between the emojis and the highlighted message provide fertile ground for wry social commentary, as can be seen, for instance, in this tweet:
In this tweet, the sole dark-skinned hand emoji amidst a sea of white emojis sheds light on the fact that while a lot of writers' rooms might provide themselves on being 50% women, women of color are still a minority.
Commentary on race is also apparent in this meme, which has Pete Buttigieg encircled by white hand emojis and commenting on Buttigieg's prioritization of white voters over black voters.
Other examples provide some fun twists to the meme, such as this tweet which references MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This":
And this tweet which substitutes finger emojis with pig emojis and alludes to the feral hog issue:
Verdict: One of the best features of this meme is that for the real clever ones, it often takes you a second or two to puzzle through their hidden meanings. We're glad that our attention has been pointed to the meme. Point well-taken, all of them.
2. Gonna Tell My Kids
The meme: A fun retelling of history that usually links a pop culture reference with an inaccurate caption of historical or political figures.
Examples:
Verdict: Who doesn't like playing a round of revisionist history, especially when it involves the most iconic figures in our pop culture history? Years later, we're going to tell our kids this "Gonna tell my kids" meme was Vine.
1. Baby Yoda
The meme: Disney+'s Star Wars series "The Mandalorian
features a "50-year-old" baby alien character referred to on the show as "the Child" but referred to by everyone else and their mom as "Baby Yoda."
Examples:
Verdict: With dozens of "Star Wars" fans clamoring that they'd die for Baby Yoda, the infantilized green muppet has won the internet's hearts and most likely is set to become the Tickle-Me-Elmo of Christmas 2019.
The 2019 Meme Power Ranking
Click each entry on the ranking to see when it debuted.
- OK Boomer
- Vibes
- Wholesome Buff Guys
- The Girl Drinking Kombucha Reaction GIF
- Baby Yoda
- Claire Saffitz Zoning out
- Fucking Mint
- Untitled Goose Game
- If I Were
- The 'Payphone' Exit