Alexia Tsotsis’s “A List Of The Best Of The Best Meme Lists Of 2010” is a year-end roundup of year-end roundups—not a definitive ranking of the year’s memes. Published by TechCrunch on December 31, 2010, it points readers to other publications’ takes on internet culture and briefly notes what made each one distinctive. Read the original TechCrunch article.
What the TechCrunch article is—and is not
Tsotsis’s piece is a guide to other 2010 meme lists, with an honorary mention for a list about lists. Its selections differ in format and scope: some focus on catchphrases or mainstream breakouts, while others collect viral posts, explain a broad range of memes, or look back across a decade.
The article’s joke is recursive by design: as Tsotsis puts it, “you can’t have viral culture without recursion.” The roundup captures a moment when internet culture was being recapped not only in annual retrospectives but also in articles about those retrospectives.
Which meme lists does it cover?
Rather than applying a shared scoring system, Tsotsis offers short editorial observations about each source. The links below identify the lists by the titles she cited; the descriptions are her impressions, not a common ranking rubric.
#1 Best Overall
| Source and list | What Tsotsis highlights | Scope or format |
|---|---|---|
| The Atlantic, “The 12 Best/Worst Memes of 2010” | Its brevity and focus on catchphrases; she jokes that it offers little helpful context. | Short single-year list |
| Know Your Meme, “2010 Year In Review” | A roughly 90-second video condensing the year’s internet culture. | Short video; single year |
| Urlesque, “2010’s Memes in the Mainstream – How Bed Intruder, Bros Icing Bros and Old Spice Guy Broke Through” | Coverage of memes crossing into mainstream media, alongside the publication’s Urlies awards. | Mainstream crossover; single year |
| Jay Irwin, “Top 10 Memes of 2010” | Introduced Tsotsis to CAPTCHA Art and, in her view, avoided videos. | Text-oriented list; single year |
| BuzzFeed, “Top 50 Most Viral Posts of 2010” | A semigraphic collection of widely clicked online posts. | Viral-post collection; single year |
| The Huffington Post, “The Best Internet Memes Of The Decade: Chuck Norris, Rickroll, Lolcats And More From 2001-2010” | A slideshow with a decade-long frame. | Slideshow; 2001–2010 |
| Memeburn, “Outstanding Memes of 2010” | Tsotsis comments on its introductory definition of a meme. | Single-year list |
| Chicago Sun-Times, “Year In WTF!?” | Included among the year-end selections. | Single-year retrospective |
| Houston Press, “The Year in Static Memes” | Presented alongside an addendum about video memes. | Static memes, with video-meme addendum |
| Ranker, “The Top 25 Greatest Internet Memes of 2010” | Tsotsis singles it out for breadth and explanatory text. | Broad, explained list; single year |
| Rex Sorgatz, “List of Lists” | An honorary mention, since it is a year-end list about lists rather than a meme list. | Meta-list |
Why the lists are not directly comparable
The roundup places very different kinds of retrospectives side by side. A short video compresses a year into a quick recap; a viral-post collection emphasizes items that circulated widely; a mainstream-focused article asks which internet phenomena crossed into conventional media. The Huffington Post’s slideshow reaches beyond 2010 to cover 2001–2010, while the Houston Press separates static memes from video memes.
“Best” therefore means different things in different entries. The TechCrunch article does not say that every source used the same criteria or that its list is an objective ranking of meme quality, popularity, or cultural influence.
Rank #2
What selection methods are documented?
A later Know Your Meme review provides one example of a more explicit process: its 2011 year-in-review says selections drew on community and research-staff input through a special poll, site analytics, and comparisons of keyword search interest. That description applies to the 2011 review; it does not establish how the 2010 lists in Tsotsis’s roundup were assembled.
For context, a contemporary Wired/GeekDad retrospective describes “This Week, on the Internet” as a short weekly recap that began in March 2010, aimed at people who could not keep up with the volume of online memes. The page later turns satirical, so its claims about readership, literacy, or control of internet culture should not be treated as factual reporting. Read the Wired/GeekDad retrospective.
Recommended Free Tools
Finding the original roundup
The archival reference is TechCrunch’s article by Alexia Tsotsis, published December 31, 2010: “A List Of The Best Of The Best Meme Lists Of 2010.” It is the place to start if you want the original set of links and Tsotsis’s brief comments. The entries cover distinct formats and editorial angles, so readers looking for the “best memes of 2010” should treat this page as a map to contemporary retrospectives, not as one final answer.
Quick Recap
Best Value
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
