This Week's Best Memes, Ranked
Here at Digg, we try our best to cover the most important and confounding memes that come across the timeline. But the web is littered with tons of great memes that never quite hit the mainstream, instead bouncing around the weird corners of Twitter or Reddit.
Enter: our recurring feature, Memes, Ranked, where we not only rank the funniest memes each week, we also keep a running top 10 of the best memes of 2019. Skip to that here.
For the week of April 15, we have a handful of contenders: the Mueller report, Bran Stark, "I Don't Know Who Needs To Hear This" and that guy who says "it's fiction" over and over.
4. Bran Memes
The meme: Confession time: I'm one of those people who doesn't watch "Game of Thrones" and as a consequence I do not know anything about this meme. Here's what my thrones-watching colleague Mat Olson has to say about it:
In the Season 8 premiere of "Game of Thrones," young lad-turned-soothsayer Bran Stark spends the whole episode chilling in a castle courtyard, sitting patiently in his wheelchair. Nobody is quite sure what Bran is waiting for, until one Jamie Lannister — who pushed Bran out one of that castle's windows in the show's very first episode, thus putting him in that wheelchair — rolls up to the courtyard and locks eyes with Bran for the first time since that fateful day. Neither man speaks in the moment, but Bran's face says everything (something along the lines of "I see you, dick"). Thus, a meme was born.
The examples:
Verdict: Look, I do not really know anything about this meme, but this is a pretty useful reaction GIF so I'll play along! Fourth place!
3. The Supercut Of Jonathan Frakes Saying 'It's Fiction'
The meme: "Star Trek: The Next Generation" star Jonathan Frakes used to host a TV show on the Sci-Fi channel called "Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction." This week, a supercut popped up on YouTube of him denouncing things as fake.
The examples:
Verdict: A funny and useful tool for self-deprecation, with a '90s/nerdy twist. In a down week for memes, this very utilitarian supercut comes in third.
2. Mueller Report Memes
The meme: Special counsel Robert Mueller's report examining the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia is in, and as of Thursday it is available to the public. The only thing is it's heavily redacted. Entire pages have been blacked out due to the report containing sensitive information. The entire English-speaking internet poring over a heavily redacted doc at once gave birth to a fun new meme format: the redacted tweet.
The examples:
Verdict: Redacting things is inherently funny. These memes were a bright flash that will quickly fade away as our nation argues about this insane document for the next 18 months. Enjoy this while it lasts.
1. I Don't Know Who Needs To Hear This But
The meme: A meme about thoughtfully putting helpful advice out into the universe. That's it. It's great.
The examples:
Verdict: Altruistic. Comedic. Shareable. This is a perfect meme. No ones feelings get hurt and everyone has a good time. You might even learn something!
The Official Josco™ 2019 Meme Power Ranking
Click each entry on the ranking to see when it debuted.
- Let Me In!
- What If We Kissed
- She Believed
- St Louis Style
- I Don't Know Who Needs To Hear This
- [REDACTED]
- Jonathan Frakes saying "it's fiction"
- The Black Hole Photo
- Shen Yun
- Bran
Let T-Pain in!
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