memecore

It's changed so much.

When I first started 12 years ago, memes weren't mainstream at all. I'd regularly meet people who had no idea what the hell a meme even was.

As smartphones and social media platforms became ubiquitous, memes and internet culture went mainstream. Know Your Meme went from a niche trends database to an encyclopedia documenting what is now mainstream culture. It's absolutely wild.

The light hearted question is actually tougher! I think the whole Gamestop saga that happened actually surprised me quite a bit, as I hadn't seen such an intense convergence of meme culture and the stock market happen like that before.

Good Guy Greg, as /u/Filthy_Dub mentioned, is definitely a big one.

We're currently putting extra effort into looking for the Alf Kid, which is proving very difficult.

We also don't know who first created Meme Man. Someone from "Special meme fresh" claimed it was a "wonky attempt at a human head posted on 4chan's 3DCG board long ago," but we haven't been able to verify it.

I could write an entire book on the history of Pepe the Frog. It's one of the most interesting, enduring, chaotic, fraught, adaptable and resilient memes in internet history. We lay out the history pretty well in our entry on Know Your Meme.

While I was sad to see such an iconic meme character become associated with hate and bigotry back during the 2016 election, I think he's come out the other side. Pepe-related emotes are some of the most popular on platforms like Discord and Twitch, where they are completely benign. Pepe was also used as symbol of freedom by protestors in Hong Kong. I think it managed to prove it is actually not a hate symbol and will likely continue to remain important in internet culture for years to come.

The website is still going strong and has proven to be pretty stable traffic-wise. People still want to know their memes.

We've expanded the operation to make videos for platforms like Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook. We also have a Know Your Meme Insights operation where we provide consulting services surrounding topics related to memes and internet culture.

It varies. We have a number of techniques for tracking down origins and some platforms are way easier than others to track things down on.

Reddit is actually one of the easier platforms to navigate. It plays really nice with Google search, reverse image search, etc. Facebook and Instagram can be much more difficult to track things down on. 4chan used to be pretty difficult as well due to the ephemeral nature of the posts, but the various 4chan archive sites have helped make that much easier.

Sometimes, it isn't very clear where a meme original came from. In those cases we just find their earliest version we can and note that it is merely the "earliest known" instance, not necessarily the exact origin.