The news can tell you what people are doing, and historians can tell you what it all means, but if you want to know how folks are feeling, there is no better measure than memes. 

A successful meme is one that grows organically out of a news event, gets taken out of context, and is riffed upon by people who then share it widely. Which memes go viral can tell you which nerves are frayed. So where were our hearts and minds in 2024? It was a wild year. Let’s review.

In August, a passel of Waymos in San Francisco drove into a parking lot in the middle of the night and got into a honking fight. The next night, they did it again. The honking woke neighbors and prompted a software update from Waymo, but the sight of a bunch of robot cars honking at each other stirred anxieties of robot overloads and prompted a “LoFi Robotaxi Hip Hop” livestream and memes like “The future that tech wants has arrived in San Francisco,” a play on the meme “The future liberals want.” In the original video of the event, the phrase “Waymos be wildin” was born.

The most adorable meme of the year was born in a Thai zoo and named for “bouncy pork.” Moo Deng became a near-instant viral hit when the zoo shared her images on Instagram. Some theorized this was because the baby pygmy hippo sparked feelings of “cuteness aggression”: when something is so adorable you just want to eat it up. But it was also because she’s a bundle of contradictions. She’s a hippo, a synonym for enormity. And yet she’s itty bitty. The San Francisco Zoo has a pygmy hippo of its own, if you want to get your Moo Deng fix in person. 

After 22-year-old Tennessean Haliey Welch went viral on TikTok in June for describing in a pronounced Southern accent her special instructions for performing oral sex, she was initially embarrassed to be known as the “Hawk Tuah Girl.” But when people began profiting from the clip’s popularity, Welch got into the game, parlaying her 15 minutes of fame into a branding empire. She got a podcast, “Talk Tuah with Haliey Welch,” and booked guests like comic Whitney Cummings, Jojo Siwa, and Mark Cuban.

Still, Welch may have overplayed her hand this month when she launched a cryptocurrency — trading as “HAWK,” naturally — which has prompted an SEC investigation into an alleged pump-and-dump scheme. The hustle was impressive, but America may finally be done spitting on that thang.

When British hyperpop star Charli XCX dropped “Brat,” in June, it suddenly became “brat summer.” Then Charli tweeted “Kamala IS brat”  the day the veep announced she was running. The Harris campaign ran with a Brat-green filter as a way of projecting cool. OK — but just what is brat, actually? It’s a state of mind, an above-all-your-bullshit stance that combines Third Wave feminist defiance with a lack of fear over being a little messy. Turns out, Kamala wasn’t so brat after all.

When “Dark MAGA” convert Elon Musk hopped around like an excited child onstage at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, memesters pounced. Musk has a thing for jumping with excitement, but the photo that best captured the spirit of the event showed Trump giving his excitable new lieutenant the side-eye, as if to signal irritation with Musk’s inability to grasp who the real boss is. Commentators comparing the world’s richest man to a Roblox character or a home-schooled kid. Others played up the bromance factor, editing the Tesla CEO into key scenes from “Titanic” and “Dirty Dancing.”

When plus-size trans Latina TikTok influencer Jools Lebron uploaded a video explaining her take on modesty, a potent catchphrase was born. “Very demure, very mindful” may be a tongue-in-cheek satire of “proper” femininity, but overnight, the phrase appeared on T-shirts and as the caption to a million Instagram Stories. Content creators revealed the demure way to eat a slice of pizza, while detractors pointed out that aspirational “classiness” is, well, classist. Still, Lebron won: Airlines and cosmetics brands swooped in, and she was able to pay for her medical transition. 

The Sunset District’s rage over Sup. Joel Engardio’s support for Proposition K — the measure that closed a section of the Great Highway to cars permanently — has only intensified since SF voters passed it last month. Enter the X parody account @crookejenkins, which created a three-minute country-music track spoofing the neighborhood’s conservative bent. “Joel can try to stop me, but I’m driving on it,” the song goes. “Save the Great Highway, save it all / Pop some bottles and eight ball.”

Eight-year-old New Jerseyan Christian Joseph became a TikTok sensation in June on the strength of his cool demeanor — specifically, his ability to make the mewing “rizz face,” a masculine variation of “duck face” that riffs on Gen Alpha slang and “Batman” villain the Riddler. This turned him into the Rizzler, the world’s youngest gigachad, instructing the world in the art of stroking one’s chin like a boss.

Move over, Sweet James. There is only one truly meme-able personal-injury attorney in our hearts, and it’s Anh Phoong. Her blue-and-yellow rhyming ads — “Something wrong? Call Anh Phoong!” — have vaulted her to stardom across California, to the point that this year South of Market queer bar The Stud hosted a meet-and-greet. Phoong Law takes on cases involving car crashes, dog bites, and “brain injuries,” and it seems to be prospering, too. The firm’s holiday party included dragon dancers, a Michael Jackson impersonator, and a logo sculpted in ice. 

“There’s a real chance he’s hot,” thirsted one person on Twitter, as images of UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione hit the internet. Once the public saw Mangione reportedly “flirting” with a girl in a New York hostel, the floodgates broke loose, meme-wise. Some openly hoped the “vigilante” wouldn’t get caught. Once he was caught, every image, from his mug shot to his perp walk, went viral. Today, “Saint Luigi,” as the Instagram account Good Clean Memes anointed him, has entered the Internet’s all-time pantheon.