Short answer: The best memes and biggest viral moments of 2024 included Brat Summer, Very Demure, Hawk Tuah, Chill Guy, Moo Deng, the Kendrick Lamar–Drake feud, the Paris Olympics’ viral athletes, the Glasgow Willy Wonka experience, and the year’s fast-moving brainrot slang. This is a curated cultural retrospective, not a definitive ranking.
What made 2024 distinctive was how participatory its internet culture became. Users turned songs into identities, athletes into reaction characters, political remarks into edits, personal stories into serialized events, and viral attention into physical merchandise. The list that follows groups those moments by how they functioned and explains why each one traveled.
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These are the 29 memes and viral moments that best capture the internet of 2024—not as an objective ranking, but as a curated retrospective. The strongest entries were recognizable beyond their original posts, easy to remix, spread across platforms, lasted longer than a single news cycle, or expressed something larger about the year: celebrity, exhaustion, politics, AI, sports, commerce, and the need to turn almost anything into a participatory joke.
That distinction matters because there was no single scoreboard for internet culture. Know Your Meme’s 2024 roundup covered several categories, including memes, viral videos, slang, gaming, hoaxes, wacky stories, and anime. Google’s Year in Search measured search interest, while TikTok’s year-end review emphasized trends that became sounds, formats, and creator movements on its platform. The list below uses all three kinds of evidence without pretending they measure exactly the same thing.
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Catchphrases, characters, sounds, and formats
1. Brat Summer
Charli XCX’s Brat, released in June 2024, gave the internet an unusually complete visual and linguistic package: a lime-green cover, blunt typography, club-pop energy, and the phrase brat summer. It quickly became more than album promotion. People used it to describe a deliberately messy lifestyle, fashion choices, political edits, celebrity posts, and brand campaigns. The album’s identity was so adaptable that even people who had not listened to it could recognize the aesthetic.
The trend’s cultural importance was its portability. A music release became a mood board, a caption, a political shorthand, and a template for self-presentation. The Associated Press’ retrospective described the album as launching a thousand memes, while TikTok included Brat among its defining trends of the year.
Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. Availability, edition, seller, and licensing can change.
Physical artifact: For readers who want a durable reminder of the trend rather than another disappearing clip, Charli XCX Brat vinyl is a natural 2024 time capsule. Check the exact edition and seller before buying; the article does not imply that every pressing remains in stock.
2. Very demure, very mindful
In August, TikTok creator Jools Lebron turned a description of her appearance and behavior into one of the year’s most flexible catchphrases. Very demure, very mindful could be applied sincerely, but its real staying power came from parody: workplace behavior, outfits, food, public appearances, and absurdly over-serious everyday actions all became opportunities to perform exaggerated restraint.
Google specifically noted that Lebron’s viral video sent Americans searching for the meaning of demure. That search behavior is important: the phrase was not confined to an online subculture. It became a piece of internet vocabulary that people encountered first as a joke and then looked up for context. TikTok also listed the trend among its year-defining moments.
3. Hawk Tuah
A street-interview answer from Haliey Welch became one of 2024’s most instantly recognizable audio memes. Its appeal was less about complexity than repeatability: a short phrase, a memorable delivery, and an obvious opening for remixes and reaction videos.
The format expanded rapidly into appearances, merchandise, and attempts to turn fleeting attention into a business. It later became associated with a meme-coin controversy, which made Hawk Tuah a particularly clear example of the risks in the meme-to-monetization pipeline. The phrase could travel far beyond the original video, but that did not make every commercial extension equally trustworthy or durable.
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Phillip Banks’ cartoon dog became a major late-2024 reaction image after spreading through TikTok and other platforms. Chill Guy’s visual joke was immediately legible: a relaxed, casually dressed character appeared completely unbothered while captions placed him in stressful, absurd, or socially awkward situations.
Unlike a meme that depends on a long explanation, Chill Guy worked at a glance. The character could be dropped into a caption, a video, or a reaction without changing the basic joke. That simplicity helped it survive the rapid turnover of late-year meme culture, and Know Your Meme included it in its 2024 roundup.
5. Moo Deng
Moo Deng, a baby pygmy hippopotamus at Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo, became one of the year’s most wholesome viral figures. Short clips of her expressive behavior turned her into a reaction image, a fan-art subject, and an online personality often described as a tiny diva.
Moo Deng’s popularity showed how animal virality works when the source material is both visually distinctive and endlessly repeatable. A brief clip could communicate irritation, excitement, sleepiness, or theatrical outrage without translation. The phenomenon also demonstrated how quickly affection becomes an attention economy: the animal inspired products and collectibles, even though readers should distinguish official merchandise from unlicensed fan-made goods.
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Megan Boni’s song about looking for a man in finance became a TikTok sound and a joke about dating stereotypes, wealth, aspiration, and internet archetypes. Users could perform it straight, parody it, or use it to expose the gap between online fantasies and ordinary life.
The format succeeded because it was simultaneously a song, a character description, and a social observation. It gave creators a ready-made persona to imitate while inviting commentary about class and relationships. TikTok’s 2024 trends review identified it as one of the platform’s notable memes.
7. Kendrick Lamar versus Drake—and Not Like Us
The Kendrick Lamar–Drake feud produced a sustained ecosystem rather than a single joke: diss tracks, reaction videos, memes, public-event references, and arguments about lyrics all fed one another. The conflict moved between music fandom and general internet culture, making participation possible even for people who were not following every development in the feud.
Google listed Not Like Us as the top-trending song globally in 2024. That does not, by itself, prove that every part of the feud was the year’s largest meme. It does show how a music event became a searchable, remixable, and highly visible cultural story.
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Kamala Harris’s line about people believing they had simply fallen out of a coconut tree was heavily remixed in 2024. Edits turned the remark into a political sound, an image format, and a source of captions. It later intersected with Brat’s lime-green aesthetic and the wider online conversation around Harris’s campaign.
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The chronology is worth preserving: the original remark was not itself new to 2024. What was new was its renewed circulation, remixing, and political role during that year. It belongs in this retrospective as a political meme phenomenon—not as a claim that the speech was first made in 2024.
9. AI time-traveler interruptions
This format used generative AI imagery or video to imagine a time traveler interrupting a famous scene just before an iconic event occurred. The joke combined an older internet instinct—altering history for comic effect—with the newly visible ability of generative tools to produce plausible-looking scenes quickly.
Its significance was less the individual image than the method. AI became part of the meme grammar itself: a way to stage impossible historical interventions, manufacture visual evidence, and play with the boundary between familiar imagery and synthetic invention. Know Your Meme’s staff review treated the format as a mash-up of older memes and AI’s expanding role in online culture.
10. Foghorn Leghorn rambling
Users revived Foghorn Leghorn’s distinctive speech pattern and inserted extended, exaggerated monologues into situations that had nothing to do with Looney Tunes. The humor came from the mismatch between the character’s old-fashioned delivery and the modern scenario receiving the ramble.
It was especially suited to text-heavy posts and social platforms where a familiar voice could carry a long caption. Know Your Meme’s staff described it as one of the largest Twitter meme formats of 2024, a reminder that not every important meme was born on TikTok.
11. Pedro raccoon
The animated raccoon associated with the Pedro song became a compact looping reaction meme. The visual, beat, and repeated name were immediately understandable in short-form video, allowing creators to use it as a celebratory, absurd, or deliberately annoying interruption.
Pedro’s design illustrates why looping animation remains powerful even in a crowded video ecosystem. It requires almost no setup, can be inserted into another clip, and communicates through rhythm as much as language. Know Your Meme’s staff list identified Pedro as one of the year’s memorable meme subjects.
12. The Costco Guys and the victory-royale catchphrase
The Costco Guys’ family-centered food-review videos became a recurring TikTok presence through exaggerated reactions, recurring catchphrases, and appearances by other creators. The format blended food content, family entertainment, gaming language, and self-aware meme performance.
This was not one static image or one isolated sound. It was a creator format whose characters and rituals became the meme. That distinction matters: 2024’s viral culture often rewarded repeatable personalities and recognizable performance systems rather than single posts.
13. Holding Space for Defying Gravity
An interview with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo about Wicked produced the phrase holding space. The wording was then remixed into videos of people solemnly gathering around, contemplating, or overreacting to the song’s lyrics and the emotional language of the interview.
The joke became a late-2024 example of brainrot: a sincere phrase detached from its original context and repeated until its solemnity became funny. The Guardian’s year-end review identified it as a prominent late-year viral moment.
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28. The brainrot and slang wave
The year’s vocabulary—aura, demure, brat, sigma, rizz, and related terms—worked as a constantly mutating system rather than a set of neatly separated memes. Some words predated 2024; the year’s distinctive development was their acceleration, recombination, and movement between sincere usage and ironic performance.
Slang became a way to signal platform fluency. A word could describe a person, mock the act of describing a person, or be deliberately overused until it became funny through exhaustion. Know Your Meme treated slang as its own category, while TikTok’s year-end material framed trends as movements driven by remixing and creator participation.
Real-world moments that became memes
14. The Dune popcorn bucket
The sandworm-shaped popcorn container released for Dune: Part Two became an online object of fascination and sexualized joke-making. Its meme life was largely independent of the film’s plot: the shape itself was enough to generate commentary, reaction images, and discussion.
The bucket showed how a promotional object can escape its intended function. Instead of remaining a concession item, it became a symbol of the way studios, audiences, and online culture increasingly interact through objects designed to be photographed and shared. The Associated Press’ review of the year’s pop-culture moments included it among 2024’s notable conversation points.
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Reesa Teesa’s multipart TikTok account of a disastrous relationship became a major serialized storytelling event. The account ran to 50 parts, and its structure encouraged viewers to return, compare details, discuss revelations, and experience a personal story with the momentum of a television series.
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Its importance lies in format as much as subject. A single creator could turn a long-form personal narrative into a daily appointment within a short-form app. The story also showed how quickly audiences can become emotionally invested in an unfolding account, even when the material is not a conventional meme. The AP included it among the year’s defining viral moments.
16. Elmo’s emotional check-in
A Sesame Street post asking people how they were doing prompted an unexpectedly candid wave of replies about mental health, exhaustion, stress, and loneliness. Elmo became the center of a conversation that was funny in places but not reducible to a joke.
The exchange captured an early-2024 mood: people were willing to use a familiar children’s character as a low-pressure invitation to admit that they were not doing well. It is an important inclusion because virality can create a temporary public forum, not just a template for mockery. The AP’s retrospective identified the check-in as an early viral moment.
17. The Glasgow Willy Wonka experience
A poorly produced children’s event in Glasgow became a global spectacle after attendees posted images and videos of a sparse venue and confused performers. Promotional material had used AI-styled imagery, creating a sharp contrast between the fantastical promise and the event people actually encountered.
The story became a meme because the evidence was visual and immediate. Attendees did not need to explain the disappointment in detail; photographs of the venue communicated the entire collapse of expectation. Know Your Meme categorized the event among 2024’s wacky stories, but the episode also raised a more serious question about misleading promotion and the use of synthetic imagery in advertising.
18. Peanut the squirrel
Peanut, a social-media-famous squirrel, became the subject of intense online attention after New York authorities euthanized the animal following an investigation involving its owner. The story generated grief, outrage, political commentary, and extensive meme circulation.
It should be handled differently from a cartoon reaction image. Peanut was a real animal and the controversy involved real people, government action, and competing views about wildlife rules and ownership. Its inclusion shows how the meme ecosystem can absorb a serious public dispute, but online visibility should not be mistaken for a complete account of what happened. The Week’s roundup documented the episode as one of the year’s major viral stories.
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The Paris Olympics as a meme engine
The Paris Games produced an unusually concentrated cluster of viral personalities, images, jokes, and official posts. Athletes became characters without losing their athletic achievements, while Olympic accounts and broadcasters actively participated in the circulation. The result was not simply spectators making memes about sport; the institution, media partners, and athletes all helped shape the event’s online identity.
19. The Olympics chocolate muffins
Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen repeatedly posted about the chocolate muffins served at the Paris Olympics. A cafeteria dessert became a recurring character in his content and a recognizable joke beyond the swimming competition.
Google listed Olympics chocolate muffins as the top-trending food-and-drink recipe search globally for 2024. The moment demonstrates how a small, repeatable preference can become a cross-platform story when a creator gives it a personality and returns to it often.
20. Yusuf Dikeç’s casual-shooter aura
Turkish pistol shooter Yusuf Dikeç went viral for competing with a comparatively casual-looking setup, including ordinary-looking eyewear and one hand in his pocket. The image was quickly recast as an expression of effortless cool, or aura.
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The meme should not erase the achievement behind it. Dikeç won a silver medal in the mixed-team 10-meter air-pistol event. The contrast between the relaxed appearance and the precision required by the sport is what made the image so reusable, but the athletic accomplishment is the foundation of the story. TIME’s account of the Olympics’ social-media moments provides context for the phenomenon.
21. Kim Ye-ji’s cinematic cool
South Korean shooter Kim Ye-ji became an internet style icon after photographs and clips highlighted her composure, concentration, and distinctive competitive look. The images invited comparisons to a film character or action hero, even though the original setting was an Olympic shooting range.
Like Dikeç’s viral moment, Kim Ye-ji’s meme identity grew from the tension between stillness and high performance. Her appeal was not simply that she looked cool; it was that the photograph suggested a complete character while documenting elite competition. TIME’s Olympic social-media coverage identified the shooting athletes as major viral personalities of the Games.
22. Stephen Nedoroscik, the Pommel Horse Guy
U.S. gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik became known online as the Pommel Horse Guy. His glasses, waiting-room demeanor, specialist role, and decisive pommel-horse performance produced Clark Kent comparisons and a large reaction-image ecosystem.
The story offered an unusually satisfying visual arc: an athlete appeared to be quietly waiting, then delivered exactly the performance his team needed. The meme emphasized the contrast, but the contrast depended on real expertise. The AP’s roundup of unlikely Olympic heroes included Nedoroscik among the athletes who captured attention beyond their sports.
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23. Raygun’s Olympic breaking routine
Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, competing as Raygun, became one of the most memed figures of the Paris Games after her unconventional routine received no points. Clips circulated widely, often detached from the judging context and from the realities of competitive breaking.
A responsible retrospective has to separate online mockery from athletic evaluation. Memes are a measure of circulation and recognizability, not a fair measure of preparation, skill, or the standards used by judges. The episode also showed how quickly a performance can be reduced to a few repeated seconds once it enters the algorithmic clip cycle. Forbes’ coverage examined the meme phenomenon.
24. Snoop Dogg at the Paris Olympics
Snoop Dogg’s NBC role, outfits, reactions, and visible enjoyment of the Games made him a recurring meme generator and an informal mascot of the broadcast. His presence gave viewers a familiar celebrity perspective on events that might otherwise have remained within sports coverage.
The appeal was participatory: audiences could circulate a reaction, caption a facial expression, or treat an outfit as a standalone event. Snoop also represented a deliberate broadcasting strategy in which personality and social-media fluency were part of the Olympic spectacle. NBC’s own collection of viral Paris moments reflects that role.
25. Gabriel Medina’s floating surf photograph
A photograph of Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina celebrating in midair became one of the most reused images of the Games. The composition looked almost too perfectly arranged: Medina appeared to float beside his surfboard while pointing upward, turning a split second of competition into an instantly understood poster.
Paris 2024’s official social accounts amplified the moment with increasingly surreal edits. That official participation mattered. Instead of institutions merely policing unauthorized memes, the Games’ accounts helped extend the image’s afterlife and demonstrated how sports organizations can join the remix culture surrounding their own events. TIME documented the photograph and the broader Olympic meme environment.
26. The Olympics’ hang-it-in-the-Louvre meme
The phrase hang it in the Louvre was used to frame striking Olympic photographs as museum-worthy art. Paris 2024 and other accounts applied the treatment to images involving athletes including Cassandre Beaugrand and Teddy Riner.
This was an unusually clear example of official meme marketing. The joke worked because it was familiar enough for audiences to recognize immediately, while the photographs supplied the grandeur. The posts also blurred the line between fan culture, institutional promotion, and editorial selection: the Olympic accounts were not simply documenting iconic images; they were helping decide which images became iconic.
27. Ilona Maher’s Olympic breakout
U.S. rugby player Ilona Maher became one of the Games’ most visible athletes through her humor, personality, and fluency with social media. Her online presence brought attention to rugby while making her recognizable to people who might not otherwise watch the sport.
Maher’s breakout illustrates a broader change in sports celebrity. Athletes no longer have to wait for broadcasters to supply a public personality. They can build one directly through short videos, jokes, candid commentary, and audience interaction. The AP included Maher among the less expected Olympic heroes who captured attention beyond their events.
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29. The meme-to-merch pipeline
One of 2024’s defining meta-trends was the speed with which internet attention became a physical object. Viral phrases, animals, athletes, and album aesthetics moved from feeds into plush toys, clothing, vinyl, souvenirs, collectibles, appearances, and other products.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallThe examples were varied: Moo Deng merchandise, Hawk Tuah products, Brat vinyl and clothing, and Olympics-related collectibles all turned online recognition into something that could be bought or displayed. That does not mean every product was officially licensed. A viral identity can produce authorized merchandise, unofficial fan goods, opportunistic listings, and outright scams at the same time. Buyers should check the seller, materials, edition, licensing information, and return policy rather than treating virality as proof of authenticity.
The pipeline also explains why 2024’s memes felt unusually commercial. TikTok supplied sounds and creator formats; Google reflected what people wanted to understand or find; celebrities and athletes supplied recognizable personalities; and official accounts sometimes amplified the joke themselves. A meme no longer had to remain an image in a feed. It could become an album campaign, a political edit, a broadcast segment, a product line, or a continuous creator franchise.
What these 29 moments reveal about 2024
- Participation mattered more than origin. A phrase became culturally significant when people could adapt it to their own clothes, jobs, relationships, politics, or fandoms.
- Reaction characters were efficient. Chill Guy, Moo Deng, Pedro, Elmo, and the Olympic personalities communicated quickly in a feed where viewers may give a post only a few seconds.
- Real life was raw material. A muffin, a popcorn bucket, a disappointing event, a personal story, or a sporting photograph could become as memetic as a deliberately designed image.
- Platforms produced different kinds of evidence. Search rankings reveal curiosity and intent; TikTok trend reports reveal participation on one platform; meme databases reveal persistence and taxonomy. None should be treated as a universal popularity ranking.
- Institutions learned to remix themselves. Paris 2024’s image edits and the NBC Olympic personality strategy showed organizations participating in the same culture that once existed mainly outside official media.
- Attention became merchandise unusually quickly. The commercial life of a meme could begin while the joke was still circulating, creating both legitimate souvenirs and questionable products.
That is why the year is best remembered as a network of overlapping formats rather than one dominant meme. Brat could become politics; an athlete could become a reaction image; a children’s event could become a cautionary tale; and a phrase could move from TikTok audio to merchandise in weeks. The most durable moments were the ones that gave people a way to participate while also reflecting the strange, anxious, commercial, and highly self-aware mood of 2024.
Rights note for creators: Reusing clips, songs, photographs, broadcast footage, screenshots, or branded characters in a compilation or livestream requires appropriate permission or a defensible legal basis. A meme’s popularity does not make its underlying media free to republish.
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The Bottom Line
2024’s biggest internet moments were not all conventional memes. They included catchphrases, animals, athletes, personal stories, promotional objects, AI formats, and official media campaigns. Their common feature was participation: people did not merely watch them—they remixed them, performed them, searched for them, argued about them, and increasingly bought them.
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