12 days of Meme-mas: January 2012

2012 was a great year for the internet, as you may have previously noticed. But there are only so many montages you can be expected to sit through, what with all the Honey Boo Boos and Call Me Maybes that devoured our minds and social media over the last 12 months, so here’s our retrospective breakdown of the best of the net in 2012, starting with what now seems like a time long lost our memories, January 2012.

Technically this one kicked off in December 2011, but it wasn’t really until the new year that the trend took off. Took off being a massive understatement. Shit X Says became one of the most popular memes of the year, not only in its original format, (the original creators even getting a book deal out of the affair), but also inspiring so many offshoots of the meme that it’s actually difficult to follow. What started life as a twitter account last year quickly snowballed into a video version in the form of Shit Girls Say, which spawned Shit Black Girls Say, Shit Single Girls Say, Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls etc., but we then had Shit Beyonce Says, Shit Madonna Says, basically anyone who was anyone was talking shit on YouTube. And it ain’t showing signs of dying soon, with the latest in the Shit X Says entries,Shit Lana Del Rey Says (Paradise Edition) only released last month and proving to still be a hit. Here’s hoping that with the dawn of 2013, we’ll put a nail in the Shit Saying coffin and be done with it.

Honourable Mentions

Gotye covers: We had many, many, many covers of what went on to be the most played song of 2012, and then even more parody versions, but the below became one of the most viewed videos of the year, amassing over 141 million views to date. And it's probably the only version of the song that we can still listen to.

Lana Del Rey dancing: She became one of the biggest music stars of the year, but it wasn't until her poor performance on SNL in January this year that sent her into high meme territory, with a GIF of her own unique form of dancing being stuck into everything from historical photos to recent pop culture events. Tumblr, of course, is the haven of this bizarre and delightfully entertaining phenomenon.