This 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 January 13th, we have a few contenders: Teriyaki Boyz memes, Oscar nomination memes, and kebab shop fight memes.
3. The 'Tokyo Drift' Song
The Meme: This week, TikTokers have been caught up in a nostalgia trip for the 2006 film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and have been putting the theme song by the Teriyaki Boyz, with its repetitive bells, over top videos of pets making drifting-like twists and turns. Others have filmed themselves twisting and gliding to the music as well.
The Examples:
@kevrun25 French and The Furious #frenchbulldog #fyp #tokyodrift
β¬ Tokyo Drift – Teriyaki Boyz
@alec.lockard I I got detention for this, make it worth itπ #tokyodrift #fyp #makemefamous #tiktokdoyourthing #foryoupage #fy #goofygoober #vibecheck
β¬ Tokyo Drift – Teriyaki Boyz
@lil.linhh Hi, my name is Seth and I drift.. #cats #drift #tokyodrift #catlovers #fyp
β¬ Tokyo Drift – Teriyaki Boyz
The Verdict: As long as the animals aren't crashing into anything, we wholeheartedly endorse this meme and look forward to seeing many more derpy animals (and humans) making frenzied spin turns that perfectly sync up to the Teriyaki Boyz.
2. Oscar Nomination Memes
The meme: The Oscars nominations were announced this Monday and as usual, there were plenty of surprises and snubs. Some of the biggest snubs included the fact that Adam Sandler's "Uncut Gems" was completely shut out of the Oscars nominations and that there are no women in the Best Director category, despite the fact that Greta Gerwig's "Little Women" and Lulu Wang's "The Farewell" are some of the best movies of the year. The upside of all of this? At least, we get some good memes that skewer how ridiculous these omissions are.
The examples:
The "this is how I win" meme from "Uncut Gems" was one of the most notable memes from two weeks ago, and this week, in light of the Oscar snub, other scenes from the movie have come in handy:
And there have been some great memes about the female director snub, including Issa Rae's righteous shade:
As well as several others:
People have also pointed out how overwhelmingly white the Oscars nominations are this year — in the field of actor nominees, only Cynthia Erivo has been nominated.
There has also been some, um, response to the sweeping 11 nominations "Joker" has garnered, more than any other movie:
Verdict
In times of great snubs, great memes are needed. We're not sure whether or not we'll actually want to watch the Oscars this year, but we sure as hell enjoy watching all these memes dunk on the tastes of the Academy.
1. Kebab Shop Fight Bystander
The meme: Over the weekend, a wild fight in a kebab shop in Portsmouth, UK went viral on Twitter. The fight itself is quite something, but the clip went viral and became meme-fodder due to the unexpected star: the guy who refused to stop enjoying his food while the fight went down:
Once people had latched onto gray coat guy, the memes started flowing.
The examples:
The best of the bunch adds a second frame, with a separate onlooker, to add more depth to the meme:
The verdict: It's a very good internet video, with the perfect juxtaposition between the insane and the mundane. It could flame out, but we can see the labeled still format sticking around and popping up down the line. Solid meme.
The 2020 Meme Power Ranking
Click each entry on the ranking to see when it debuted.
- Baby Yoda
- As A Treat
- World War III memes
- This Is How I Win
- Kebab shop fight memes
- OK Boomer
- 'Marriage Story' memes
- Oscar nomination memes
- Vibes
- The Girl Drinking Kombucha Reaction GIF
Baby Yoda has a new fan: