The 10 best memes templates of the last 10 years

Memes are the cultural phenomenon of the decade. From their birth, in the darkness of 4Chan forums, to modern digital art auctions, their success has been universal and their presence has spread throughout society: politics, fashion, marketing and so on. The most striking side of meme culture was certainly that it was able to become a deforming mirror of our world, explaining it one parody at a time. Whether it's a fight between boyfriends or geopolitical dynamics on a global scale, every human phenomenon has its own counterpart in the world of memes – but there are some formats that over time have turned out to be better and longer-lived than others, both for narrative versatility and for the potential for creative remixes. 

Below we have listed the 10 best memes templates of the last 10 years. For the collection of historical data and official names of templates, we have obtained our information from the main online meme database Know Your Meme, the main online archive on the phenomenon of memes.

Distracted Boyfriend/ Left Exit 12 Off Ramp

via Prog Dusmanlarina Verilen Muthis Cevaplar

u/danikger

@n1m161

@DistractedBoyFriendd

u/J0Aco777

@ELXGANZA

@bornmiserable

@dakrolak

via Gabor Ligeti

@ToddAtticus

via knowyourmeme

via me.me

Here we combine two visually different but substantially identical formats, which have had a huge spread in recent years. The original image of distracted boyfriend was taken in 2015 by Antonio Guillem and posted on iStock. In 2017 the image was used as a meme on a Turkish page and from there spread on Twitter like a fire. The meme is used to indicate a situation where you prefer something immediately or seemingly pleasant while ignoring the safest or best known options. In this sense it is very similar to the Left Exit 12, also spread in 2017, which was instead born in 2013 as a YouTube video How to exit freeway like a boss and has a slightly different nuance, describing the situation in which an irresponsible and instinctive choice is made even in front of an obvious and better, but boring option.

Woman Yelling at a Cat

@missingegirl

@lc28_

u/AppleTrump

u/Perpetual Winter

u/FriedL1verAttack

via knowyourmeme

@MaxPaladin

via ebaumsworld

via ebaumsworld

The original photo that makes up half of this meme comes from a 2011 episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills titled Malibu Beach Party From Hell. In the episode Taylor Armstrong cries during an argument pointing the finger at accuser. Seven years later user Tumblr deadbefordeath posted a picture of a cat sitting at the table with a dispreast expression that first became a separate meme called Confused Cat. The two images were combined only in 2019, but giving life to one of the best template memes ever – capable of telling every conflict between someone incredibly involved and an opponent who could not care less. 

Roll Safe

@FootyHumor

via Dinish Kandasamy

@Trillxdadian

@trapafasa

@RyanWindoww

@lifehackblackguy

@girlposts

One of the most "historical" memes on this list. It originated in 2016, with the YouTube series Hood Documentary, in which actor Kayode Ewumi touches his temple winking in the room while talking to a woman. The decontextualized image has become a meme that remains famous even today, certainly one of the most iconic and immortal of the second generation of Reaction Meme (to be clear, the one after Rage Comics such as Trollface or Me Gusta) and has been used on millions of different occasions. The Roll Safe meme, among other things, has also become one of the first memes co-opted by marketing agencies that, of course, have not known how to use it well. 

Swole Doge vs. Cheems/ How It Started VS. How It’s Going

via Doges Artesanales

u/DiegoGamer25

u/PEKE19

u/Vulpanthrope

via boredpanda

via boredpanda

via boredpanda

via knowyourmeme

@vjillanelles

@TaylorPhilipps

@serinide

@autie_radig

@youngmoneysite

@xolei3

@officememes

@MercedesBenzUSA

Tracing the entire history of doge meme would perhaps require an article in its own right. His last and best incarnation is the so-called Swole Doge vs. Swole Doge. Cheems – a comparative format born in 2020 in which two images of the same dog, one photoshopped on a muscular body and the other depicting the original Doge are used to compare two similar situations but with very different outcomes, often related to the past/present dynamics. Incidentally, the meme revived the 2017 Virgin vs. Chad, which worked in much the same way, and has a perfect parallel, also dating back to 2020, in the format How It Started vs. How It's Going. The relevance of these template memes lies in their ability to capture the zeitgeist of 2020, a year in which the difference between past and present felt more dramatically than ever. 

Milk Edinburgh/Bro Explaining

@VRSJMS

@SuperDigitalUK

via knowyourmeme

via knowyourmeme

via memebase

via masipopal

@twittem

As we said, memes have the ability to reflect and talk about changes in culture and society. These two formats are basically identical: a man who insists on talking to a woman who is not interested and who does not know how to untie herself. Milk Edimburgh is a 2018 photo that was taken on an evening in Scotland while Bro Explaining originated in 2011 but only became a meme in 2020. Both photos gained popularity on the basis of the #MeToo becoming emblematic of mansplaining and ironically reacting to the concept of Bro Culture masculinism.

Side Eyeing Chloe

@youngbasedblogger

via shutup&takemymoney

@lilyandcloheofficial

via memecrunch

The mother of all reactions. In 2013, a video titled Lily's Disneyland Surprise... AGAIN, in which two little girls react to the news that they are going to Disneyland. The eponymous Lily goes crazy with joy, crying and screaming, while her younger sister, Chloe, looks on forth with an expression that has become the visual definition of the word awkardness. 

This is Fine

u/theonefoster

@GOP

u/Asdi144

@AndyjoelOlgando

@MattBrave

@DaMusicGamer

@RibitFrog_TheSequel

The This is Fine meme has been so universally successful over the past six years because it expresses a feeling common to all: the denial of a problem in front of the most obvious evidence. The image took on a new relevance in 2020 due to the lockdown, expressing an ironic reaction to the escalation of the pandemic. Over the past year, the meme has also been an exemplary case of politicization by the American Republican Party, which used it on Twitter prompting the image's creator, K.C. Green, to expose himself on the platform asking the party to withdraw the meme. The meme was later also mentioned in a speech by Republican Senator Richard Burr that was later picked up by numerous American newspapers leading to the creation of additional memes to comment on the event.

How the E-Mail Finds Me

@wintersp00ky

@WhatsUrIG

@wallysfax

@joyedoe

@therealwavybaby

@nomatesss

@waybeline

Created in February 2020 by Twitter user @wintersp00ky, this meme is a reference to zoom's spread, office culture, and digitization of work followed by lockdowns set up by most world governments. The meme did not go viral until August 2020, when two other Twitter users, @WhatsUrIG and @wallysfax, used the template by changing the image and achieving extraordinary success. From then on the meme has become an instant classic lending itself also to various crossovers with other templates.

Blinking White Guy

@eskbl

@yahiam

via me.me

via sayingimages

@sincerelyjexi

u/reedog24

u/smileguyley

via knowyourmeme

Drew Scanlon è il nome dell’uomo ritratto in questo meme. È un video editor e podcaster del sito Giant Bomb. L’immagine del meme risale a un episodio del 2013, il suo primo utilizzo come reaction risale invece al 2015 mentre nel 2017 l’utente Twitter @eksbl lo utilizzò ottenendo una reazione virale che ne decretò il successo. L’immagine originale si trasformò in un format multipanel con il nome First Guy To per esprimere una reazione di sorpresa mista a disappunto e disorientamento. 

Baby Yoda

@adoptedbabyyoda

@jillboard

@thejuliebenson

@urnastyhippe

@virific

@vivithao

via knowyourmeme

via mamasgeeky

via mamasgeeky

via mamasgeeky

First appearing in 2019 in the first episode of The Mandalorian series, Grogu, better known to the public as Baby Yoda, has become a real cultural phenomenon, a character whose fame is second to that of Pikachu – and who like Pikachu has become the protagonist of at least six different meme templates. The most popular of all is Baby Yoda Drinking Soup, born on November 29 and characterized by a fundamentally ambiguous meaning used to describe a wide variety of situations and characters, but which generally expresses indifference, apathy or expectation.