Psy was like a meme who jumped out of the internet and landed in real life.

Whereas 2011 saw memes enter the mainstream and disseminate and popularise the news of important events, 2012 saw them revert to form: cheap laughs, silly songs and hate. 2012 also marked the explosion in popularity of many memes which had already been bubbling away for, in some cases, several years.

Australia saw a few global hits with top honours going to Gotye. Elsewhere, what the Olympics failed to deliver, the US Election made up for in spades.

As with last year, if you've no idea what a meme is, the best way to find out is to follow this list. Then you'll understand. For those who already know, there's our top 10 listed at the bottom for you to complain about.

As before, and because some people get upset about this sort of thing, what follows are key examples each meme. In some cases that might be the viral video which inspired it. Here we go...

January

As is tradition, 2012 started off with a hangover derived from what came before. As such, many people, ahem, were shuffling into the new year:

A dog kept making phone calls

Nokia phones somehow became cool again (again):

Up until some guy put one in a blender.

Basement dwellers once again started critiquing females





And some girls said "shit."

February

Facebook started crawling with How People See Me posters. To be fair, some weren't terrible



A man found his perfect dog

Also...

A cockatoo drank from a chocolate fountain and Lindsay Lohan is not looking so good these days. YouTube's Kevin Allocca explained why videos go viral.

March

Brace Yourselves peaked

Bracing for Kony2012, perhaps?

Keep Calm came back in a big way. By the end of the year, English Premiership Footballers were showing off T-shirts with it on.

Angelina's leg upstaged everything at the Oscars

After playing Mass Effect for some 200 hours over several years, some people were a smidge disappointed with the ending.

Possibly due to the huge buzz that Game of Thrones was making, Sean Bean's Hobbit-based, "One Does Not Simply" meme made a big comeback.

Puns made a comeback and arguably became funny for the first time ever in human history.

More here

April

Hillary Clinton sent a text

Amazingly, a dog really did text back

A bear then dropped from a tree

More here

Dolan duk made a unpoular cumbak with hiz warped distopian moron diznee raep-fild wrld.

Titanic memes reappeared with a popular reprisal of The Winslet's, "Draw me like one of your French girls"

Speaking of models...

However, maybe not this lady



After all, ain't no body got time for that.

Except maybe this guy

May

The letter 'M' seemed to stand for both May and meme.

Someone was a bit confused

Bad Luck Brian got popular

Evil Cows: The Return

But it was around this time that Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know was peaking in internet interest.

Memes were everywhere...

Remixes, covers and parodies of the song flourished so much that Gotye himself remixed them.

Indeed, Gotye looked all set to be the online musical hit of the year.

Another musical hit wasn't really a meme, but it was one of the greatest things to appear on the internet all year... much to the chagrin of countless boyfriends who were forced to watch it countless times.

Also, the force was strong with this one. Diablo 3 launched to massive hype and introduced Error 37 to the world. Mitt Romney learned a valuable lesson about the power of modern media and the internet (or not) when his iPhone app misspelled, "America."

June

The month started with tragedy as Mr Trolololol, singer of the happiest song in the world, passed away.

And so, in his honour...

A US breakfast cereal went bananas

Suddenly, Ermahgerd!

Also, The Skerm.

Meanwhile, Anita Sarkeesian told the vast, anonymous YouTube audience that everything they liked was sexist. But things got nasty and the backlash was intense.

A different young lady played up to and embraced her massive internet fame as she became the face of Overly Attached Girlfriend

She even found a boyfriend, or brother - it wasn't quite clear.

But eventually, someone put her together with her first love, Justin Bieber.

The meme took a turn in September when Kristen Stewart cheated on R-Patz and became, Underly Attached Girlfriend

A kid from Africa was skeptical

Carly Rae Jepson looked all set to be the online musical hit of the year.

July

July looked set to thrive thanks to Olympic memes but they didn't really take off. Australia went a bit silly by slamming swimmers posing with guns despite sending the swim team on a team-bonding shooting day beforehand.

Much came down to how terrible Channel 9's Olympic coverage was.

Also in Australia, offensive Aboriginal memes got banned. However, banning memes from the internet ain't gonna happen.

That's not to say they're all bad

Forced memes rarely work, but this anti-Shell one did. The oil company complained about people manipulating the truth about them. Don't you hate it when that happens?

August

A story appeared. In GIF form. Here.

McKayla Maroney wasn't impressed.

Still...

Jesus got a facelift

Clint Eastwood talked to a chair

And then a meme seemed to step out of the internet and become real. Over 1.1 billion views later and it's still not getting old.

September

Australia went global again thanks to billionaire, Gina Reinhardt, urging the Australian government to lower minimum wage restrictions to compete with African labourers working for $2 a day.

The internet was not amused.

Finally, Bagel Head jumped out of the internet and hit people square (or should that be round?) in the face.

What on earth were they doing?

Stahp!

October

Things got drunk

There was an election which was full of wonderful memes, gaffes, sour-faced Fox News presenters and of course, Binders Full of Women

The US election was a veritable treasure trove of memes. See our special report, here.

November

Yet another Australian song went global. This time it came from Melbourne's Metro trains of all places

4Chan invented Lenny but quickly wished it hadn't

In the US, Papa John slammed Obamacare with unsurprising consequences.

A few more comebacks...

A bear confessed

Suddenly... Sudden Clarity Clarence exploded in popularity

December

Finally, a new epic cat appeared. Though he wasn't happy about it.

A monkey went to IKEA

The year ended with some helpful advice from a new advice animal

Naturally, he had to have an arch nemesis: Malicious Advice Mallard

Also: Do You Even Lift came back strongly.

Top 10 of the year

There's a clear winner, obviously. But do you agree with the following? What were your favourites?

Honourable mention and personal favourite: Sweet brown - Ain't no time to get bored of it

10. Ikea monkey - Awwwwward winner

9. Grumpy cat - Sadly, the year's greatest kitteh

8. Condescending Wonka - Awesomely aloof

7. Kony2012 - Horrible but undeniably popular

6. Ermahgerd!

5. Overly Attached Girlfriend - She loves it really

4. So call me maybe - Still going strong

3. Gotye - Impossible to think anything musical could beat him at the time

2. US Election memes - Binders Full of Women!

1. Gangnam Style - What else?

Elsewhere:

We're a bit late so here's more meme of last year

Smosh

KYM

Kudos again to Know Your Meme, Memebase, Tumblr, 4Chan and Reddit for creating, distributing and curating much of the above.