Most Popular Memes Trending on Social Right Now (Updated October)

While it’s important to share product releases, sale reminders and more, memes are an incredibly effective way to gain engagement on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. 

Not only do they provide fun and fast entertainment for your audience, but they also help develop your brand’s voice, identity and infuse personality into your social profiles. Memes can be an impactful way to engage your community — when done right.  

In this blog, we discuss:

• October 2024 trending memes. 
• Monthly trending memes.
• What are memes?
• How to find trending memes. 
• Should brands share memes? 

As we settle into spooky season, here are the memes making the rounds on social media.

Mama, a girl behind YOU 

This meme has taken on a life of its own on the internet. Originating from a clip of a child taking their mom’s photo, a bitmoji appears in frame, causing the child to say, ‘Mama, a girl behind you!’ 

Creators are using this meme in TikTok videos, captions and more, whether they’re putting their own spin on it or simply using the meme for any content involving a surprise, or of course, someone standing behind you.

All Things Moo Deng 

Moo Deng is the pygmy hippo taking the world by storm. Whether it’s an SNL parody (HOSE!), cute videos of the pygmy biting her trainer’s leg or funny memes professing their love for the pint-sized animal, Moo Deng content presents many opportunities to engage your audience for a laugh. 

Which memes are trending this month? Brands can expect to lean into Gen Z and Alpha slang as we hold onto Summer and say hello to Fall. 

Define Aura

This trend is primarily popular among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and involves sharing an image or video of a celebrity, character or even a product with lots of ‘aura’ — a term which essentially means your ‘vibe’ or a specific quality you feel someone strongly demonstrates. This is a great chance for brands aiming to target a younger audience to creatively draw attention to their brand and its strongest qualities.

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With Summer ending and the Olympics in full swing, the Paris 2024 games are providing audiences with a variety of funny memes, whether you work in sports or not.

Silver-Medal Olympic Sharp Shooters

The contrast between South Korea’s Kim Yeji and Turkey’s Yusuf Dikeç took the internet by storm, with creators and meme accounts everywhere posting the silver medalists side-by-side and poking jokes at the juxtaposition between their styles. While Turkey’s Dikeç took a laid-back approach to his Olympic event, Kim’s style leaned futuristic, providing great material for ‘comparison’ memes, like the example below. 

The Muffin Man

Henrik Christiansen might not have won a medal, but he did win over audiences on TikTok with his Olympic food reviews, particularly for the chocolate muffin. This positive reception has spawned memes from Christiansen himself, others in the Olympic Village and more.

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As Summer enters our lives, here are trending memes this month, along with the fully-conscious baby, looking for a man in finance trend and more covered in our monthly TikTok trend round-up. 

I Shall Hold My Post

This trend involves using this sound, and either lipsynching to it or simply letting it play in the background. In your TikTok or Reel, describe a situation where you’re standing guard or have a duty to fulfill, from watching kids by the pool or even saving a seat for someone.

Three Tickets To Challengers, Please 

This is a fun meme making the rounds on X and is quite easy to partake in. The trend involves sharing a photo of three people, particularly two men and a woman — bonus points for a trio that feels surprising, fun or a bit different — and sharing it with the caption ‘Three tickets to challengers, please’. If you know, you know.

Here’s what’s making users laugh across the internet this month. 

You Wouldn’t Last an in Hour in the Asylum Where They Raised Me

This trend is making the rounds on X, TikTok and Instagram — on video-based social platforms, this is paired with the Taylor Swift song ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’. On platforms like X, simply write the lyrics then post your ‘asylum’, which can be a place, game, activity or anything from your past or present you’d like to share (or poke fun at). 

Met Gala Memes 

Despite being just one night of looks, the Meta Gala is the internet gift that keeps giving all month (and maybe more) — brands should look for opportunities to engage with relevant Met Gala content, or create your Meta Gala laughs on your own social profiles. 

Brain Rot

This simple trend involves using a template with two characters having a conversation — the left, asks a simple question (for brands, this can be something related to your brand or a product you’d like to highlight). The character on the right should reply with something in ‘TikTok language’ — for example. “I love your new outfit!” the character on the right could reply, “It’s giving hot girl summer,” an example of slang originating from the internet.

I’m Looking For

This trend caught on from a girl who sang the words, “I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6’5’, blue eyes’ while jokingly asking, ‘did I just write the song of the summer?’ From there, DJ’s remixed this into real songs, while the rest of the internet ran with it, using related sounds in their content or creating their own funky versions, like the influencer below who used it to plug going-out outfit recommendations at her link in bio.

Curious which memes are trending memes this April? Here’s what’s trending across social media this month. 

Solar Eclipse

The solar eclipse happened on April 8, 2024 — with that, comes memes, published both before and after the eclipse. This meme pokes fun at people who stared directly at the eclipse, who predicted major events and more. 

Social Media is Fake 

This trend involves using either a carousel or a video, and sharing a selfie with a text overlay that says ‘social media is fake, so here are some things I’m ashamed to admit.’ Next, share a few different frames (in either a video or carousel) with things you’d like to admit — these can be personal, relatable, or even humorous. Some users choose to get vulnerable, while others like to poke fun with an obsession or other quirk they have. This trend is happening across TikTok and Instagram, so feel free to play around with both earnest and comedy content. 

Which One Reminds You Of…

This meme has been making the rounds for awhile now, but is really taking off this month. For this meme, simply upload a chart, carousel or video montage of various animals, characters or even inanimate objects, with a title card that says ‘Which one reminds you of your friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.?’

What memes are making users laugh this March? We’ve rounded up a few of the most popular memes making the rounds. 

Silly Goose

This meme involves using a TikTok or Instagram carousel post to share an image of you and a friend or another duo, and a pair of geese on the next slide that represent the duo. On the first, write ‘you better not act like a silly goose tonight’ to drive the point home.

World’s Best

This meme can be done by nearly anyone, and involves talking about a competition to be the best at something you or your brand does well, but a specific person or even stereotype you believe does it better. In the example below, a nurse pokes fun at her belief that other nurses who wear clogs, baggy scrubs and have pixie cuts are often the best nurses around by saying “me arriving to the world’s best nurse competition but my opponent has on baggy scrubs, a pixie cut, and is wearing clogs.”

Small Mouse, Smaller Violin

This meme is quite similar to the ‘I’m just a girl’ trend — rather than vocalize this, this meme requires you to share a situation posed as a question that you don’t want to do. On the first slide, include a statement or question — the example below says ‘Your car will need an oil change’. On the next slide, include a photo of this big-eyes mouse with a bow and a few images that misinterpret the question or statement on the first slide. In this example, a variety of lip oils and hair oil are included to illustrate the ‘oil’ you’re most familiar with.  

All That Work 

To do this meme, simply use text to describe something that you spent a lot of time or work on, that wasn’t necessarily ‘worth it’. Use the ‘all that work and what did it get me’ audio to drive the point home.

So, what are memes, exactly? Memes are often funny copy, images, videos or other online content that usually spread rapidly and are reproduced by other users in the form of jokes or incorporating the original joke or visual in online content.

Why Are They Called Memes, and What Makes a Meme?

Memes earned their name from Richard Dawkins, who used the term in his book 'The Selfish Gene'. The word ‘meme’ is derived from the Greek word ‘mimema’, which means ‘imitated’ — this name fits memes perfectly, as they transcend a joke when they become duplicated, edited and widely shared.

If a meme is something used and widely spread, is a GIF a meme? Not necessarily — GIFs could be derived from a popular meme, but since users can’t edit GIFs for reproduction in the same way they can text and video, GIFs aren’t the exact same as memes. 

Luckily for social marketers, there are many ways to find trending memes — sharing outdated memes (even by 1-2 months) can make your brand or social team appear out of touch or out of the loop. To prevent this, your social media marketing strategy should leave room for agility so your team doesn’t rely on pre-scheduled memes that could become irrelevant quickly. 

To find trending memes, social marketers should:

• Follow a variety of meme accounts. Popular accounts include @daquan and @epicfunnypage. Some of the most popular aggregate meme accounts contain profane names, so take a peek around Instagram and follow a few accounts that share a variety of funny content. 
• Bookmark blogs like this that are regularly updated with round-ups of the latest memes. 
• Utilize Reddit for marketing — Reddit is a trove of funny, humorous content and trending memes that are often shared there before anywhere else. 

Should Brands Share Memes?

Overall, depending on your industry and audience, entertaining content can help drive conversions and engagement — but this isn’t always the case. One way to discover if memes would resonate with your audience include creating buyer personas. Buyer personas involve diving into existing and target audience demographics, researching their likes, dislikes, online habits and more to help inform your content marketing strategy. For example, if you plan to target Gen Z, including memes is likely beneficial for your content mix. Insider Intelligence reports Gen Z is more likely to stay on platforms that embrace memes, illustrated by just 2.4% of Gen Z planning to leave Twitter (or X), compared to 9% of users from other generations.

Why are memes so popular?

Memes are so popular because they’re a form of social entertainment that’s quick and easy to read and digest. Entertaining audiences is paramount to attracting them and engaging on social media, and memes are one of the most common ways to do this, that also let social marketers express their brand’s humor and personality. 

How to make a meme popular?

It can be challenging to make an original meme popular, as the nature of memes are quite organic. 

However, there are some tips you can use to increase your chances of creating popular content: 

• Dive into competitive insights and use custom reporting to discover what memes competitors share and set benchmarks for your own meme performance. 
• Revisit your buyer personas biannually or annually in case the content your target demographic engages with has changed.
• Take time weekly to explore what memes are taking over TikTok and Instagram — even if you don’t incorporate these into your content schedule, it’s helpful to know what type of humor and jokes resonate with a wide range of users. 

What is the most popular meme ever? 

When it comes to determining the most popular meme, this is a little tricky as the platforms and type of memes commonly shared have changed over time.

Some of the most popular memes of all time include: 

• Keep calm. 
• Woman yelling at a cat during dinner. ‍
• Troll-face meme.