Brainrot took center stage in the year’s internet discourse. AI was a close second
As we say our goodbyes to 2025, we must bid adieu to the memes that came with it. It was a surreal year on the internet — many of this year’s memes leaned heavily into the brainrot that’s come with the rise of AI and over-consumerism, though others sprang out of good old-fashioned candid camera moments. Trump was back in office, Katy Perry was in space, and kids everywhere were screaming “six seven” for some reason, before adults coopted it and make it cringe. Presented to you in roughly the order they came into our lives, let’s take a walk down the memes that defined 2025 — for better or for worse.
Photographs in illustration
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images; Blue Origin/Cover Images/AP; Johannes Simon/Getty Images; Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Reheating Nachos
Image Credit: Getty Images
Perhaps the greatest bit of slang to come out of Stan Twitter this year was “reheating nachos,” a phrase usually wielded against pop stars to accuse them of lacking originality. Basically, if you’re reheating someone’s nachos, you’re copying them or piggybacking off their creativity. Though the phrase originated on the reality show Baddies West in 2023, per KnowYourMeme, it caught fire this year (reheated, really) as a meme. Doja Cat got accused with reheating Sabrina Carpenter’s nachos (and vice versa), while Lady Gaga got charged with reheating Madonna’s nachos, and Tate McCrae with Britney Spears’. Beyoncé, however, faced no nacho allegations — “She is the tortilla industry,” as one person put it.
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Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl
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What a halftime show we had this year — it’s not every Super Bowl you get to see the greatest rap beef in years get aired out live for all the world to watch. Kendrick Lamar’s performance of “Not Like Us” was one of the most talked-about halftime moments in ages — particularly after Lamar turned directly to face the camera when he name-checked Drake, flashing a giant, mischievous grin. The performance —which came one week after “Not Like Us” swept at the Grammy’s — was the knockout punch in the rappers’ feud, and the image of Lamar beaming ear-to-ear set off a ton of memes.
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Baby Faced J.D. Vance
Close your eyes for a moment. Picture our sitting vice president. What does he look like? Are you sure? In March, following Trump’s tense meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Photoshopped images of J.D. Vance had a huge moment online, with the fine artists of the internet coming up with increasingly ridiculous edits of him. Many of them showed him as a chubby-cheeked toddler, often pictured with a lollipop and propeller hat. Others got more creative with it. “I have completely forgotten what the real J.D. Vance looks like at this point,” one person quipped on X, sharing an edit of Vance with a neckbeard, one of the most enduring images of the meme era. Though the meme took off this year, its origins stem back to October 2024, when Rep. Mike Collins posted a rather yassified looking photo of the VP.
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‘Everything’s Computer’
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Unfortunately, Trump is funny sometimes. One of these times was back in March, when Trump checked out a Tesla in front of the White House. Intrigued by the vehicle’s digital touchscreen, he uttered one of the most perfect sentences about modern technology in recent memory: “Everything’s computer!” Literally so true. It was an instant hall-of-famer Trumpism, joining the likes of “many such cases” and “Thank you Kanye, very cool!”
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Recession Indicators
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Economic anxiety was so back in 2025. With it came a refrain: that’s a recession indicator. Almost anything you can think of was probably dubbed a recession indicator this year: Addison Rae’s music career, the return of flash mobs, people wearing business casual to the club, among others. Everywhere you looked, there were signs the economy was sliding into collapse. Though a recession hasn’t officially hit the U.S., it still sounds like it could be coming, so keep storing up those recessioncore memes for 2026.
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Ashton Hall’s Morning Routine
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Grind culture found a new patron saint in March with fitness influencer Ashton Hall’s morning routine. The video is a truly rich text — Hall wakes up at 3:52 a.m., does a bunch of pushups, eats a banana and then rubs the peel on his face, journals for exactly three minutes, and dunks his head in a big bowl of Saratoga bottled water not once but twice, all before 9:30 a.m. At one point, he dives off a diving board, and according to the video’s timestamps, is suspended in midair for four minutes. The video is so ridiculous it’s honestly hard to tell if it’s real, parody, engagement bait, undisclosed sponcon for Saratoga, or some mysterious combination thereof. Whatever it was, the memes practically wrote themselves.
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‘Get Me to God’s Country’
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At the end of Morgan Wallen’s first Saturday Night Live hosting gig in March, he abruptly bounced, walking offstage mid-credits as the rest of the cast (and Mikey Madison) clapped and hugged it out as they typically do. It was a surprising exit — even more so when, shortly afterwards, he made it clear on his Instagram Story just how happy he was to take his leave. “Get me to God’s country,” he wrote over a photo of his private plane.
The phrase became a meme pretty much immediately, a sort of desperate request to abscond to one’s personal slice of paradise, be it the Rainforest Cafe, Neopia, or the Myrtle-Broadway subway stop in Brooklyn.
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Katy Perry in Space
Image Credit: Cover Images/AP
In April, a star-studded, all-women, crew — which included Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, and Katy Perry — exited the Earth’s atmosphere for about 10 minutes on a rocket operated by Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, Blue Origin. It was already a not-so-great time to be Perry — everyone was dunking on her latest album, a 2010s throwback no one had asked for — and the billionaire-funded space trip just felt like further confirmation she’d lost the plot. Not helping matters: her saying things like “space is going to finally be glam” and “we are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” singing “What a Wonderful World” at zero gravity, and kissing the ground when she landed. Obviously, it was massively roasted and sparked some out-of-this-world jokes and memes. What a wonderful world, indeed.
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Italian Brain Rot
A new cast of AI-generated creatures with vaguely Italian-sounding names started taking over everyone’s TikTok For You pages in early 2025. First there was Tralalero Tralala, a sneaker-wearing shark. Then emerged Chimpanzini Bananini (a chimp-banana hybrid), Ballerina Cappuccina (a ballet dancing cup of cappuccino), and Bombardiro Crocodilo (a combination crocodile and bomber plane), just to name a few. Not all of them were Italian — Tung Tung Tung Sahur, a wood log with a baseball bat, was Indonesian. The number of characters that emerged from the trend is unclear, though one popular video counts at least 100. If you’re confused, don’t overthink it too much — like so many contenders this year, this is another one of those weird brainrotty memes that transcends explanation and just sort of is. Ballerina Cappuccina, mi mi mi mi!
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‘Grok, Is This True?’
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As AI chatbot use surged in 2025, the website formerly known as Twitter introduced one of its own: Grok. It quickly became common for users to reply to a tweet and tag Grok, summoning the bot to explain it, often asking, “Grok, is this true?” The phrase soon became a meme, with people using it to mock growing over-reliance on AI. People did find some solid uses for Grok — namely, using it to roast its creator, Elon Musk. Unfortunately, the chatbot did have one major downside, which was that it really liked Hitler.
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100 Men vs. 1 Gorilla
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Who would win in a fight: 100 men, or one gorilla? That was the question on everyone’s minds in April. It wasn’t the first time the topic had set off discourse online, but this time, it seriously took off, going viral thanks to a few posts on TikTok and X. A lot of people joined in on the debate, or at least got in some solid jokes.
So, what’s the answer? A few primatologists weighed in with their thoughts. Wildlife photographer and conservationist Ron Magill told Rolling Stone he thinks 100 men could defeat the gorilla if they “are committed and go in united,” but it would likely be a Pyrrhic victory. “It could be a kamikaze mission for the men closest to the gorilla,” he said.
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‘Conclave’ Comes to Life
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In May, shortly after the death of Pope Francis, 133 cardinals gathered in the Vatican to select the next pope. Though this is a process that dates back almost 1,000 years, this was the first one since the movie Conclave came out last year. As such, everyone suddenly knew how conclaves worked, and proved it with the most blessed memes. People were stanning their favorite cardinals, reading all the latest conclave news on Pope Crave, and even posted about the seagulls on the roof of the Sistine Chapel to pass the time while they awaited white smoke.
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Zendaya Hat Theory
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Way back in September 2014, Zendaya wore an enormous Armani hat to the Teen Vogue Young Hollywood Party. The hat was very big, and the photos were very funny. Flash forward to this May, and the image resurfaced on TikTok, where user @thesnakesbloxx paired a bunch of low-res clips of the photo with some eerie-sounding audio from Ethel Cain’s Perverts. As that TikTok went viral, so with it did the “Zendaya hat theory” meme — particularly after Zendaya wore another big hat to the Met Gala just as the meme was gaining traction.
So, what is the theory? Well, it doesn’t actually exist — the concept was basically just a parody of online conspiracy theories, with a people vaguely suggesting something was hiding under the hat or that it had some cryptic deeper meaning. As far as we could tell, the only thing the hat was covering up was her head.
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With Mama
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A sort of “don’t talk to me or my son ever again” for the modern age, photos of baby animals “with mama” took over in a huge way throughout 2025. After the first instance — an image of the solar system with the caption “let’s orbit around mama” — first went viral on Tumblr, adorable memes soon started popping up on Instagram and had major staying power for months to come.
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Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Breakup
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It was the breakup of the year. In June, Elon Musk — who up until this point had been besties with the president — came out against Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Obviously, Trump didn’t take it too well, and the two began publicly feuding on social media, their once-close relationship flaming out in spectacular fashion. Who could’ve guessed that two of the biggest egos in federal government would eventually butt heads? Naturally, the very online (including one of Musk’s many baby mamas) rose to the occasion with some truly excellent posts.
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Standing on Business
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It was quite a year for Justin Bieber — one during which he found himself especially hounded by the celebrity gossip machine. By June, it seems like he’d finally had enough, and he confronted paparazzi outside a Soho House in Malibu. “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business, is it?” he told the photographers. The video circulated widely, and people clowned on him pretty hard for the sorta cringey and not exactly correct use of AAVE slang. But “standing on business” became a pretty much inescapable part of the meme lexicon after that.
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Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday
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One of the most ubiquitous TikTok audios of the year came courtesy of a U.K. tour operator’s commercial from 2024, showing a family frolicking on vacation. “Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!” a very peppy British woman says in the ad, as Jess Glynne’s 2015 song “Hold My Hand” plays in the background. Soon, people were using the audio over videos of vacation–related mishaps. By the middle of the summer, it was unavoidable. Thanks to the trend, “Hold My Hand” was one of TikTok’s top songs of the year.
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Labubu Matcha Dubai Chocolate
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Everywhere you look online, there’s another microtrend being shoveled through the algorithm. In 2025, that creeping ennui of overconsumerist slop crystallized into a meme: “Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate” — a sort of word salad summing up the year’s most inescapable fads — a Nordic-inspired toy, Japanese drink, and pistachio-filled candy bar, respectively. At times, other words and phrases made it into the memes, particularly Stanley cups, Benson Boone, Love Island, and Crumbl cookies.
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Performative Males
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Are you a guy who carries feminist lit around in your tote bag? Do you listen to Clairo in your wired earbuds while sipping an oat milk matcha latte? Congratulations, you might just be a performative male. Though many terms have been floated in the past for dudes who fake emotional sensitivity and feminist ideals to get into their Hinge date’s pants — “softboy” and “male manipulator,” in particular — “performative male” took off in a big way in 2025. By the summer, “performative male contests” began popping up across the country, with men competing to be crowned the pick-me guy final boss. One could argue that ironically competing in such a contest is perhaps the greatest “performative male” indicator of them all, but that’s a discussion for another day.
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The Coldplay Couple
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At a Coldplay concert in Massachusetts in July, the kiss-cam panned to one unsuspecting couple. A split second after popping up on the Jumbotron, the man and woman — who had been wrapped up in each others’ arms, looking very much in love — suddenly broke apart. The woman turned around, back to the camera, while the man ducked down to the ground. “Oh, look at these two,” Chris Martin said. “Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.” The public latched onto the idea that it was the former after the two were quickly identified as Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot, the CEO and head of HR of the tech company Astronomer, both of whom were married to other people.
Sources have since claimed there wasn’t an affair at all — this was just a show of their “excellent working relationship,” and the divorce that came after was in the works before the incident. But at the time it was a rare bit of monoculture, sparking a ton of jokes (even from the pair’s former company) as everyone gobbled up the undeniably juicy scandal of a CEO and HR exec caught in a very unprofessional act. As one person wrote on X, “Shoutout to Coldplay for bringing the whole internet together for one day.”
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Gen Z Stare
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If you’ve ever spoken to a teen or twentysomething and been met with a blank stare and silence, you’ve probably experienced the so-called “Gen Z stare.” The term refers to the dead-eyed look zoomers supposedly give older people when asked a question, often in classrooms or customer service settings (or when you’re Sydney Sweeney being asked about your jeans ad). The concept of a “Gen Z stare” started gaining traction on TikTok in July, though members of the generation were quick to deny its existence, with many defending it as a valid reaction to dealing with stupid people. “Your question was so idiotic it reset my brain,” one TikToker wrote.
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Taylor Swift Brings the Boas
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In case you hadn’t heard, it was a pretty big year for Taylor Swift. Between buying back her masters and bringing an entire new audience to the NFL, she somehow found time to roll out a whole new album. After she announced The Life of a Showgirl on the Kelce brothers’ podcast in August, it basically took over zeitgeist, filling everyone’s feeds with memes of other sparkly, feather-boa–wearing icons. That’s showbiz, babe.
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The Rapture
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The Rapture has been incorrectly predicted more than a few times throughout history, but never has it happened in such an online way. In September, a handful of Evangelical Christians thought the world was going to end, and it became a whole thing on TikTok. The prophecy came by way of South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela, who in a sermon posted to YouTube, claimed Jesus Christ had personally told him the Rapture would take place on Sept. 23 or 24. Well, apparently he was wrong, but everyone had a lot of fun anyway.
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6-7
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Some memes have a fascinating, deep inner meaning. This one does not. Perhaps the most significant Gen Alpha meme to date (sorry, Skibidi Toilet), shouts of “six seven” became all but inescapable in middle school classrooms across the country this fall. It initially took off among basketball fans — the phrase first appeared in Skrilla’s song “Doot Doot (6 7)”, which then became the soundtrack to a ton of TikTok edits of NBA stars, particularly six-foot-seven LaMelo Ball.
So, what does it mean? Well, basically nothing. After reaching ubiquity on TikTok, the phrase sort of just became a thing kids couldn’t stop saying, a sort of mass inside joke only made funnier by the fact that teachers and parents didn’t get it. That is, until Halloween, when many of these lame grownups dressed up as “six seven,” thus immediately making it cringe and freeing us all.
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Group 7
Image Credit: Stephanie Saias*
In October, while promoting her new song, Australian singer-songwriter Sophia James posted seven different TikToks as a “little science experiment to see what video gets the most reach.” In the seventh video, she told her audience as much. “If you are watching this video, you are in Group 7,” she said. For whatever elusive reason the TikTok algorithm decreed, that’s the one that went viral. Soon, people all over TikTok were making TikToks proclaiming their Group 7 pride. The children long for school spirit week.
