

(Brady Hall, Pepper Spraying Cop Tumblr)

Inspired by the Web site Know Your Meme’s year-end tribute to the best memes of 2011, we thought we’d celebrate some of the unsung memes of 2011. Here’s our round up of some of the best Internet ephemera you may have missed:

Know Your Meme Editor’s Choice: Best Memes of 2011:

1. Rebecca Black — The wannabe teen pop starlet who created, along with the Ark Music Factory, one of the worst songs and music videos ever. The inane choice of lyrics (“Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday/Today it is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)/… Tomorrow is Saturday/And Sunday comes afterwards) was what really clinched Black’s meme fame.

Underrated alternative: Lana Del Rey . If we’re going to make fun of a singer on the Internet of questionable authenticity, why not make fun of one who can actually sing? Lana Del Rey incited the ire of hipsters everywhere when it was revealed that she was not actually the former trailer-park “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” who could tug at the heartstrings of Williamsburg residents — she was Lizzie Grant, daughter of an investment banker, whose marketing team came up with her new identity. Not even her lips are real, allegedly — but the girl can sing!

2. Planking — everyone lies down face-first in unusual places, and takes pictures of themselves.



The Leisure Dive ("Trend Benders," Men's Journal )

3. Occupy Wall Street (Pepper Spray Cop, Hipster Cop, etc.) — The year’s biggest political meme had several submemes associated with it. The most popular was the Pepper Spray Cop, who was Photoshopped into moments throughout art history. Hipster cop, Occupy Sesame Street and “We Are the 99 Percent,” were among the others.



View Photo Gallery: Lt. John Pike, photographed pepper spraying passive protesters at U.C. Davis, has become the subject of a meme inserting him in great moments in history and art history.



Riot police walk in the street as a couple kiss on June 15, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada. (By Rich Lam/GETTY IMAGES)

4. First World Problems — A hashtag and photo series complaining about things that would only bother people who live in privileged countries — such as having to wait in a long line for a new iPhone, or eating a salad with too much arugula. The meme was criticized by the Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal for implying that people from the Third World don’t also crave technology and luxury.



(Know Your Meme)



( Know Your Meme)