2023 was a lot of things, but one thing’s for sure–it was an excellent year for memes. From cringe-worthy raps to pop stars nibbling on nuggets, countless meme-worthy moments dominate the internet. It’s hard to narrow them down to only ten memes, but we did our best to capture the humor, insanity, and randomness of 2023’s memes.

Here are the ten best memes of 2023, ranked:

10. Angela Bassett Doing The Thing

We all saw the rap. Ariana DeBose delivered a powerful performance at the BAFTAs that elicited strong and divided reactions. She boldly sang, “Angela Bassett did the thing; Viola Davis, my woman king; Blanchett, Cate, you’re a genius; And Jamie Lee, you are all of us!” It was wordy; it was cringe; it was a lot. But no line stood out as much as Angela Bassett doing the thing. People instantly began to speculate about what “the thing” might be. Starring in Black Panther 2? Winning a Golden Globe? Being Angela Bassett? We may never know, but we’ll never get the line out of our heads.

9. Taylor Swift Eating A Piece Of Chicken With Ketchup And Seemingly Ranch

This one is a bit out there, but that’s precisely what makes it such a fitting encapsulation of 2023. Taylor Swift was everywhere: performing in the Era’s tour, rereleasing 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and dating Travis Kelce. But perhaps her most memeable moment came not from anything she did, but from a single caption on a fan’s Instagram account. While sharing a smile with a friend, Taylor Swift posed for a photograph with a cocktail plate that featured a lone chicken nugget. The caption noted, “Taylor Swift was savoring a piece of chicken with ketchup and what appeared to be ranch!” Soon, a wave of ketchup and what seemed like ranch covered everything. Heinz kicked it off by releasing a new ketchup flavor. Hidden Valley followed suit. The Empire State Building even lit up in red and white to celebrate. The chicken has vanished, but its memory will always stay with us. The chicken is long gone but lives on forever through memes.

8. The Ludicrously Capacious Bag

This line from the hit TV show Succession is arguably a more giant breakout star than Jeremy Strong. When Tom Wambsgans roasted that woman’s bag for being “ludicrously capacious,” the phrase became an instant classic.

Suddenly, everything in sight became ludicrously capacious–Gwyneth Paltrow’s courtroom purse, Kim Kardashian’s Birkin, your mother-in-law’s new wig. We hope that future memes will teach us as much about vocabulary as we learned from a single bag.

7. Girl Dinner Meme

What makes something a girl’s dinner? Who knows. Inspired by a TikTok by Olivia Maher, the “girl dinner” concept took off faster than a wildfire. Soon, people were showing off their girl dinners through memes, consisting of anything from a bag of almonds and some hummus to a single Oreo and a glass of red wine. Just because it’s not filling doesn’t mean it can’t be a girl’s dinner.

6. Big Red Boots

This year, celebrities and influencers all around New York Fashion Week wore $350 rubbery monstrosities that smack of Astro Boy; they have become the butt of ridicule online. We understand that excellent footwear and cartoonish abstraction are a nice statement, but let’s try to do better next year.

5. Timothée & Kylie’s Debut

There are aspects about being a celebrity that you just can’t get into; it’s a high-stakes game with major drawbacks. You can’t hang around casually with your reported boyfriend or girlfriend and enjoy coffee at Starbucks while wearing your hideous pajamas. You can be sure that covert photographers will be following you wherever you go. When every action you take might become a headline, the fight is real! When Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner declared their relationship, the internet went crazy and Twitter went crazy with ridiculously funny messages. We never realized we needed a new power duo like Kylie and Timothee until recently.

4. Boston Slide

A video of a Boston police officer slipping off a playground slide surfaced online and spread like powdered lightning long before the uniformed cop shot face down out the tube. Though it is not clear where the clip came from, police confirmed with statements that what was shown on the video happened and an unidentified officer had been working at this moment, though he remained only slightly injured. The slide also became a tourist attraction; so many daredevils came to ride it that authorities had to fence it off at night. It was even converted into a location on Google Maps.

3. Babygirl

Pedro Pascal. Kendall Roy. Jeremy Allen White. Have we brought up Kendall Roy? All of them became babygirls in 2023. What does the term “so babygirl” mean? It cannot be defined. It turns out that being a baby or even a female is not necessary; in fact, this adorable moniker is most often (and sweetly) connected to adult males. Even though it was only another word for “cute,” it was particularly widely used as a sarcastic label applied to some of the most sinister or even downright evil TV characters.

2. Tube Girl

Sabrina Bahsoon, a Malaysian model and influencer, gained popularity through her dancing and lip-syncing videos on TikTok, which were taken while riding the London Underground. “Tube Girl” inspired many others to reproduce the trend on their own, and popularity reached Bahsoon so much that she participated in fashion shows in Paris, London, and Milan.

1. Barbenheimer

The top meme of the year is also the most culturally dominating. The joint release of two such different movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer, led to a perfect mishmash of memes. Pink mushroom clouds. Ideas for the perfect viewing order (Barbie, cigarette, Oppenheimer). Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy spliced together like Two-Face from Batman. It was a jarring mashup of memes, but also a perfect encapsulation of the duality of life. Or something like that.

With 2023 setting such a high bar for memes, we can only hope that 2024 is up to the challenge. Who knows what awaits us–more movie characters serving realness? Is Taylor Swift grazing on a crouton? An even more ludicrously capacious bag? We can only dare to dream.

New to Crazed? Sign up for our newsletter! Subscribe now