This year was no 2020, yet 2021 nonetheless ended up being another exceptionally brutal year for many people. Maybe not physically brutal for those of us who were lucky, but it could have still been mentally and emotionally so. Certainly for me, it was; even if this was a markedly better year than the last one, personally speaking, it still took a major toll on me.
It is whenever times end up being so trying, however, that we’ve especially got to take stock of the things that bring us relief and joy. For me, a major source of such positive vibes ended up being those functionally useless yet arguably entertaining and/or hilarious things that we call “memes” or whatever it is that goes “viral.” In the truest spirit of memes, the joy often came from not just the chuckle that these things gave me, but also the joy of sharing in the silliness with others–my wife, my family, my friends, etc.–whether I was introducing all this stupid shit to them or if they were sharing it with me.
And for this end-of-year and wintry holiday time, I’m now going to forcibly share these things to all of TAY! A few of them are even related to videogames!! Hurrah!!!
In no particular order, I hereby present my picks for the good-ass memes and other viral tidbits of The Year of Our Lord 2021. Some of
NOTHING IS HERE!!!! – Look at that, it’s where the thumbnail came from!! It also happens to be a fine demonstration of the power and potential of Tik Tok. The key thing at work here is the “duet” feature, where someone records a video of their own that plays simultaneously with an already-existing Tik Tok video. That could be used for something as simple as recording your real-time reaction to another video. Or maybe someone is singing a capella and you decide to add in a layer of harmony, in which case the “duet” part of a duet is made literal. But then someone maybe takes YOUR duet with the melody and your harmony and adds in a second layer of harmony, and someone else piggybacks off of their duet to add a third layer of harmony, and that goes on and on and before you know it you’ve just come up with the Tik Tok sea shanty phenomenon that blew up a year ago.
OR…you can take some random clip of a guy screaming in the middle of the road for no apparent reason and play some acoustic guitar to it to reveal the outburst as, in fact, hilariously musical. If you do that, maybe a drummer and a bassist could decide to add layers of their own to construct a more complete–and therefore more amusingly epic–song. My wife and I have been screaming “NOTHING IS HERE” in that overly dramatic matter in reference to this work of art for many months now whenever there’s an appropriate (or half-appropriate…or quarter-appropriate) time to point out whenever nothing is there.
Bernie Sanders, Just Sitting at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration – There was one week this year, ONE SINGLE WEEK–or maybe just one single day, it’s been so long, I don’t remember anymore–where it felt like we might have been in for a better year than the one-to-four years that preceded it. It was during the inauguration for incoming United States president and vice president Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, respectively, when they both got promptly upstaged by Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont, humbly sitting cross-legged in a comfy coat and a set of mittens.
With that one image, for a single moment in time, the internet lost its shit in a way that was positively pre-2016 in its lack of malaise and joyful abandon towards totally irony-free corniness. For that brief sliver of the year, it felt like a more innocent era. It also gave us the GIF above, my favorite byproduct of this brief dumb phenomenon.
Grape Sprite, have you tried it? – You’ve gotta commend the dude for trying extremely hard to stay focused and lucid against whatever the hell was making him so out of it. Yet even despite the valiant effort, his short-term memory was evidently putting a heavy emphasis on the “short” side of things. And so we get this delightfully circular bit of nonsense, aided by a cameraman who’s all too happy to mess with his buddy as he tries that Sprite but grape flavored three separate times.
It’s got quotes for days! There’s been a lot of “Have you tried it?” being shared back and forth between my wife and my brothers, of course, but my wife and I have lately been using “Lemme try this shit” for all foods and drinks just as often. It also motivated us to try grape Sprite from one of those Coca-Cola Freestyle soda machines, and it is in fact Sprite but with grape flavor, and also pretty tasty.
Natassia Harris and Family Revisit “Rasputin” a Decade Later – Back in 2010, this trio apparently had a viral hit when they recorded themselves playing Boney M.’s “Rasputin” in Just Dance 2. Early this year, they reconvened to do the routine once more. I wasn’t even remotely aware of the original video when it came around the first time, but even without that background, it could still make anyone feel all warm and fuzzy–with maybe a touch of bittersweet at the passage of time–seeing a few people who’ve clearly been close buddies for a long time do a throwback, a decade older and maybe wiser. And hey, there’s even been some character development in the decade between, because Natassia is now out here finally doing the ground part!!
I’m not at all sure how or why, but “Rasputin” somehow found itself having a major resurgence in 2021, just in time for it to score one of the movie trailers for the Rasputin-featuring The King’s Man. This was the year that I’ve personally come around on the song fully, that’s for sure. So having this piece of “Rasputin”-centric fun here was a must.
However, this also made me just plain happy. I’ve got friends who I’ve known for 13 years now where one of our big get-together activities was jamming out to Rock Band in our college dorms and apartments, so the experience of playing rhythm games together as seen here hits a particular sweet spot for me.
This Bizarre Ode to Animal Crossing: New Horizon‘s Squeakoids – The newest Animal Crossing game was in a stagnant rut for much of the last year. Late into 2021, however, came the major “version 2.0” update and the Happy Home Paradise DLC game expansion, which has positively revitalized fans’ enthusiasm. One aspect of the update that has charmed the pants off so many was New Horizon‘s take on the Gyroids, those weird little noise-making automatons–only this time, they’re more musical and waayyy cuter.
So naturally, people have been professing their love and allegiance to their favorites. The Crumploids have been an especially noteworthy phenomenon. Me, personally? I’m ride-or-die for the downtrodden big-mood Bendoid. The Gyroid that seems to garner the most…fervent, is that the right word??…adoration, though, would appear to be the Skueakoid. Like…that video linked above…wut.
That song’s a goddamn bop, though; we immediately added “Take a Slice” to our music rotation after this. Good on you, Glass Animals! It’s good to know you’ve got much better in you than that “Heat Waves” song.
Kommander Karl Reloads, Fires(?), Reloads Again – As an eager childhood participant in the giddy art of turning literally any objects (or pets) you can get your hands on into FPS weapons, this is my brand of perfection.
Backyardigans-esque Renditions of Lil Nas X’s Hit Songs – I am 99 percent sure that The Moonies that make kid-friendly covers and companion mascot music videos of hit songs are completely unrelated to the religious cult that shares a similar nickname, so I am 99 percent comfortable including them here. They are the kind of YouTube curiosity that I would have never come across on my own, with the only reason that my wife and I got exposed to them being due to Lil Nas X himself taking greatly amused notice of their cover of his “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)”.
This channel has provided their treatment to numerous songs, but what they do to Lil Nas X’s body of work is easily their highlights. It could be that both “MONTERO” and “Industry Baby” were seemingly built to specifically have meme and viral strength. I think, though, that most of it comes from the incongruousness of these tiny-voiced blue creatures making a pass at these particularly un-kiddie lyrics, and the ways in which they change the words–so much dancing and singing!–to get everything more G-rated.
Daði Freyr Brings Music Video Charm for the Second Year in a Row – Such rotten, rotten luck that Icelandic musician Daði and his Gagmanið posse got dealt! They first score their shot to represent Iceland in the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest with the catchy “Think About Things”, complete with a laugh-worthy music video…only for that year’s contest to be canceled thanks to a pandemic that is still ongoing to this day.
Fortunately, they then get the chance to rep their country again in the 2021 contest, just needing to submit a new song, namely “10 Years”: An ode to Daði’s wife that is quite possibly even better than the previous year’s song. And the contest isn’t canceled this year, so they get to compete! Only for the group to have to pull out of performing in the finals from catching COVID-19, arguably handicapping them at an urgent time. Would they have gotten all the way to the top instead of a still thoroughly impressive fourth place had they been able to actually perform? We will never know.
However, none of that can take away from this group of people being a bright spot in the year. My wife, my brother, and I got introduced to Daði Freyr one random night when the arcane workings of the YouTube algorithm served up “Think About Things” to us, which mesmerized us with its combination of a fun song with a music video that made Daði and company look as dorkily lame as humanly possible. He made us laugh, he made us smile, he made us dance!
Then he did it again with “10 Years”! At some point during the year, my wife and I learned the silly dance as best as we could, because Daði put up a whole tongue-in-cheek instruction video showing how to do it. All in all, he’s the kind of force for good that we cannot help but root for.
A Shitshow of Hyper-Local British Community Politics – It felt like ages ago, but nope! The events of this meeting by the Handforth Parish Council happened barely a year ago, and they gained disproportionate exposure to the wider world within 2021. We were, evidently, just left that totally bored by the pandemic.
But also, there was some real funny shit in here. The “Fuck off” caught on a hot (un-muted?) mic. “You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver,” promptly followed up by said Jackie Weaver kicking the tempter of fate out of the main chat room. Roger Small and his dangling semicolon. The scenery-chewing line reading of “Read the standing orders!! READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM!!!” Golden, all of it. Golden.
JerryTerry’s Tumblr Post Musical Interpretation “Bloodborne Sex” – It’s a bit surprising how Bloodborne has enough relevance and fervor behind it to be inspiring viral Tumblr shitposts, even six years after its release. And then one of those viral Tumblr shitposts get spun off into an audio shitpost that does it in a Pet Shop Boys-inspired style??? And now everyone is clamoring for a Bloodborne Kart game as a result.
As another notch in its belt, this track also prompted my favorite–and only good–variation on that dumb fucking “Go to horny jail” doge bonk meme, courtesy of Twitter user HollarityArt.
The chaos tiktoks Twitter Account – This account on Twitter is doing the world a public service. I don’t know shit about Tik Tok, and whatever actually shows up on the main page of Tik Tok tends to not really be quality or funny. So it’s excellent to have someone who knows what they’re doing go through and curate some of the weirdest, sometimes disturbing, and actually funniest videos from that post-Vine service so that simpletons like myself can get exposed to them.
Some of the highlights/”highlights” that this thing has introduced?
- I’m ready to party, babe, fuck yeah!! WHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! I drank HALF the BOTTLE, motherfucker!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
- Trying to politely ignore drive thru drama
- An awe-inspiring dance set to the Psycho shower scene musical score
- Getting some Beyblade action on in the club
- Hype times with the homies as we dance to Sean Paul at the local Crispy Fish & Chips
- Train man going wild with a wooden beam like he’s a Timburr
- Uhhhh why is there this much disposed bread
- Bacon buffet madness
- This fucking horrifying mall Christmas tree
- “It is KUH-NYEFF?!!!!” “WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT SILENT LETTERS!!!!”
- “It’s CRAIG!!!” Dudes rock.
- And my absolute favorite thing: A wooden block that strikes sheets of metal as they pass by on a conveyor belt, which only gets stupider and funnier the more I watch it
Thank you for blessing and/or cursing my timeline.
Thus concludes my Christmas gift to my wife, who wished for a post all about the year’s memes. I hope this was an entertaining read.
Here, a bonus Morning Jam for good tidings:
Happy Holidays!
Get involved!
Comments