There was no single definitive ranking of 2021’s best memes. Know Your Meme’s community poll favored remixable formats, while year-end editorial roundups also covered celebrity, television and news moments—and sometimes viral clips that were not technically memes. Taken together, they show how people turned games, songs, scenes and real-world events into material to share and remake.
What “best” means in a 2021 meme list
The year’s lists used different yardsticks. Know Your Meme published a community-voted ranking of meme formats; other publications chose notable moments and trends. A platform recap, meanwhile, can focus on activity within one service rather than rank cross-platform formats. These are useful snapshots of online culture, not interchangeable measures of total views or popularity.
That distinction matters because a reusable meme format and a viral moment are not always the same thing. Complex included the Milk Crate Challenge and Sidetalk’s “bing bong” clips in its year-end roundup while noting that they did not technically qualify as memes. They belong to the wider viral culture around memes, but should not be mistaken for captionable or remixable formats.
Know Your Meme’s community-voted Top 10
Know Your Meme published its poll results on December 17, 2021. The percentages below are each entry’s share of that poll’s votes—not view counts, unique audiences or a platform-wide popularity estimate.
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| Rank | Meme | Share of poll votes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amogus | 25% |
| 2 | “Damnit KRIS Where Are We!?” | 23% |
| 3 | “Think, Mark” | 7% |
| 4 | Ankha Zone | 7% |
| 5 | Pondering My Orb | 6% |
| 6 | Lamar Roasts Franklin / Yee Yee Ass Haircut | 5% |
| 7 | For the Better, Right? | 5% |
| 8 | Super Idol | 4% |
| 9 | Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer | 3% |
| 10 | John Xina | 3% |
Game culture stands out in the top two. “Damnit KRIS Where Are We!?” drew on Deltarune and spread through scene remixes, while “Think, Mark” drew on Invincible and inspired redraws. The poll’s descriptions also show how varied formats could be: “For the Better, Right?” used four screenshots from Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones with dialogue not actually spoken in the film; Pondering My Orb was an exploitable remixed in October and November.
Formats built for adaptation
- Amogus: The poll’s top entry drew on Among Us and had a presence in Discord and Twitch, illustrating a meme associated with more than one service.
- Lamar Roasts Franklin: The Grand Theft Auto V scene was adapted by replacing its characters.
- Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer: The format dated back to 2019 and reached a 2021 peak. On TikTok, its virality was associated with Bring Me the Horizon’s “Can You Feel My Heart.”
- Super Idol: A song clip circulated with China-themed memes.
- John Xina: A nickname and image meme that gained renewed attention in summer 2021.
These examples suggest several routes for a format to travel: a sound can become attached to a comparison, a scene can be redrawn or recast, and a clip or image can be reused in new contexts. They illustrate particular cases; they do not establish that every meme followed the same path across platforms.
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News and entertainment became meme material, too
Not every memorable meme began as a purpose-built format. News photographs, interviews, music videos and screen moments also supplied images and scenes people could recaption or remix.
Bernie Sanders at the inauguration
A photograph of Sanders at the January 2021 inauguration—wearing mittens and sitting with his arms crossed—became a widely remixed image. Fortune’s December 30 review noted versions placing him in The Last Supper and Where’s Waldo?. Sanders also sold sweatshirts featuring the photograph to raise money for charity; that is historical context, not confirmation that the merchandise is available now.
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Interviews, television and music
Complex’s year-end selection ranged across Bernie Sanders, Oprah, WandaVision, The Weeknd, Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian, Omarion, Squid Game and You, showing how much 2021’s meme culture drew on news and entertainment as well as user-made formats. Esquire highlighted meme formats based on Lil Nas X’s “Montero” video and Oprah’s interview with Harry and Meghan.
ABC News Australia’s month-by-month retrospective also included the “I’m not a cat” Zoom clip and the Suez Canal blockage, alongside Sanders’ inauguration outfit and other moments. That is an Australian publication’s retrospective framing, updated in 2025, rather than a universal ranking of what mattered most everywhere.
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How the year’s lists differ
| Source or list | Selection method | What it selects | Scope and distinction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Know Your Meme | Community poll | Ranked meme entries and formats | Its reported percentages are shares of poll votes, not measures of total reach. |
| Complex | Editorial roundup | News, celebrity, film, television and user-originated moments | Includes some viral clips it says are not technically memes. |
| Fortune | Year-end editorial review | Notable remixes of the Sanders inauguration photograph | Focuses on a particular news image and its remakes. |
| ABC News Australia | Month-by-month retrospective | Viral events and online moments across the year | An Australian publication’s selection, updated in 2025. |
| Esquire | Editorial coverage | Formats tied to “Montero” and the Oprah interview | Highlights specific entertainment-related meme sources. |
| 9to5Mac | Secondary report on a platform recap | TikTok’s in-app year-end trends recap | A report dated December 6, 2021; not a direct TikTok statement. |
What these memes say about 2021
The poll favored adaptable formats, particularly those rooted in games and entertainment, while editorial roundups captured a broader mixture of public events, celebrity culture and platform-native clips. The most useful way to read these lists is as complementary views: a community vote says what its participants chose, and an editorial recap says which moments its editors considered notable. Neither turns “best” into an objective or comprehensive internet-wide ranking.
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