Sometimes silly, sometimes cute, sometimes controversial: internet memes can be the only reason that people hear about important events.

2011 may have seen the creation of some of the silliest internet memes yet, but it was also a year that validated their existence too: they became important and integral tools for global information distribution, social judgment and satirical comment. Yet all the while they kept in touch with traditional values like pointless laughs and cats.

In this article we'll look at the best memes of the year (our Top 10 is listed at the bottom for people to argue over) and show how the savage wit and biting satire which frequently appeared in them traversed beyond the realms of cheap laughs and delivered astute social comment on controversial topics using the simplest of techniques.

What's a meme?

Memes are so simple yet comparitively difficult to describe to those who don't already know about them. Basically they are "things on the internet" - 'in jokes' and 'repeated references' that produce a knowing smile from those-in-the-know and a sense of bafflement from those who don't. Ultimately, the best way of teaching a novice about memes is to show them loads and wait for things to sink in. And we have plenty displayed below.

As we'll see, while memes tend to be popularised by communities on 4Chan, reddit and Tumblr. They can appear anywhere at any time and from the most unlikely sources. Heard someone taking about 'taking an arrow in the knee' lately? No? You're not alone. All will be explained below.

It's also worth pointing out that meme rhymes with cream. It's a mitigating circumstance in assault cases* to involuntarily slap anyone who pronounces the word as "may may."

* may not be true.

The importance of memes

A recent and telling example is that of Pepper Spray Cop.

There are still many people (non-internet-dwellers) who have no idea who Pepper Spray Cop is and what he relates to. But, millions of internet denizens - from all over the globe - first found out about this 'shameful' police abuse because of silly and satirical versions of the image being circulated online. Without meme proliferation, awareness would have been confined to a few YouTube videos and niche websites. In the end, the parodies - along with the original incident - were cited in mainstream news around the world.

It also produced a follow up meme which showed how ruthlessly satirical memes could be. Fox News' Megyn Kelly casually and callously dismissed the Pepper Spray incident by saying that pepper spray was "Just a food product, essentially".

This throwaway comment on rolling news didn't go unnoticed, however, and Kelly quickly became an unflattering meme. Millions of people around the world now know who she is and what she said courtesy of striking parodies like these:

While some have suggested that making light of such serious issues is, in itself, offensive that's the nature of satire. Validation comes from the awareness gained and the thought-provoking castigation of the original incident. It's shocking and outrageous yes - but the memes are used to show people that the original statement was too.

Meanwhile, in London, rioters were publicly humiliated online thanks to Photoshop wizardry and some great examples of creativity.

2011 also saw some internet movements go utterly mainstream - and for somewhat different reasons. On the one hand, Rebacca Black's song Friday, was such a viral hit that it appeared in mainstream media everywhere for being the 'Worst song of all time'. At the other end of the scale, the 'Occupy' and 'We are the 99%' movement all started slowly online and have grown to become major news items around the world.

Go Aussie

Australia got in on the act this year. A Stanley Cup Final ice hockey riot in Canada saw the birth of the Vancouver Riot Kiss meme.

The "make love, not war" image of a couple tenderly kissing on a street with riot cops and mayhem surrounding them went round the world thanks to silly (and striking) internet pictures. The male protagonist was Aussie Scott Jones and the back story can be read, here.

The images ensured that the incident was known about all over the world rather than predominantly in North America.

There was also the case of Casey Heynes - the Zangief kid.

A NSW school bullying incident captured on a cameraphone saw Casey getting punched repeatedly before snapping and body slamming the protagonist a la Street Fighter star, Zangief. It made the news in Australia but saw Casey become an internet sensation. He's now faced with the decision of whether to continue living his life as a victim while suffering condemning "violence doesn't solve anything' diatribe from the sort of people who like to use the word "inappropriate" OR embracing internet communities like 4Chan who universally declared him a hero and made him into an action movie star of sorts. He even met Justin Bieber. Although it's not clear what that did to his credibility.

Memes of the year

You may feel that there are some blatant omissions below - let us know if there's something that you feel HAS to make the list. But here are some of the best examples of the most talked about memes of 2011.

January

The year started with a new meme religion - the worship of Inglip all because of reCaptcha and a reddit user.

We were also introduced to Scumbag Steve and, more-importantly, his hat. Together they allowed us to both vent at the selfish actions of others and just be downright silly.

Also, a homeless man found employment thanks to the internet

February

Steve's scumbag hat could have been worn by a few kill-joy music execs who thought they were losing revenue thanks to parodies of Thom Yorke dancing to a heap of songs he didn't write in February. Mercifully, many versions still avoided the dreaded take-down, copyright-infringement notices. The below version is probably the funniest, but no one should miss him dancing to Beyonce, here. Or Beyonce dancing to Radiohead, here.

The Arab Spring kicked off and was brought to the attention of many partly thanks to Bread Helmet guy.

Meanwhile, Bear Grylls didn't seem to stop drinking his own piss :(

March

Ponies became the guilty pleasure of many men who should probably know better. The internal 4Chan war that pitted lovers vs. haters only made them more popular. Bronies were born.

Charlie Sheen went all Tiger Blood

And there was a new definition of Black Friday. Few give Black the credit she surely deserves for rhyming Bowl with Cereal. Furthermore, the derision, dismissal and parodying of Black's only-too-evident angst at "wondering which seat to take" illustrates a general lack of allegorical awareness of the social comment Black is clearly trying to make - the astute allusion to there being too much choice in the world has been lost to many. Other commentators lamented the unfairness of how video games still get blamed for violence in the world but how the inspired feelings of murder, generated by watching Friday from beginning to end, get completely ignored by an outraged society.

But the month was rescued/underlined by Australia's the Zangief kid. Bullied for much of his life, he snapped, fought back, got suspended from school and generally condemned by a mainstream media which understood, but couldn't condone such an aweso... erm, inappropriate response.

April

Things became more upbeat in April thanks to the explosive appearance of arguably the most epic internet cat of them all.

Pop tart-bodied, rainbow-trailing Nyan Cat made an appearance in all kinds of other memes and appeared in heaps of variations including a smooth jazz version, a Russian version, an awesome Brian Eno-esque 800x slower version and he even spawned his own Nemesis.

It was used as a progress bar on Youtube and loading animation on Know Your Meme. Hitler had mixed feelings though and swore a lot.

"Mark Zukerburg" kept getting notes passed to him.

And some people found it funny to put Steve Buscemi's eyes everywhere.

At opposite ends of the political spectrum, a Hitler House appeared along with the reincarnation of Lenin... as a cat.

Some babies debated modern interpretations of Nietzsche, or something

And Good Guy Greg became everyone's best mate. Greg and Steve were two of many new "advice animals". Other honourable mentions go to Good Dog Greg, Misunderstood Mitch and Dating Site Murderer.

May

The beginning of May saw Lulzsec burst on to the scene and arguably gave much of the greater world populace its first glimpse of a Rage comics character and some ASCII art.

The group often used memes to spread word of its actions.

Then the end of the world happened and Rapture Bombing photos provided evidence of people being spirited away.

Planking went global.

However, things went awry in Australia when the act of lying down caused a fatality in Queensland which led one TV presenter on the 7.30 Report to question whether it should be banned(!)

Happier news saw The Royal Wedding and widespread meme-approval of Princess Beatrice's hat

although not everyone was interested.

Shortly afterwards, Osama Bin Laden was killed. It begged the question: 'is it still too soon?'

But it was The Situation Room that saw most spoofs.

June

Love and violence were everywhere in June. We met Cara who wanted an online date. She's not really a dog person though.

Meanwhile, in Canada, a couple had everyone talking about juxtaposition

While Hyperbole and a Half's little-known Clean ALL the things comic went ballistic.

July

A month of villains saw Casey Anthony became the new OJ. The internet showed its displeasure.

And some internet dwellers lost sleep over their new uninvited house guest.

August

London's riots saw some of the most creative Photoshop jobs of all time and globally humiliated hordes of thugs.





Spock, however, wasn't impressed.

Horse Maning became popular in some parts.

Why?

And a new whale species appeared.

September

September saw taxidermy become cool again.

While God took a day off...

While it was rampant all year and existed pre-2011, it's worth taking advantage of the lack of September entries by mentioning the explosion in popularity of 60's Spiderman which kept going nuts on sites like 4Chan.

October

A new iPhone launched new memes in October.

But things got serious with 99%. Many people posted poignant stories online.

There were plenty of reversals too.

Things became less clear cut when a Halloween-based cultural awareness campaign was deemed too politically correct...





November

Neil deGrasse Tyson became the internet's badass in November.

While Lt. Pike casually sauntered into web notoriety thanks to his demonstration of unnecessary force when controlling a vicious crowd of sitting-down-quietly people

Fox News' Megyn Kelly didn't see what all the fuss was about.

December

The year rounded off with a reminder that memes could come from the unlikeliest places. With millions of people playing Skyrim, it wasn't too surprising that "Fus Ro Dah" started entering common language.

But who could have predicted that in a game that spanned an enormous virtual universe and dealt with dragons, uprisings, mythical beasts, magic, quests, murder, theft, songs and ancient fantasy lore the dominant meme to appear would came from the most minor members of an enormous supporting cast who off-handedly announced, "I used to be an adventurer like you. But then I took an arrow in the knee". Truly one of the silliest memes of the year.

Top 10

It's not an end of the year article without a top ten list to annoy everyone and court controversy. Feel free to point out who has been missed and I might hastily rewrite something. But here's the ABC Tech & Games Top 10 memes of 2011:-

10. Bread Guy - a great meme symbol for the Arab Spring.

9. Check Tester - who else could make taxidermy cool again?

8. Planking - getting old maybe but immensely popular.

7. Princess Beatrice's hat - for catching global mainstream media's attention.

6. Scumbag Steve's hat. A very useful and potentially-subtle way to declare disgust for someone or something without attracting too much attention.

5. Photoshop Looter - for brilliantly humiliating the world's scumbags.

4. Occupy/the 99% - caught the world's imagination and helped foster real-world action.

3. Pepper Spray Cop - perfectly illustrates how memes can make an otherwise-local event global.

2. Rebecca Black's Friday - The big mainstream success story. Illustrates how memes perhaps shouldn't make an otherwise-local event global.

1. Nyan Cat - Becoming arguably the number 1 cat on the internet is undoubtedly the greatest feat of all.

And Finally...

If you still have no idea what this article is on about, the best place to go is Know Your Meme which once again has done a sterling job of tracking and categorizing memes throughout the year.

What was your favourite? Disagree with what's above? Let us know below.