EXECU TIVE SU MMARY

A meme is defined as an element of culture or behaviour that spreads by non-genetic means, but to many the
term is now synonymous with the Internet image meme. The audience for this developing art form rapidly
grew with the mainstream adoption of social media, but little research has been done on memes despite
their increasing cultural significance and use in marketing products and ideologies.
Our analysis uses a dataset of over 400,000 images that resulted from a targeted collection of the most
popular memes posted throughout 2018 to the content aggregator Reddit. An artificial intelligence named
MemeVision was trained to identify memes using a three-branch approach; based on the colors, shapes and
words within an image. Combining this with the metadata attached to each image we can estimate the total
number of times the various instances of a meme were viewed each day of the year. p27-30
We define a new unit of measurement - the Magnitude Estimation of Meme Prominence (MEMP). This is
far less volatile than the number of views a meme receives; the relationship between views and MEMP is
loosely analogous to how net trade volume affects the price of a stock or currency. As such we get a clearer
view of trends over time and a more accurate way to determine the most prominent meme of the year (by
which we mean the most prominent image template – we are not referring to an individual instance of a
meme and we did not include other media types such as video or music memes). p31-32
The meme economy is much like any other: a handful commands the disproportionate share of audience. Of
the 250 most prominent memes, just 10 account for roughly one third of the views. Furthermore 7% of
those views (around 219m) are accounted for by the most prominent meme of the year, Drake’s Preference,
which uses two images from Drake’s 2015 music video Hotline Bling. p7
Other noteworthy memes:
- Surprised Pikachu received the most views within a single week. Circumstantial evidence suggests this
could have been part of a marketing campaign to promote the Detective Pikachu movie. p18
- Change My Mind was the most prominent meme using an image from that year; it is based on a photo
of conservative commentator Steven Crowder taken February 2018. p9
- Theresa May Dancing was the most prominent meme of a politician, far more so than any of the
numerous different memes featuring Donald Trump. p9
When grouping together memes based on a common subject, we found the following:
- SpongeBob SquarePants was the most prominent franchise; memes using images from this cartoon
collectively received over 626m views throughout the year. p8
- Stefán Karl Stefánsson was the most prominent individual; various memes using images of the actor,
best known for portraying Robbie Rotten in Lazytown, peaked shortly after his death in August. p10
- Spooktober, a festival of spooky memes, received the most views within a single week. p11
Other findings include:
- The impact of social media influencer Pewdiepie mentioning a meme is inconsistent. p17
- Once a meme has peaked it takes on average one month for it to half in prominence. p18
- A language analysis of all instances of the Pepe The Frog meme, infamous since being labelled a hate
symbol in 2016, found an estimated 17% are political and 20% include hateful terminology. p20
Wider trends in the types of images used:
- The majority of memes use a screenshot from a video, often including a caption of dialogue. p13
- Memes popularised years ago have a greater tendency to use animal photography, while those of more
recent years increasingly use illustrations and animated characters. p15
- The older image macro format has lost popularity in favour of formats based on tabular comparison,
rewriting dialogue and the use of text to label subjects of an image. p14
- We predict an increasing use of animation, superheroes and non-western media to source images. p24
We suggest the potential of a meme is best assessed on the following criteria: the immediate impact and
emotional resonance of the image, the mutability of the premise and how many competitors there are. p23
We will continue this quantitative research to further human understanding of memes. Our website and social
media pages include datasets, graphics and analysis we did not have room to include in this report.

iiMemeIndex.com 1

CONTENTS

Executive Summary 1
Contents 2
Introduction 3
Definitions 4
M ethodology 6
Results
i. Most successful image meme 7
ii. Most successful meme franchise 8
iii. Most successful meme photo taken in 2018 9
iv. Most successful human 10
v. Most viral meme event 11
vi. Most successful classic meme 12
M eme Demographics
i. Image source 13
ii. Meme format 14
iii. How image source varies by meme format 15
Analysis
i. How dominant is SpongeBob? 16
ii. Can a celebrity make or break a meme? 17
iii. Was Surprised Pikachu a marketing campaign? 18
iv. How long does a meme last? 19
v. How prevalent are political Pepe the Frog memes? 20
vi. What terms are used in memes? 22
Conclusions
i. How to judge the potential of a meme 23
ii. What to expect from the future of memes 24
Internet Image M eme Index 25
Acknowledgements 26
Appendix A: Detailed M ethodology
i. Data collection 27
ii. Identifying images 28
iii. Estimating views 30
iv. Quantifying meme prominence 31
v. Final ranking 32
Appendix B: Detailed Results
i. Top 30 ranked species 33
ii. Top ranked species that use images from 2018 34
iii. Top 20 ranked families 34
iv. Meme calendar 2018 35
v. Selection of Species compared to Families 36
Appendix C: Additional Example M emes 37
Appendix D: Image Credits 40

iiMemeIndex.com 2

IN TRODU CTION

Meme Image Meme Internet Image Meme

An element of a culture or system A meme emerging from a An image meme whose
of behaviour passed from one static image and spreading dissemination is mostly or
individual to another by imitation via copies or variations of entirely reliant upon the
or other non-genetic means. 1 that image. internet.

Internet Image Memes (henceforth iimemes) are now so ingrained in popular culture that in common
parlance the term ‘meme’ has become synonymous with the iimeme. Thus one could conclude that the
iimeme has risen to become the apex meme, overshadowing all other forms of meme in a Darwinian way
that would make Richard Dawkins proud.
Driven by the mainstream adoption of social media, the audience for iimemes has rapidly expanded over the
past decade. In many ways the iimeme is an antidote to an increasingly detached way of living, a social
lubricant that provides connection through a shared idea. Thus in turn we have seen the increasing use of
iimemes to market both products and ideologies.
The iimeme is yet to achieve the reverence afforded to other art forms, instead often being dismissed as a
lowbrow triviality. But there has been a notable rise in the number of published academic articles
mentioning the term “internet meme(s)”, which in 2012 surpassed the number mentioning the one time
icon of the future “flying car(s)” (figure 1).
This report details a rigorous quantitative analysis of iimemes during 2018, and aims to provide a greater
understanding to this increasingly important aspect of popular culture.

Fig 1: Comparison of academic publications mentioning internet memes and flying cars2

1
Oxforddictionaries.com. Meme was originally defined in Dawkins, Richard. "The Selfish Gene” (1976)
2
Data from Google Scholar; English language articles only, includes patents, excludes citations
iiMemeIndex.com 3

DEFIN ITION S

iiMeme Species
A group of iimemes are of the same
species if they incorporate at least part of
the same static image.

iiMeme Family
A group of iimeme species are of the
same family if their defining images share
a common subject or source material.
Fig 2: Taxonomy of the iimeme

Note these definitions are based solely on the image used – not what is mentioned in any text. For
instance an iimeme may contain a joke about Donald Trump, but it only falls into the Donald Trump family
if it features an image of him. Because a single iimeme can be composed of multiple images it is possible
for it to belong to more than one species or family. For clarity we italicise names of species and families.

These three iimemes all belong to the Drake’s Preference species because they incorporate the same
image of musical artist Drake. It does not matter that the image has been cropped, has a different
brightness level, or has the head of Santa Claus edited on. The third example also belongs to Stefán’s
Preference because it also incorporates the image defining that species.

The first two of these imemes belong to the Stefán’s Preference species; which follows the same formula
as Drake’s Preference but uses different images so is a separate species. All three of these iimemes
belong to the Stefán Karl Stefánsson family because they use images that portray Stefán Karl Stefánsson.

iiMemeIndex.com 4
DEFINITIONS

Magnitude Estimation of Meme Prominence (MEMP)

A measurement of the prominence of an iimeme species or family in the collective memory of a society.

We define this new unit of measurement to provide a better reflection of how popular opinion concerning a
species or family changes over time. The calculation of MEMP comprises multiple elements designed to
simulate short and long-term memory, as well as offset bias in the data collection.
The relationship between number of views and MEMP (figure 3) can be seen as loosely analogous to the
relation between trade volume and price for a stock or currency (figure 4). With high views being similar
to a net positive trade volume, and low views being similar to a net negative trade volume.
The primary driver of this measure is the number views that iimemes in that species or family receive.
The relationship is non-linear and relies upon additional variables. The full formula we used for MEMP
calculations can be found in the detailed methodology section of the appendices.

Fig 3: Views and prominence of all Fig 4: Example of a volatile currency

memes in the Elon Musk family. MEMP exchange3. Price (top) rises when there is a
(red line) rises after a high number of net positive volume (bottom bars - white) but
views (grey bars) but falls if there are too falls when there is a net negative volume
few views to sustain prominence. (bottom bars - red).

Example of the Elon Musk Smoking Weed Example of the Elon’s Preference
species, which uses the viral image taken species, another offshoot of the
from his appearance on the Joe Rogan Drake’s Preference species.
podcast on 6 th September 2018.

3
Chart by TradeView, via Binance
iiMemeIndex.com 5

 The full methodology can be found in Appendix A
METHODOLOGY

Datas et
During 2018 we collected 418,874 images posted to Reddit,
currently the 19 th most visited website in the world4. The site is
divided into many Subreddits for different topics; we picked 69
to monitor and collect from based on the number iimemes
posted to them.
Roughly 12% of the images we collected were hosted externally
on Imgur, which provides precise view counts. Correlating these
with metadata provided by Reddit allowed us to estimate views
for the remaining 88% of images.

Identifying Images
We identify whether images in our dataset belong to any iimeme
species or families using an artificial intelligence we developed Fig 5: Artistic impression of
named MemeVision. MemeVision identifying images
It has been trained to use a three-branch approach to narrow
down potential matches using the words, colors and shapes of an
image. For each potential match it performs a more
computationally intensive process to confirm or deny the match.

Quantifying M eme Prominence

For a given species or family we calculate its prominence over time using a multi-step non-linear formula
based primarily upon the view counts for each image belonging to that species/family.
The first step involves short and long-term memory elements based upon three and six weeks of prior data
respectively, using a sigmoid function to give higher weighting to more recent data points.
We then add a downstream echo to model how memes move to other platforms; this gives us a final result
that better resembles the whole Internet rather than just Reddit. For a given species/family the more widely
spread it is among different Subreddits, the more it will echo downstream.
Finally a crash factor is added to accelerate decline in cases where there are very low views for a sustained
period. This has little impact on any of the high-ranking species or families.

F inal Rankings
Finally having calculated a time series of MEMP levels for every species and family, we need to convert
this into a single value that summarises their overall prominence throughout 2018.
When looking back at the year people will more likely recall those memes that reached very high
prominence, even if for only a short time, and so a simple average of the annual MEMP levels is not
adequate. However simply ranking by the peak MEMP achieved throughout the year does not reflect the
differing consistencies. Therefore our final rankings place equal importance on the peak and year average.

4
Data from alexa.com/topsites February 2019
iiMemeIndex.com 6
 Total Views are lower bound estimates for combined views on Reddit,
Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. The true global total is likely higher.
RESULTS

i. M os t s ucces s ful image meme

The most prominent image meme of 2018 was Drake’s Preference, which uses two screenshots from the
music video for Drake’s Hotline Bling. The meme originated from the image board 4chan in 2015 and
went on to gain mainstream popularity during 2016. It has since led to the creation of many memes that
follow a similar formula, the most prominent of which is Stefan’s Preference (the 28 th ranked Species).

Species MEMP MEMP Views 2018 Example in

Rank
iiMeme Species
Average 2018 Peak 2018 (Lower Bound) this report
1 Drake’s Preference 2508 5815 219m p4
2 Is This A Pigeon? 1469 8185 124m p7
3 Surprised Pikachu 1010 7582 100m p19
4 Expanding Brain 1551 4322 129m p24
5 Lisa Simpson’s Presentation 985 4806 95m p23
Is This A Pigeon? uses a screenshot of The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird (a 90s anime set in an optimistic
version of 2010 involving androids and space police). While this image has been circulating as a meme for
years it gained a new lease of life in 2018, becoming one of the quickest spreading viral images of the
year. The other memes listed above are discussed in later sections of this report.

The original Is This A Pigeon? image (left) which is edited by meme authors to convey how other things
are misidentified. One the most viewed versions of the meme during 2018 comments on the reaction
people have to celebrities committing suicide (center). Finally one of the many crossover versions of this
meme (right) references the popular Steamed Hams segment from an episode of The Simpsons.

Fig 7: MEMP levels of the five most prominent iimeme species during 2018

iiMemeIndex.com 7
RESULTS

ii. M os t s ucces s ful meme franchis e

The most prominent iimeme families are all based around popular culture franchises, the most successful of
which is SpongeBob SquarePants. The prominence of SpongeBob SquarePants peaked towards the end of
the year following the passing of creator Stephen Hillenburg on 26 th November.

Family MEMP MEMP Views 2018 Highest ranking

iiMeme Family 5
Rank Average 2018 Peak 2018 (Lower Bound) species
1 SpongeBob SquarePants 6402 9992 626m Patrick’s Wallet (14)
2 Star Wars 4451 5786 435m Sacred Texts (99)
3 The Simpsons 2304 8512 220m Lisa’s Presentation (5)
4 Marvel Movies 2490 5174 224m Scientist Myself (43)

Star Wars memes were helped

by the release of The Last Jedi
in December 2017 and Solo in
May 2018, although memes
about the prequel trilogy were
collectively more prominent.
Similarly Marvel Movies
benefited from the April
release of Avengers: Infinity
Wars, generating many memes
about the antagonist Thanos,
but the 2002 Spiderman
trilogy starring Tobey Maguire
continues to be a significant
sources of memes.
The Simpsons peaked towards Example of the Patrick’s Wallet
Example from the
the end of the year due to the species, the single most successful
SpongeBob SquarePants
viral success of Lisa Simpson’s SpongeBob SquarePants meme of
family, mourning the passing
Presentation, that one meme 2018, used by meme authors to
of Stephen Hillenburg,
alone accounting for over 40% rewrite an argument had between
creator of possibly the most
of the family’s views. Patrick and Man Ray.
memed show of all time.

Fig 8: MEMP levels of the four most successful iimeme families of 2018

5
To be ranked we require a family to contain at least three species each contributing at least 1% of the total
MEMP of that family. For instance a Drake family would not satisfy this requirement so is not included in the
family ranking, even though the Drake’s Preference species is on its own more prominent than some of the
top 20 ranked families (see Appendix B for full list).
iiMemeIndex.com 8

RESULTS

ii i . M os t s ucces s ful meme photo taken in 2018

Out of the hundred most prominent species of 2018 only five use images created that year, the most
prominent of which was Change My Mind, using a photo taken of conservative commentator Steven Crowder
in February, which went on to become the second most viral of all image memes during March.
2018 MEMP MEMP Creation Species Example in
Created iiMeme Species
Rank Average 2018 Peak 2018 Date Rank this report
1 Change My Mind 646 1825 16 th Feb 13 p9
2 Theresa May Dancing 118 1237 3 Oct
rd 34 p9
3 Rewind Time 50 967 6 Dec
th 54 p9
4 Connor Pushes Circle 86 712 6 Jun
th 68 p38
5 This Is America Execution 69 658 5 May
th 79 p37
The second most prominent photo meme of 2018, and the second most viral of all memes during
November, was of British Prime Minister Theresa May dancing onto stage at the Conservative Party
Conference. Some may expect the most prominent meme of a politician to be of Donald Trump, but we
speculate that his polarising nature means audiences are divided in how they interpret such memes, thus
limiting their viral potential. Contrast this with the relatively bland and less well-known Theresa May,
audiences can more easily disconnect their politics from images of her and a more unified view of a meme
gives a greater chance for it to spread. Although it should be noted that due to the sheer number of different
Trump memes that when taken as a whole they are more prominent than all memes of May.
Rewind Time is a screenshot of Will Smith in Youtube’s 2018 Rewind. Connor Pushes Circle is a photo of
actor Bryan Dechart who stars in Detroit: Becoming Human, one of the most memed games of 2018 .
Finally This Is America Execution uses an image from Childish Gambino’s This Is America, one of the
most memed music videos of 2018.

Fig 9: Prominence of Change My Mind (left), Theresa May Dancing (center) and Rewind Time (right)
with blue vertical line marking the date each photo was published. Note different axis scales for each.

One of the most viewed examples for each of

Change My Mind (left), Theresa May Dancing (center) and Rewind Time (right)

iiMemeIndex.com 9

RESULTS

i v . M os t s ucces s ful human

Occasionally people ascend beyond mere humanity and become part meme6, around them an entire family
of memes forms that rivals the prominence of many popular franchises. The number one human of 2018
was Stefán Karl Stefánsson, who played Robbie Rotten in Lazytown. Having been prominent within meme
culture for years his passing on 21 st August resulted in one of the largest surges in memes of the year.

Human MEMP MEMP Family

iiMeme Family Highest ranking species
Rank Average 2018 Peak 2018 Rank
1 Stefán Karl Stefánsson 400 1863 10 Stefan’s Preference
2 Donald Trump 547 1605 11 Enemy of the People
3 Elon Musk 151 947 19 Elon Smoking Weed
4 Jesus Christ 179 750 21 They Hated Jesus
5 Mark Zuckerberg 147 618 22 Zucc Drinking Water

The inclusion of a meme within a family is

based solely on the image. A meme that
mentions one of these people but does not
picture them will not be included.
Donald Trump memes reached their peak
after declaring to the assembled media at
an October press conference “You are the
enemy of the people”.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk reached peak
meme after the image of him smoking
weed on the Joe Rogan podcast went viral
in early September. While for another tech
billionaire Mark Zuckerberg it was his
testimony to the United States Congress in
April that inspired many memes, Example meme from the Stefán Karl Stefánsson family,
particularly regarding the way he drinks pointing out that after he finished portraying a villain he used
water. his fame to become an inspiration and hero to many. The text
Jesus Christ memes peaked around is a play on words of one of the most memed lines of
Christmas time. dialogue from the Batman film The Dark Knight.

Fig 10: MEMP levels of the 5 most human memes of 2018

6
Human meme = Humeme
iiMemeIndex.com 10

RESULTS

v. M os t viral meme event

We determine how viral a species/families is based on a combination of the peak 7-day MEMP change in
absolute and percentage terms7. The most viral event of the year was the start of the annual meme festival
of Spooktober, which celebrates the posting of Spooky Memes throughout October. A full calendar of the
most viral memes of each month of the year can be found in the appendices.

2018 most Rank Example

7-day MEMP 7-day views
iiMeme Species/Family viral 7-days in this
rise absolute (lower bound) Species Family
(end day) report
Spooky Memes +3998 19.1m 7 Oct - 6 p11
Surprised Pikachu +3833 17.8m 11 Nov 3 - p19
Is This A Pigeon? +2712 10.7m 19 May 2 - p7
Gru's Plan +2329 12.1m 16 Mar 8 - p37
Stefán Karl Stefánsson +1512 5.7m 28 Aug - 10 p4
Who Killed Hannibal? +1172 6.9m 23 Apr 16 - p37
Car Salesman +1178 5.1m 5 Jul 20 - p39
Excuse Me, WTF? +1066 3.8m 19 Aug 12 - p39
This Is America +1011 4.1m 14 May - 16 p37
Rewind Time +930 4.1m 12 Dec 54 - p9

Example of Skeleton WTF, the most

prominent Spooky Memes species. Fig 11: The Spooky Memes family reached peak prominence
at the start of Spooktober (marked by blue vertical line).

This Spooky Memes example was
one of the most viewed of all
images in the family.
The single most viral meme of the year was Surprised Pikachu,
we discuss its astronomical rise in more detail in the analysis
section. In the conclusions section we discuss what qualities a
meme needs in order to succeed.
What is striking about the top ten most viral memes is that only
four were in response to events; Spooky Memes, Stefán Karl
Stefánsson, This Is America, and Rewind Time. For the other
six their viral success appears to have emerged organically. Is
This A Pigeon? for instance was popularised as a meme many
years earlier but was revitalized this year, while Gru’s Plan uses
a screenshot of a film released years ago.

7
This is why the SpongeBob SquarePants family is not in this ranking. While it had a large absolute rise in
MEMP over 7 days it was starting from such a high point that the percentage change was relatively small.
iiMemeIndex.com 11

RESULTS

vi. M os t s ucces s ful Clas s ic meme

The modern meme market is increasingly volatile, new memes rise and fall in a matter of weeks. Through
this all a handful of Classic Image Macros remain highly prominent, the most successful of which was
Confession Bear. We discuss how the Classic format differs from others in the Meme Demographics section.

Classic MEMP MEMP Views 2018 Species

iiMeme Species
Rank Average 2018 Peak 2018 (Lower Bound) Rank
1 Confession Bear 861 1601 70m 9
2 Advice Mallard 534 1278 44m 17
3 Socially Awkward Awesome Penguin 473 1200 36m 19
4 Satisfied Seal 321 910 26m 24
5 Awkward Moment Sea Lion 281 741 20m 31

Example of Confession Bear, Two of the several variants of Socially Awesome Awkward
successful partly because of Penguin, all of which come under the same species because
how guilty that bear looks. they use the base image of a penguin.

Some may be surprised that Confession Bear was ranked 9 th among all image memes8 despite being years
old (ancient by meme standards). The explanation for this is straightforward; the modern meme market is
far more competitive and fractured, in part because of a larger pool of meme authors. New memes are
constantly being tested and when one catches on it is often feverishly utilised that meme authors tire of it
after a short time. Some perform so well that they retain significant prominence even after their initial
boom, but the majority end up fading off into relative obscurity.
Meanwhile one of the single most subscribed to feeds for memes on the Internet (the AdviceAnimals
Subreddit) is consistently posting the memes using the same handful of classic image macros. This is a
significant number of people who seem to prefer familiarity in their memes; week in week out the same
few images are used in their most popular memes, and over a year that adds up. In a way this is a parable
for how first past the post electoral systems function.

Advice Mallard Satisfied Seal Awkward Moment Sea Lion

8
Confession Bear would rank even higher if we based MEMP calculation solely on Reddit data, however as
explained in our methodology the formula includes an element to offset the bias towards Reddit.
iiMemeIndex.com 12

MEME DEMOGRAPH ICS

i. Image source
Table and pie chart summarising where images originate from for the top 250 species:

Share of Number of
Source Subsection Views Species
Source Description Example (species rank)

Human 14.3% 45 Distracted Boyfriend (7)

Photo Static photograph image.
Animal 7.4% 13 Confession Bear (9)
Television 15.9% 54 Who Killed Hannibal? (16)
Screenshot of live action
Video Cinema 7.9% 25 cinema, music video or Keep Your Secrets (27)
television (including online).
Music 7.4% 2 Drake’s Preference (1)
Western 16.7% 48 Screenshot of any animated film Gru’s Plan (8)
Animation
Japanese 7.8% 4 or television. Is This A Pigeon? (2)
Artwork 9.0% 18 Masters Blessing (73)
Any drawn artwork (except of
Illustration Stock art 4.1% 12 Hard To Swallow Pills (15)
gaming character).
Webcomic 4.0% 18 The Scroll Of Truth (38)
Screenshot of video games or
Gaming 3.0% 7 Excuse Me, WTF? (12)
artwork of gaming characters.
Text 2.3% 4 Templates defined only by text. Netflix Adaptation (132)

Fig 12: Views by source

There is significant overlap online between those enthusiastic about

gaming and memes, but despite this relatively few gaming memes
reach a wide enough audience to end up in the 250 most prominent
species. This could be because many gaming memes require at least
some familiarity with the subject matter (such as the Waluigi meme
which ranked 274) or they have a greater tendency to originate and Example of the Netflix Adaptation
spread as video memes (such as Ugandan Knuckles which we ranked species, defined by the right hand
461 based solely on static images). column that consists only of text.

iiMemeIndex.com 13
MEME DEMOGRAPHICS

ii. Meme format

Table and pie chart summarising how the top 250 species can be categorised into five broad formats:

Format Number of Example

Species
Format Description
(species rank)

Reaction 100 An image used to show a reaction to a situation. The Theresa May
simplest and oldest iimeme format. Dancing (34)
Classic An image with one line of text overlaid at the top and Confession Bear
49
Image Macro another at the bottom, usually in Impact font. (9)

Modern An image with words or sentences overlaid in such a way Masters

43
Image Macro that they add labels to the subjects of the image. Blessing (73)

A meme that relies upon rewriting the original text that Patrick’s Wallet
Rewrite 39
appears in the image, including video subtitles9. (14)

A meme that requires being split into at least two Netflix

Tabular 19
columns in order to best convey the meaning10. Adaptation (132)

At one time Internet image memes would have been considered synonymous with the Classic Image Macro;
many of which reached mainstream notoriety such as the Success Kid or Bad Luck Brian. Their rigid format
makes them easy to create; there are many websites that can be used to generate one in seconds.
However the Classic Macro has in recent years lost popularity in favour of more complex formats that can
communicate more, but often require at least a basic understanding of image-editing software to create.
The rise of the Modern Macro, Rewrite and Tabular formats in recent years is likely due to a larger pool of
meme authors who are computer literate, as well the natural progression of the art form. The Reaction
format is the most widespread and straight forward, although increasingly canny meme authors use image-
editing software to alter and breath new life into stale memes.

Example of the Master’s Blessing, a modern

Fig 13: Views by format
image macro format

9
When a species can be considered more than one of these formats we categorise based on the most common
or fundamental usage. For instance Captain Picard WTF can be used as a Reaction, but it more often used as
a Classic Macro. Also meme authors sometimes label the subjects of Patrick’s Wallet in a way that
resembles a Modern Macro, but in every case they reword the captions and so it is fundamentally a Rewrite.
10
Most square four panel webcomics are considered Rewrite rather than Tabular because rearranging them
into a single row or column does not make them harder to understand.
iiMemeIndex.com 14

MEME DEMOGRAPHICS

iii. How image source varies by meme format

Nearly all the Classic Macro formats were

popularised as memes 5-10 years before
nearly all Modern Macro, Rewrite and
Tabular formats. Therefore we can gain some
insight into how sourcing of images has
changed over the years by comparing these
formats.
The most striking difference is that the
fascination with animal photography is largely
restricted to Classic formats. The newer
formats have replaced this with an increased
sourcing from illustrations and animations
(which often feature animals).
The availability of media on the Internet could
explain some of this. Today there is a much
larger online community of artists, meaning a
huge range of illustrations available to be
turned into memes. 10 years ago it was not
possible to easily watch any film or television
show online, thus taking a screenshot of any
frame of your favourite animation and turning
it into a meme would not be a trivial task like
it is today. On the other hand large stock
photography databases were relatively early
fixtures on the Internet, providing an array of
potential meme images.
The increase in Internet usage over recent
years could also explain some of this
difference; there is undoubtedly a distinct
difference in culture between the relatively
small set of early adopters compared to the
wider audience that is online today. It could be
that in previous years a greater portion of Fig 14: How image source varies by
users saw the Internet as a place to discover format (measured by share of views)
unknown obscure things, such as obscure stock
photography. Contrast that with the relatively
mainstream modern Internet that is heavily
integrated into popular culture.
It is unsurprising then that in the modern
more competitive Internet space we see a
greater proportion of memes gaining success
partly because they feature widely
recognisable characters, particularly those
known to all ages such as animation or
superhero characters.
However these trends should not be
overstated; many memes popularised in recent
years use stock photography of unknown
subjects, while many older memes only came
into being because they were sourced from Yugio Counter (species rank 45)
popular franchises. placed here to fill empty space

iiMemeIndex.com 15

AN ALYSIS

i . H ow d ominant is S pongeBob ?
The meme economy is much like
any other; a handful of memes
occupying the top positions
command a disproportionate share
of the audience.
During 2018 the iimemes within
either top 250 species or 25
families collectively received a
minimum of 4.733 billion views.
The SpongeBob SquarePants family
alone accounted for a staggering
13.2% of those views, as well as
containing 15 of the top 250
ranked species, more than any other
family. The top ranked species,
Drake’s Preference, accounted for
4.6% of those views.
More broadly around 55% of those
views, 2.598 billion, are accounted
for by iimemes within either the top
5 families or 10 species.
The most appropriate probability
distribution to model the share of
prominence across different memes
Fig 15: Venn diagram showing the relative scale of and
would appear to be the Pareto
crossover between the top 5 families and top 10 species
distribution (figure 17).
(within the total of all 250 species and 25 families).

Fig 17: Ordering the top

250 ranked species by
average prominence gives
something resembling a Fig 16: Venn diagram showing the crossover between the
Pareto distribution. top 250 species and top 25 families.

iiMemeIndex.com 16
ANALYSIS

i i . Can a celebrity make or break a meme?

The most successful memes generally emerge organically as the result of a wide collective decision-making
process. However it is undeniable that a single individual with a large following can influence the collective
- the question is by how much? Many celebrities will make use of memes from time to time, but Felix
Kjellberg (known online as Pewdiepie) provides the perfect opportunity to answer this question.
He has one of the largest online followings in the world, but more importantly throughout 2018 he
regularly broadcast videos dedicated to discussing memes, which consistently received millions of views.
This gives us the cleanest possible experimental data set for which to study the question of celebrity
influence. Below we show how much the prominence of memes changed immediately after being mentioned
by Kjellberg in his Meme Review series. The iimeme species we selected to examine were the ten of those
reviewed that appeared highest in our overall rankings. All ten were reviewed on different dates.

Figure 18: Prominence of 10 memes before and after being reviewed by Pewdiepie
(split into two graphs based on date of review for ease of viewing).

- The impact of a review was not the same for all memes.
- More often than not a meme rises in prominence for the few days after being reviewed.
- Not all memes were reviewed at the same point of their cycle: some while they were rising, others
while they were peaking or falling. It is unclear whether the highest gainers rose because of the
review, or rather because they were reviewed while they were rising anyway.
- At the high end Is This A Pigeon? rose by over 500% in the week after being reviewed.
- At the low end Kowalski Analysis dropped by 50% in the week after being reviewed.
- Reviews in the first half of the year (left) were followed by a greater rise than those in the second half
(right) on average; this could simply be due to when during their lifecycle those memes were reviewed.
- The best impact would arguably be on Hard To Swallow Pills, given that this meme was falling but this
trend reversed immediately after the review.
- The worst impact would arguably be on Netflix Adaptation, given that this meme was rising but started
to fall immediately after the review.
This may have been the cleanest possible data set with which to study this question, but it is still not good
enough to get a definitive answer given the many other factors at play. We do not have enough data points to
control for how the meme is trending when it gets reviewed. Another important factor is likely how
enthusiastic Pewdiepie’s audience is for each meme.
In conclusion his influence is inconsistent - he does not have the power to create or destroy a meme.
We do not believe that any one person can control the tides of the meme economy.

iiMemeIndex.com 17

ANALYSIS

i ii . H ow long does a meme las t ?

No meme ever truly dies; it can always be revived at a later date. But we can investigate how long on
average a meme stays in high prominence before fading back into relative obscurity. To do this we selected
12 meme species that placed highly in our viral rankings.
When a meme begins and ends ‘high prominence’ is obviously a fuzzy boundary that could be set in any
number of ways. For our purposes we use 50% of that meme’s peak prominence. Figure 19 shows how
each of these memes progress before and after they reach their peak prominence.

Figure 19: Prominence of 10 viral memes relative to each of their peaks, horizontal black line marking 50%
of peak prominence, vertical black line markets peak (split into two graphs for ease of viewing).
We find that the median time from a meme first hitting 50% prominence to hitting peak prominence is 8
days. While the median time from peak prominence to going back down to 50% prominence is 28 days.
This lopsided result is unsurprising given that our measure of prominence attempts to simulate collective
memory; the amount of time it takes for something to become well known is generally less than the time it
takes for it to be forgotten.
By this crude measure we can say on average a meme will be at its best for around 36 days.

Epic Handshake uses an image of Carl The Speed At Which Lobsters Die (103 rd
Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger ranked species) uses a screenshot of Josh
shaking hands from the film Predator. Peck from the series Drake and Josh.

iiMemeIndex.com 18

ANALYSIS

i v . Was Surprised Pikachu a marketing campaign?

Surprised Pikachu was one of the most viewed

memes of 2018; especially impressive
considering it was only popularised in the last
quarter of the year. This caused us to put our
detective hats on and investigate further.
We see comparable trends going viral entirely
organically, such as Is This A Pigeon? or
Gru’s Plan. On the other hand many trends are
in response to high profile trigger events, like
celebrities being in the news, or in the case of
Spooky Memes the beginning of October. Example of Surprised Pikachu (left), alongside a meme using a
screenshot from the Detective Pikachu trailer (right).
In the case of Surprised Pikachu there was a
related event - on the 12 th November Warner Bros published the first trailer for the Detective Pikachu
movie11, the latest cinematic adaptation of the wildly successful Pokémon franchise, for which Pikachu is
the mascot. But curiously the peak viral surge of Surprised Pikachu happened before this date, not after.
From 5 th-11 th November the meme received at least 17.8m views, by our calculations more than any other
image meme did in any 7 days of 2018. The production was public knowledge since earlier in the year, but
the trailer release on the 12 th made it a mainstream talking point. There were some articles relating to test
screenings a few days earlier12,13 on the 8 th, but the surge in views peaked before this on the 5-7 th.
It would certainly be possible to artificially prop up a meme: “Reddit is being manipulated and gamed on a
wide scale by companies” concludes a Forbes article14 on marketing firms working in this space. The
process is easier than many would assume: in an interview published to Youtube a hacker explains how with
just one mobile phone and the right method he could push his posts to be seen by millions of people15. Only
a tiny fraction of Reddit users vote on new posts made to the site, so a few dozen accounts voting in quick
succession can be enough to swing the algorithm into pushing a post to the front page and get seen by
millions. The cost of doing this on a larger scale would be a drop in the ocean compared to the enormous
marketing budget for a movie like Detective Pikachu.
But this is all speculation; it is entirely possible that Surprised Pikachu grew organically and by coincidence
surged in views a few days before the biggest Pikachu related press event of 2018 – the release of a trailer
that included a shot of a surprised looking Pikachu.

Fig 20: Views and Prominence of Surprised Pikachu. Peak views occurred Nov-6.
Blue vertical line marks the Detective Pikachu trailer release on Nov-12.

11
Detective Pikachu first trailer - youtube.com/watch?v=1roy4o4tqQM
12
Screen Rant on test screenings - screenrant.com/detective-pikachu-early-reactions-positive/
13
Nintendo Life on test screenings - nintendolife.com/news/2018/11/early_detective_pikachu_movie_screening_
14
Forbes article by Jay McGregor on Reddit corporate manipulation -
forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/20/reddit-is-being-manipulated-by-big-financial-services-companies
15
Video interview by Tim Pool explaining how Reddit can be manipulated - youtu.be/NuR3PIwYMPs?t=843

iiMemeIndex.com 19

ANALYSIS

v . H ow prevalent are political Pepe t he F rog memes

memes ?
Pepe the Frog reached peak infamy in late
Pepe iiMeme Average Peak Species
2016 when the meme was labelled a far-right
Rank Species MEMP MEMP Rank
hate symbol16. Some may be shocked to learn
that we calculate Pepe to be the 5 th most 1 Helper Pepe 319 964 23
prominent image meme family, receiving at 2 Happy Pepe 235 717 37
least 168m views during 2018, and of the 3 Sad Pepe 187 480 58
hundred most prominent iimeme species four 4 Smug Pepe 138 428 80
were Pepes. So we will investigate how 5 Worried Pepe 92 322 131
exactly this meme is most commonly used.
The most common Pepe species was Helper Pepe,
often used by meme authors to portray themselves
as low status, often accompanied by extremely self-
deprecating humour. The Pepe most associated
with right wing figures is Smug Pepe, usually used
to portray a high status individual, versions of which
have depicted Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen.
Helper Pepe memes had in total an estimated 2.5
times the views of Smug Pepe memes. Example of a Helper Pepe meme
Happy Pepe, Sad Pepe and Worried Pepe usually
accompany an anecdote that ends with the author
feeling one of those three emotions. Sad Pepe is
notable as being one of the most popular
emotes/emojis on Twitch; a platform used to
broadcast people playing video games, it contains
almost no political discussion. Various Pepe
emotes have collectively been used hundred of Example of Happy Pepe (using Cool Pepe variant)
millions of times on Twitch17. So the young viewers with a spurious story about losing one’s virginity
of these broadcasts who have only seen this meme
used to react to events in videogames may be
confused to learn it was declared a hate symbol.
Conversely users of a more politically focused
platform like Twitter, who only encounter Pepe in
that context, may find it confusing to know how
prevalent the meme is on a platform used largely Images of Sad Pepe (or ‘Feels Bad Man’),
by children watching videogames. Smug Pepe and Worried Pepe (or ‘monkaS’)
In both cases perception is hampered by sampling
bias. We propose that the one platform that
provides the best reflection of the Internet as a
whole is Reddit, because it was designed as a
content aggregator rather than a social network or
broadcasting platform. It contains echo chambers,
but a wider variety of them than other platforms.
To answer the question of how prevalent political
Pepes are we performed an analysis of language
used in these and other memes. For comparison we Two NPC memes; depticing a malfunction upon
looked at NPC (Non-Player Character)18, the 65 th hearing Trump’s wife is an immigrant (left),
most prominent image meme species, which is used mocking those offended by the NPC meme (right)
almost exclusively in political contexts to discredit
an opponent by likening them to a robot. We also

16
BBC report on ADL branding Pepe The Frog a hate symbol - bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37493165
17
Of the 50 most used BTTV memes/emotes 13 are Pepe variants - stats.streamelements.com/
18
The NPC meme is a modern repackaging of the philosophical zombie theory that suggests some proportion
of humans are non-sentient, thus operating similarly to how a video game NPC is programmed to behave.
iiMemeIndex.com 20

ANALYSIS

collected groups of images that are sure to be political in nature from two Subreddits; The Donald and
PoliticalHumor, which are dedicated to rightwing and leftwing content respectively. Lastly to get a baseline
for comparison we compiled a control group of all memes belonging to either the most prominent family
(SpongeBob) or any of the ten most prominent species (see Appendix B for full list).
First we calculate how many
images within each group Political terms Hateful slurs
contain explicit political or Images from: Explicit Total (estimate) Explicit Total (estimate)
hateful language. Given the two The_Donald 63.8% 100% 1.4% 2.1 - 2.4%
Subreddits are in reality 100%
PoliticalHumor 56.5% 100% 0.6% 0.9 - 1.0%
political, this implies our
explicit figures should be NPC memes 60.4% 94.7 - 100% 1.1% 1.7 - 1.9%
inflated by a factor of 1.56– Pepe memes 9.5% 14.8 - 17% 11.1% 17 .3 - 20%
1.77 to get the true total. As
Control group 3.6% 5.6 - 6.4% 1.0% 1.5 - 1.7%
such we arrive at upper
estimates of around 17% of Pepe memes conveying political sentiments. Lacking a comparison group that
we know to be 100% hateful, we assumed the same inflation factor to get an estimate of 20% containing
hateful language. Only 1.3% contained both explicit political and hateful terms. By far the most common
slur was homophobic, accounting for well over half of all hateful terms; unsurprising given that this term
was the only hateful slur listed by previous studies as one of the 15 most common profanities for both
Twitter19 and Facebook20.
To get a sense of how subjects of discussion vary between the groups we can observe two word clouds21
based on the text appearing in NPC memes (figure 22), which show several political themes, and Pepe
memes (figure 21), which imply themes around adolescence.
Pepes are more prominent than memes from huge franchises such as Game of Thrones or Star Trek. While
we can say with some certainty that most Pepe memes are non-political in nature, even just 17% of them
equates to tens of millions of views and three political Pepes for every one NPC meme. They are prevalent
enough to impact political discourse so it is understandable how the meme was labelled a hate symbol, but
to assume it is used exclusively or even mostly in this way would be to mislabel large numbers of mostly
young people with views they do not hold.

Fig 21: Word Cloud using Pepe memes Fig 22: Word Cloud using NPC memes

19
Wang, W., Chen, L., Thirunarayan, K., & Sheth, A. P. (2014). Cursing in English on Twitter. Proceedings
of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 415-424.
20
Chris Kirk: slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2013/09/11/top_swear_words_most_popular_curse_words_on_facebook.html
21
The size a term appears in the word cloud is proportional to how often that term appears in the text.
iiMemeIndex.com 21

ANALYSIS

vi . What terms are us ed i n memes ?

To shed some light on the most common terms used in the most popular memes we show word clouds based
on the frequency of their appearing within the images and the titles of the accompanying Reddit post.

Fig 23: Word Cloud using text from all memes in the top 10 ranked species (listed in Appendix B)

Fig 24: Word Cloud using all text from Fig 25: Word Cloud using all text from
memes in the SpongeBob family memes in the Star Wars family

iiMemeIndex.com 22

CON CLU SION S

i. H ow to j udge the potential of a meme

Having observed how memes rise and fall we propose several criteria for judging meme success.
Impact – An image is more likely to be noticed if it immediately impacts on the brain. This can be
improved with: bright colours, recognisable characters, or cute things. Surprised Pikachu has all three.
Resonance – An image is more likely to be remembered if it portrays a clear basic emotion that will
resonate with our own feelings. Drake’s Preference conveys pleasure and displeasure, Epic Handshake
conveys friendship, Confession Bear conveys guilt and Surprised Pikachu conveys surprise.
Mutability – A meme will only last and spread if the premise behind it allows many different potential
ideas; simplicity is better. Is This A Pigeon? is one thing mistaken for another, Lisa Simpsons’s
Presentation is giving any opinion, Surprised Pikachu is surprise – all very simple premises.
Competition – If two memes share the same premise they must compete for a limited number of ideas.
Surprisingly there were no very popular surprise based memes during 2018, hence potentially why
Surprised Pikachu was able to succeed. On the other hand there were many memes using the identical
presentation premise, three of which featured Lisa Simpson, Paul Ryan and Bernie Sanders. Given these
three had identical levels of competition and mutability, the most successful was the one featuring the
brightly coloured recognisable animation character with a clearer emotional expression.

Three similar presentation memes; Lisa Simpson (rank 5), Paul Ryan (64) and Bernie Sanders (187).
The more impactful and resonant the image, the more prominent that meme ended up.

Three similar preference memes; Drake’s Preference (rank 1), Distracted Boyfriend (7) and Left Exit
Off Ramp 12 (26). The simpler the emotion and colour of the image, the more prominent that meme
ended up. But the fact they all rank quite highly is a testimant to how powerfully simple this premise is.

Maturity – This is less about the potential of a new meme, more about the staying power of an existing
meme. Drake’s Preference now has dozens of fairly prominent competitors that follow exactly the same
formula, but unlike those competitors it was the first to popularise the premise. Similarly many classic
memes continue to succeed in the face of new memes because there is a first to market advantage.
Put simply a meme is just a shared idea; so the more it has been shared, the more it is a meme.

iiMemeIndex.com 23
CONCLUSIONS

ii. What to expect from the future of memes

Given how difficult it is to forecast the future we give some predictions so vague as to be unfalsifiable.

Tabular Formats – This format is easy to edit and easy to understand. We will continue to see new
tabular memes appear, often using the same existing premises, but perhaps with more striking images.

Animated Characters – The success of memes from franchises like The Simpsons or SpongeBob
SquarePants has led to creators to increasingly mine older animated film and television for images, the
most successful during 2018 being Tom & Jerry (the 17 th ranked family). Whether it is from an old classic
or a new CGI live action remake of an old classic, memes of animated characters will dominate.

Superhero Films – No film of 2018 was a greater source of memes than Avengers: Infinity War and its
antagonist Thanos. Given how many superhero films are produced at least one each year will end up being
great meme fodder, due to the combination of larger than life characters, overly dramatic stories, as well as
a combined audience of children and diehard adult fans.
Global Media – The influence of Western media will slowly decline as the number of Internet users in
other parts of the world increases. For instance This Is Beyond Science picturing actor Rajinikanth in 2.0
became a viral success very shortly after that film was released. Another prominent meme Am I A Joke To
You? pictures actor Rapulana Seiphemo in South African soap opera Generations: The Legacy.
Old Favourites – Mature memes, like Harold, will persist for a long time yet.

One of the most viewed memes Reality is often disappointing This Is Beyond Science
from the Tom & Jerry family one of many Thanos memes (rank 117)

Am I A Joke To You? (rank 22), Harold (rank 166), an

actor Seiphemo has produced illustrious meme of actor
several telvision series and a Arato Andras, who was once
feature length documentary, so president of the Hungarian
Expanding Brain (rank 4) he is definitely no joke. Lighting Soceity, very cool.

iiMemeIndex.com 24

Inte rne t Ima ge M e me Inde x

The Internet Image Meme Index conducts quantitative research to further human understanding of memes.

Our website and social media pages contain datasets, graphics and analysis not included in this report.

www.iiMemeIndex.com (includes links to social media)

iiMemeIndex.com 25

A c know l e dge me nts

This research was possible because of previous work by the following groups22.

Reddit for the use of their API and for creating a well organised content aggregator.
Imgur for the use of their API and for creating a well organised image-hosting site.
The developers of the software we used, particularly those mentioned in the footnotes of pages 28-30.
KnowYourMeme and its contributors for creating a well organised meme encyclopaedia.
Everyone who made a meme during 2018.

A rti c l e 13

The author of this report has through

professional experience seen first hand how
public policy that is well intentioned but
crudely formed can have long lasting
unintended consequences.
We would like to praise the ongoing work
of Save The Internet in campaigning against
the meme censorship that could be brought
about by the EU Copyright Directive.
www.savetheinternet.info

Example of an Article 13 compliant meme

22
None had direct involvement with, or in any way endorse the findings of, this report.
iiMemeIndex.com 26

APPEN DIX A: DETAILED METH ODOLOGY

i. Data c ollection
During 2018 we collected 418,874 images posted to Reddit, currently the 19 th most visited website in the
world23. The site is divided into many Subreddits for different topics; we picked 69 to monitor and collect
from based on the number of iimemes posted to them.
While Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are also used for image sharing and receive more web traffic, we
chose Reddit as it has several key advantages allowing a vastly more efficient data collection process.

Each social media platform has a different user base and culture, meaning they vary in how they relate to
one another and wider culture. With respect to meme trends the relationship between platforms is often
summarised in the Life of a Meme meme. While this may be a broad caricature it does contain a large
grain of truth; iimeme trends more often than not appear on Reddit before most other platforms. To offset
the bias in our dataset we designed the MEMP formula to model how trends echo ‘downstream’ from
Reddit to other platforms.
In wider society 4chan is infamous as the source of many political trolling campaigns; but it is also the
origin point of many mainstream meme trends. Though compared to the other platforms mentioned the site
gets minimal traffic (around 120,000 th most visited site globally23) and the most popular posts receive a far
greater number of views when reposted to Reddit.

Modern interpretation of Life of a Meme

23
Data from alexa.com/topsites February 2019.
iiMemeIndex.com 27
APPENDIX A: DETAILED METHODOLOGY

ii . Image Identification

We have developed an artificial intelligence named MemeVision that is trained to recognise whether an
image belongs to any of over a thousand iimeme species and families. It does this using a three-branch
method based upon the colors, shapes and words within an image.

Fig 26: MemeVision process flow Fig 27: MemeVision avatar

Colors – This branch uses five Support Vector Machines (SVM)

learning models implemented in Scikit-Learn24. Within a given
species most iimemes use roughly the same proportion of the
defining base image, so using a feature set of pixel frequencies is
often sufficient to narrow down the correct identification.
The hue-saturation-value (HSV) color palette was found to be more
effective at identification than red-green-blue (RGB), consistent
with literature dating back decades25. Editing and reposting
iimemes involves repeated image compression and resizing, often
resulting in slight alterations to pixels barely perceivable to the
human eye. These differences tend to appear smaller in HSV than Fig 28: The five SVMs used
RBG, hence why it is a more effective palette to use. within the color branch
There are two HSV based SVMs. First
the ‘hi-res’ that uses 8 frequency bins for
each color channel that is better able to
discern between species using similar
colors. Second the ‘lo-res’ that uses 4
bins for each channel so is better able to
catch images that have been significantly
altered due to compression or resizing.
In addition there are three greyscale
SVMs that use 4 bins for each radial
division of the image; one hi-detail that
splits the image into 48 divisions, and
two lo-details that split the image into 24
divisions in different ways.
The identification relies on the two HSV Fig 29: Example of Domino Effect divided into the 48
SVMs, with the three greyscale SVMs divisions used for the hi-detail radial. The two lo-detail
only there to provide a spatial element for radials use the 24 arrived at by joining adjacent divisions
cases where we need to discern between within each ring, in one direction or the other.
multiple species with similar colors.

24
Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python, Pedregosa et al., JMLR 12, pp. 2825-2830, 2011
25
Chapelle, Olivier, Patrick Haffner, and Vladimir N. Vapnik. "Support vector machines for histogram-based
image classification." IEEE transactions on Neural Networks 10.5 (1999): 1055-1064.
iiMemeIndex.com 28

APPENDIX A: DETAILED METHODOLOGY

Shapes – This branch uses a Convolution Neural Network (CNN)

implemented using Tensorflow26. The input images are 64x64 in the
HSV palette, chosen for the same reasons as discussed above. The
CNN is able to correctly identify iimemes that are missed by the
SVM, for instance it can better see instances where a character from
one species has been spliced into another.

Fig 31: Example of Not Sure

Fig 30: CNN architecture, layers clockwise from Input to Output If with image segmentation

Segmentation – To improve accuracy the Color and Shape branches will look at the raw image along
with five segmentations of the input image. These are the two halves obtained by a horizontal split (H1 &
H2), two halves obtained by vertical split (V1 & V2), and the mid horizontal (M). In the example shown
in figure 31, the H2 segment would provide an almost exact match for the base image of the character
Fry from Futurama that is used for the Not Sure If species. Prior to this an algorithm is run to detect and
crop any unnecessary borders to image, if this occurs both the raw and cropped versions are examined.

Words – This branch uses text extracted from an image (using Tesseract optical character recognition27)
to narrow down potential matches. It uses a rule-based approach to natural language processing, detecting
combinations of n-grams (words and phrases) that imply certain species, implemented using NLTK 28.
Thresholds for a likely match are calibrated using additional metadata and previously classified images.
A complicating factor is that many images are distorted making accurate text extraction difficult. To
account for this fuzzy logic is used to detect words that are close to what is needed, but perhaps one or two
letters different due to the character recognition being confused by noise in the image. This is
implemented using fuzzyset29.

Confirmation – Once each branch has delivered potential matches, a brute force comparison algorithm
(implemented using OpenCV 30) gives a similarity score for each. Images are either considered to certainly
have at least one match, certainly have no matches, or be an edge case that requires human review.

Development – The calibration of parts of this process required a sizeable dataset of classified images,
something not available at the start of the development. However the SVMs could be trained to a
workable level of accuracy with just one example image. So initially we simply gave the model one
labelled example of each species. With this we had a Color branch that was able to classify a decent
number of iimemes that were easier to identify. We were then able to train a more robust Color branch,
along with the Shape and Word branch.

26
Tensorflow was developed by Google Brain - tensorflow.org
27
Tesseract OCR is developed by Google - github.com/tesseract-ocr
Python wrapper developed by Matthias Lee - github.com/madmaze/pytesseract
28
Bird, Steven; Klein, Ewan; Loper, Edward (2009), Natural Language Processing with Python. O’Reilly Media Inc.
29
Python fuzzyset developed by Mike Axiak - github.com/axiak/fuzzyset
30
Open CV developed by Intel - opencv.org
Python implementation developed by Olli-Pekka Heinisuo - github.com/skvark/opencv-python
iiMemeIndex.com 29

APPENDIX A: DETAILED METHODOLOGY

iii. Es timating view s

We used the Reddit API31 to collect metadata relevant to each image including upvotes, which are used by
the site to rank popularity. Reddit does not provide view counts, but 12% of images we collected were
hosted externally on Imgur, a site that does provide a view count. Using the Imgur API to collect view count
for those 12% of images then allowed us to extrapolate the relationship between upvotes and views, giving
us an estimate of views for the remaining 88% of images.
Reddit is divided into Subreddits with varying audiences and patterns of behaviour; this is a very significant
factor when estimating views. Figure 32 displays a handful of the larger Subreddits we collected from and
shows the ratio of upvotes to views ranges from around 4% to almost 13%.
When estimating views we also consider that the metadata on an Imgur post may not align precisely with
the corresponding Reddit post; for instance someone may post to Reddit a link to an Imgur post that was
created a year earlier. To account for this we do not correlate total views and total upvotes, instead we
make multiple observations of each post and correlate the differences between observations, which gives a
more accurate relationship between the two.
On a side note we found that on average an image received around 50% of its views within the first 8
hours, and at least 98% of its views within the first 24 hours.

Fig 32: How Subreddits vary by number of subscribers and the proportion of
viewers who upvote posts

31
Python Reddit API Wrapper developed by Bryce Boe - github.com/praw-dev/praw

iiMemeIndex.com 30

 APPENDIX A: DETAILED METHODOLOGY

iv. Quantifying m eme p rominence

Given all images belonging to a single species/family and a time series of their views, to calculate the
Magnitude Estimation of Meme Prominence (MEMP) at a certain time we use the following formulae.

δ The history term with memory m , gives the weighted

⎛ T =t ⎛ ⎛ ⎛ T −t⎞⎞⎞ ⎞
−1
sum of views from time t ranging back m time
−5⎜1 +2 ⎜ ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎟ periods. Weight is determined by a sigmoid function
hm (t) = ⎜ ∑ vT ⎜ 1 + e ⎝ ⎝ m ⎠⎠⎟ ⎟ (see figure 33). The term is raised to the power of
⎜ T =t−m ⎜⎝ ⎟ ⎟
⎠ ⎠
⎝ constant δ < 1 to reflect
€ that every additional view has
slightly less €
effect as a species/family
€ increasingly
vT = views at time T saturates the market. We set δ = 0.9 .

€ The baseline MEMP; a weighted sum of historical

€ terms representing short and long-term memory.
g(t) = β0 hφ (t)€+ β1 hγ (t)
€ For short-term we€set φ = 3 weeks, β0 = 1
For long-term we set γ =6 weeks, β1 = 0.25

b(t) ⎛ T =t ⎛ T −t € 1 ⎛€2π (T − t)⎞⎞⎞

€ dm (t) = ⎜ ∑ g(t)⎜α 0 − α1 − − α 2 cos⎜ ⎟⎟⎟
m ⎝T =t−m ⎝ m − 1 €2 €⎝ m − 1 ⎠⎠⎠

This is the downstream echo term, a weighted average of past baseline MEMP values,
multiplied by the strength term b. For our analysis we set memory m to 4 weeks.
Weights are determined by a Barthann window; α 0 = 0.62 , α1 = 0.48 , α 2 = 0.38 .
€
The strength term is inversely proportional to zt a measure of the concentration of iimemes
1 at that time. If every instance of the species/family is found in the same Subreddit then it
b(t) ∝ will get the maximum concentration € score and€thus the minimum
€ strength term. Given that
zt
zt has a big impact on final MEMP we apply significant smoothing to reduce volatility.
€
The final MEMP term is the baseline plus the downstream echo plus
f (t) c , the crash factor. c is a relatively insignificant term that is almost
€ € = g(t) + d µ (t) + c(t) always zero, except in cases where there is a long period of zero views
when it becomes negative to speed the decline and simulate a crash.

€ €
€

Fig 33: Sigmoid weight function Fig 34: Barthann weight function
with memory set to 20 days with memory set to 28 days

iiMemeIndex.com 31

 APPENDIX A: DETAILED METHODOLOGY

v. F inal r anking
Having calculated a MEMP time series for every species and family we finally need to provide some
ranking for the most significant of 2018. For this we give equal weighting to two metrics: the peak and
year average. This balances the recognition of species/families that perform consistently with those that
have great viral success for a short time but a lower annual average.
The index for the species/family x is calculated as such:
fx (t)
max fx (t) ∑ N
t ∈2018€ t ∈2018 S is the set of all species (or families)
i(x) = +
⎛ N is the number of time periods in 2018
max(max f s (t)) f s (t)⎞
s ∈S t ∈2018 max⎜⎜ ∑ ⎟
⎟
s ∈S N
⎝ t ∈2018 € ⎠
€
The index for species x is the maximum MEMP of x in 2018, divided by the maximum MEMP of any
species in 2018, plus the average MEMP of x in 2018, divided by the maximum average MEMP of any
€ species in 2018. For family calculations we divide by the maximum of any family during 2018.

€ €
€

Now to fill the rest of the space on this page here are the two most prominent iimemes using webcomics:

The Scroll of Truth (species rank 38) Two Red Buttons (species rank 32)

iiMemeIndex.com 32

APPEN DIX B: DETAILED RESU LTS

i. T op 3 0 ranked s pecies

Species Average Peak

Rank
iiMeme Species Format Source
MEMP MEMP
1 Drake's Preference 2508 5815 Tabular Music video
2 Is This A Pigeon? 1469 8185 Modern Anime
3 Surprised Pikachu 1010 7582 Reaction Anime
4 Expanding Brain 1551 4322 Tabular Artwork
5 Lisa Simpson Presentation 985 4806 Rewrite Animation
6 Epic Handshake 944 4328 Modern Film
7 Distracted Boyfriend 986 1698 Modern Photo - human
8 Gru's Plan 677 2659 Rewrite Animation
9 Confession Bear 861 1601 Classic Photo - animal
10 American Chopper Argument 579 2505 Rewrite Television
11 Who Would Win? 740 1599 Tabular Text
12 Excuse Me WTF? 484 2382 Reaction Gaming
13 Change My Mind 646 1825 Rewrite Photo - human
14 Patrick Wallet Argument 587 1441 Rewrite Animation
15 Hard To Swallow Pills 614 1175 Modern Stock art
16 Who Killed Hannibal? 406 1852 Modern Television
17 Advice Mallard 534 1278 Classic Photo - animal
18 Blue Button 506 1168 Modern Photo - human
19 Socially Awesome Awkward Penguin 473 1200 Classic Photo - animal
20 Car Salesman 237 1952 Reaction Stock art
21 Spiderman Double Point 495 904 Reaction Animation
22 Am I A Joke To You? 215 1489 Reaction Television
23 Helper Pepe 319 964 Reaction Artwork
24 Satisfied Seal 322 910 Classic Photo - animal
25 Jim Halpert Smiling 310 807 Reaction Television
26 Left Exit 12 Off Ramp 339 711 Modern Television
27 Keep Your Secrets 176 1235 Reaction Film
28 Stefan's Preference 237 1030 Tabular Television
29 Other Women 299 759 Reaction Photo - human
30 Skyrim Skill 100 244 864 Reaction Gaming

iiMemeIndex.com 33
APPENDIX B: DETAILED RESULTS

ii. T op ranked s pecies that us e images from 2018

Species Average Peak Peak MEMP

iiMeme Species Origin Date
Rank MEMP MEMP Date
13 Change My Mind 646 1825 16 th Feb 12 th Mar
34 Theresa May Dancing 118 1237 3 rd Oct 22 nd Nov
54 Rewind Time 50 967 6 th Dec 20 th Dec
68 Connor Pushes Circle 86 712 6 th Jun 23 rd Aug
79 This Is America Execution 69 658 5 th May 14 th May
117 This Is Beyond Science 52 515 29 th Nov 29 th Dec
160 Trump: Enemy of the People 31 392 7 th Nov 30 th Nov
163 Trump: Didn’t Expect That 47 335 25 th Sep 10 th Oct
174 Elon Musk Smoking Weed 31 358 6 th Sep 15 th Sep
182 We Don’t Do That Here 46 295 26 th Apr 8 th Jun

iii. T op 20 ranked families

Family Average Peak Highest ranking species

Rank iiMeme Family MEMP MEMP Name Rank
1 SpongeBob SquarePants 6403 9992 Patrick Wallet 14
2 Star Wars 4451 5786 Sacred Texts 99
3 The Simpsons 2304 8512 Lisa’s Presentation 5
4 Marvel Movies 2490 5174 Scientist Myself 43
5 Pepe The Frog 1781 4291 Helper Pepe 23
6 Spooky Memes 769 5005 Skeleton WTF 175
7 Lord Of The Rings 1051 3047 Keep Your Secrets 27
8 The Eric Andre Show 724 3030 Who Killed Hannibal? 16
9 Game Of Thrones 896 1361 Brace Yourselves 311
10 Stefan Karl Stefansson 400 1863 Stefan's Preference 28
11 Donald Trump 547 1605 Enemy of the People 160
12 The Office 531 1387 Jim Halpert Smiling 25
13 Spiderman Animated 546 918 Spiderman Double Point 21
14 Tom And Jerry 382 1034 Muscular Tom (and Jerry) 96
15 The Muppets 400 959 None Of My Business 84
16 This Is America 222 1227 This Is America Execution 79
17 Star Trek 347 925 Captain Picard WTF 51
18 Mario Bros 236 918 Mario Bros Views 70
19 Elon Musk 151 947 Elon Musk Smoking Weed 174
20 Family Guy 170 835 Peter Griffin News 76

iiMemeIndex.com 34

APPENDIX B: DETAILED RESULTS

iv. M eme Calendar 2018

The two most viral memes of each month calculated using the same as the results shown on page 11.
January is excluded because we do not have data for the previous month to compare against.

Most viral of the month Second most viral of the month

2018 Rank 2018 Rank
iiMeme Specie iiMeme
Month Species/Family s Family Species/Family Species Family

January - - - - - -

Something of a Left exit 12 off

February 43 - 26 -
Scientist Myself ramp

March Gru’s Plan 8 - Change My Mind 13 -

Who Killed American Chopper

April 16 - 10 -
Hannibal? Argument

May Is This A Pigeon? 2 - This Is America - 16

We Don’t Do That
June Thanos - ∞ 182 -
Here

July Car Salesman 20 - How Old Is 41 -

Stefán Karl €
August - 10 Excuse Me, WTF? 12 -
Stefánsson

The Speed At Which

September Elon Musk - 19 103 -
Lobsters Die

October Spooky Memes - 6 Kowalski, Analysis? 60 -

Theresa May
November Surprised Pikachu 3 - 34 -
Dancing

December Rewind Time 54 - Change Language 82 -

iiMemeIndex.com 35

APPENDIX B: DETAILED RESULTS

v. S election of S pecies compared to F amilies

Graphs of the most prominent species within each of eight families:

The Simspons (family 3) and Lord Of The Rings (family 7) and

Lisa’s Presentation (species 5) Keep Your Secrets (species 27)

Eric Andre Show (family 8) and Stefán Karl Stefánsson (family 10) and
Who Killed Hannibal (species 16) Stefan’s Preference (species 28)

This Is America (family 16) and Star Trek (family 17) and
This Is America Execution (species 79) Captain Picard WTF (species 51)

Mario Bros (family 18) and Elon Musk (family 19) and
Mario Bros Views (species 70) Elon Musk Smoking Weed (species 70)
iiMemeIndex.com 36

APPEN DIX C: ADDITION AL MEME EXAMPLES

Gru’s Plan Who Killed Hannibal? This Is America Execution

Spiderman Doublepoint Jim Halpert Smiling Blue Button

Who Would Win? Brace Yourselves Something of a Scientist Myself

Zuckerberg Tasty Data We Don’t Do That Here Sacred Texts

iiMemeIndex.com 37
APPENDIX C: ADDITIONAL MEME EXAMPLES

Muscular Tom (and Jerry) Hannibal Buress Wack SpongeBob Hannibal

Rollsafe Headtap Connor Pushes Circle Trump – Didn’t Expect That

Peter Griffin News Skyrim Skill 100 Mario Bros Views

Keep Your Secrets Other Women Kowalski Analysis

Thanos – Strongest Wills They Hated Jesus Intelligent Students Crying Kid
iiMemeIndex.com 38

APPENDIX C: ADDITIONAL MEME EXAMPLES

Hard To Swallow Pills You Can’t Defeat Me

American Chopper Argument Trump – Enemy of the People Excuse Me, WTF?

Change Language
Lesson in Trickery How Old Is…?

Wednesday Frog Car Salesman Car Salesman

iiMemeIndex.com 39

APPEN DIX D: IMAGE CREDITS

Image Meme Source/Credit Image Meme Source/Credit

Advice Mallard Associated Press
Am I A Joke To Generations: The Legacy
You? /Morula Pictures
American Chopper
Pilgrim Films & Television
Argument
Awkward Sealion Nature Pics Online
But That's None Of
Lipton Ice Tea / Disney
My Business
Star Trek: TNG / Paramount
Captain Picard WTF
Television
Change My Mind Steven Crowder
Getty Images / Clemens
Confession Bear
Bilan
Connor Pushes Circle Online-station.net
Distracted Boyfriend iStock / Antonio Guillem
Domino Chain Reaction /
Domino Effect
Stephen Morris
Hotline Bling / Cash Money
Drake's Preference
Records
Elon Musk Smoking
Joe Rogan Podcast
Weed
Predator / 20th Century Fox
Epic Handshake / Skelleton WTF
MILOSLAVvonRANDA
Fallout / Bethesda
Excuse Me Wtf?
Softworks
Futurama / 20th Century
Futurama Fry
Fox
Despicable Me / Universal
Gru's Plan
Pictures & Illumination
Hannibal Buress
Eric Andre Show / Abso
Wack
Lutely Productions
Who Killed Hannibal
Hard To Swallow
Wikihow
Pills
Here’s a Little
Lesson In Trickery
Lazytown Entertainment
Stefan's Preference
I'm Something Of A Spiderman (2002) /
Scientist Myself Columbia Pictures
Intelligent Students Intelligent Students / Ugo
Crying Kid Ugbor
The Brave Fighter of Sun
Is This A Pigeon?
Fighbird / Sunrise
The Office / NBC Universal
Jim Halpert Smiling
Television
Lord Of The Rings (2001) /
Keep Your Secrets
New Line Cinema
Kowalski Analysis Madagascar / DreamWorks
How To Exit The Freeway
Left Exit 12 Off Ramp
Like A Boss / Fredrik Sorlie
Lisa Simpson The Simpsons / 20th Century
Presentation Fox
Mario Bros Views Nintendo
Masters Blessing Diana Campos
Muscular Tom (and
GeltyDrake / Hanna-Barbera
Jerry)
Patrick’s Wallet
SpongeBob / United
Plankton Pictures
SpongeBob Hannibal
Pepe The Frog Boy's Club / Matt Furie
Rewind Time Rewind 2018 / Youtube
Hood Documentary / Fudge
Rollsafe Headtap
Park Productions
Sacred Texts Star Wars: TLJ / Lucasfilm
Flickr / Rick van
Satisfied Seal
Duivenboden
Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo
Brothers / Hanna-Barbera
Skyrim Skill 100 Skyrim / Bethesda Softworks
Socially Awesome National Geographic /
Awkward Penguin George F Mobley
Spiderman Double Spider-Man / Grantray-
Point Lawrence Animation
Pokemon: Indigo League /
Surprised Pikachu
Oriental Light and Magic
Teresea May Dance Getty
Avengers: Infinity War /
Thanos Strongwill
Marvel Studios
The Scroll Of Truth robotatertot / Tate Parker
The Speed At Which
Drake & Josh / Nickelodeon
Lobsters Die
This Is America
This Is America / RCA
Execution
This Is Beyond
2 Lyca Productions
Science
Tom Sneak Enter Hanna-Barbera
Two Red Buttons Jake Clark
Thor Ragnarok / Marvel
You Can't Defeat Me
Studios

iiMemeIndex.com 40