A meme is usually a video, image, or text that spreads throughout the internet with the goal of entertainment. They have been around for a long time, with the most notable and nostalgic being from around 2010 to 2020.
At the start of this year, many people online aimed to bring back the nostalgia from the 2010s through these memes. This event was mainly on TikTok, where people would post videos using old memes like Nyan Cat or old vines in an attempt to cleanse the world of the plague that is brainrot.
The people wanted to be rid of short-lasting AI slop that would make its rounds and disappear after only a few weeks.
At first, it didn’t seem like this act would work. Many claimed to be adamant on a reset, but others knew that this idea was forced and unlikely to work out. Nobody really seemed truly serious about a meme reset; it was only ever a hypothetical, a good idea, but overall too complicated to see through.
Sadly, the plea for a meme reset fell on deaf ears, which caused the organization to fail in less than a month. The idea of a meme reset was simply forgotten.
Freshman Boni Huang said, “I would love to see old memes come back, but people were too hopeful when they knew that they wouldn’t even try to bring old humor back.”
While the meme reset did fail, a silent revival happened. While not humor from around 2016 to 2017, jokes, animations, and trends from around 2020 to 2021 made their entrance onto TikTok. Songs that are “nightcore”, a genre of music with sped-up music and a high pitch, have come back as trendy audios for old animation memes. Normally, cringe and corny humor from 2020 would be seen as disgraceful today, but those who interacted with it know the sense of nostalgia it brings, which is precisely why it has come back.
These old trends and memes are coming back with a bit of a modern twist. With old animations being recreated for old times’ sake, and trending audios, mainly coming from things like anime, being used as a reflection on how cringe we once were.
While this sort of humor is definitely a niche, it is still making its way into pop culture, with clips from shows and games popular in 2020 being used for jokes in TikToks.
Memes have always been based on the times. Using media to connect to people. And for old memes to try and make their comeback, it shows how we all pine for old humor and nostalgia. The reason we have old humor coming back is that it’s still funny.
Freshman Heath Deidrick said, “I think this humor coming back is nice, because it’s something I can laugh at.”
With fairly old memes coming back, and a failed revival of 2010 internet culture, it is clear that society still loves its old memes. It seems that humor from back then is old but gold, and that all things soon come around again.