6 Social Media Memes of 2010

Here’s a roundup of six key social media memes from 2010. There are many lessons to learn from these crowd-sourced social media riffs – what kicks them off, how they spread and what groups adopt them. However, we’re going to leave the psychoanalysis to others and just give you the list:

Sad Keanu Meme
There have been hundreds of  parodys and recreations of a set of sad Keanu Reeves photos. Keanu was caught sitting on a park bench, looking glum with only a few pigeons to keep him company.

This video is up there with the best from the meme:

Double Rainbow
An awe inspiring moment, captured by a man clearly full of awe. It comes into it’s own after 24seconds and he finds it all too much after 60seconds.

The meme has been remixed in photos and videos. Here’s the double rainbow song:

Leonardo DiHapprio (or the Leo strut) meme
There have been hundreds of photoshopped recreations of Leonardo DiCaprio’s happy strut. A photo of him was taken during the filming of Inception and it is generally photoshopped (apparently now a verb) to appear in disaster images, looking carefree.

Here’s a non-diaster verion:

Antoine Dodson and the Bed Intruder
What started as a horrifc story has propelled Antoine Dodson to web stardom this year – culminating in the release of a Christmas video (Chimney Intruder). To get the full effect of the meme, you should start by watching the brief news report that made him a star and then the remix music video that took him from commentator to superstar. Not only have many images and videos been created, there was even an Antoine doll for sale on eBay (pictured above).

The remix:

Epic Beard Man
A simple misunderstanding on a bus that turned grizzly. Epic beard man came out on top (both in the fight and the remixes).

The StreetFighter version:

Any meme’s we’ve missed out? Or lessons learnt from all of this?

A great meme resource is Know Your Memes