2025 Meme of the Month Calendar (& Honorable Mentions)

2025 was an incredible year for memes…so much so, in fact, that we had to put together a calendar-style retrospective to honor all the memes that got us through the past year(s). Below, take a journey through every month of 2025 and revisit the memes that defined each one—with explanations, examples, and even honorable mentions for other popular memes! Plus, read insights from our wikiHow-exclusive interviews with TikTok, trend, and meme experts.

2025 Meme Calendar (Image)

Trend expert and TikTok influencer Jake Benedict names 6-7 as easily the best and biggest meme of 2025, reaching widespread virality in March, but remaining (hugely) popular throughout the year. Other top memes of 2025, by month, include:

January: Italian Brainrot
February: Cave Divers
March: 6-7
April: Chicken Jockey
May: Blue Shirt Guy Dance
June: It’s Not Clocking to You
July: Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday
August: Clanker
September: Totr
October: IShowSpeed's "EARLY STREAM!"
November: Tough Baby
December: Bird Game 3

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January: Italian Brainrot

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Starting off the year strong, Italian Brainrot was the top meme from January 2025. Italian Brainrot was pretty popular for all of 2025, but it first emerged in January, and it consists of bizarre, AI-generated videos of mutant animals with Italian-sounding names. According to brainrot expert Tobi Nwodo, Italian Brainrot represents “the complete absurd wackiness of the internet.” It includes characters like La Vacca Saturno Saturnita, Assassino Cappuccino, and Chimancini Bananini, he continues, but these characters don’t really have “quote-unquote ‘lore.’ And, if they do, a lot of people have just created [brainrot] videos about them and given them their own lore.”^{[1]
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Tobi Nwodo
Meme, Brainrot, and Slang Expert

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- Example: This TikTok video by @ligaprofesional shows Tralalero Tralala, one of the first Italian Brainrot characters.
- Honorable Mentions:
- Are you a fan of Italian Brainrot content? Take our quizzes to find out which Italian Brainrot character you are or whether you can name all the Italian Brainrot animals!
Meet the wikiHow Experts

Jake Benedict is a trend expert, TikTok influencer, and content creator who specializes in viral content and creates content spanning gaming, fitness, lifestyle, dating, and more.

Tobi Nwodo is a meme, brainrot, and slang expert who works as an influencer and content creator, specializing in commentary on internet culture, memes, trends, and slang.

Jemaree Jay is a trend expert, TikTok influencer, and content creator who specializes in viral social content that breaks down Gen Z identity, internet culture, race-based archetypes, and friend group dynamics.

2

February: Cave Divers

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In February, Cave Divers were the target of all the best memes. Before it was a meme, videos of actual cave divers started to become popular on TikTok—showing videos of divers taking part in the dangerous hobby. Then, people on social media began to react to the…sorta wild premise of seeing a giant, scary hole and deciding to just get on in there! So, memes started popping up that poked fun at the cave diving hobby and cave divers in general.^{[2]
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- Example: This TikTok video by @yhauna is captioned “Cave divers when their toilet gets clogged” and shows a pair of shoe soles on top of a toilet, insinuating that a cave diver would dive into the toilet in this situation.
- Honorable Mentions:

3

March: 6-7

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March saw the widespread virality of the very popular 6-7 meme (and the 6-7 kid). The now-iconic 6-7 trend actually started in December 2024, but it achieved mainstream, widespread virality in March, when a video of a boy yelling “six seven” at a basketball game went viral—he became known as the “6-7 kid.” The meme itself is pretty meaningless and nonsensical, but it’s usually accompanied by a hand gesture where both hands are extended and moved up and down in a “weighing two options” motion.
- Benedict affirms that 6-7 is one of the best memes of the past four years, and definitely the most popular meme of 2025.^{[3]
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  Jake Benedict
  Trend Expert & TikTok Influencer
  
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- Example: This TikTok video by @jesse.jn7 shows the creator doing the 6-7 hand gesture with the caption, “When u randomly shout ‘6’7’ throughout the day but nobody knows what u mean.”
- Honorable Mentions:
  - Babyface JD Vance
  - Meme Drought

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April: Chicken Jockey

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Minecraft lovers, rejoice! April’s #1 meme was Chicken Jockey. Chicken jockey is a character (or entity) in Minecraft that mixes together a chicken and a baby Zombie. In A Minecraft Movie, which was released in April 2025, the character Steve (played by Jack Black) shouts “Chicken jockey!” in one scene. This clip went viral, and moviegoers made it a trend to cheer and throw popcorn whenever the line is spoken.^{[4]
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- Example: This Tweet by @payingthe_piper shows a GIF of someone in distress, with the caption, “The underpaid teenage cinema employee watching me yell ‘CHICKEN JOCKEY’ and release a wild chicken into the theater.”
- Honorable Mentions:
  - 100 Men vs. 1 Gorilla
    - Like this meme? Find out if *you* could beat a gorilla with our 100 Men vs. 1 Gorilla Simulator.
  - Katy Perry Kissing the Ground
  - Get Me to God’s Country

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May: Blue Shirt Guy Dance

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This top meme of May was also called Blue Shirt Guy Dancing the Samba Whisk. This all started with a video of a dance teacher (dressed in a blue shirt) demonstrating a dance move called the Samba Whisk. Set to the song “Assumption” by Sam Gellaitry, the dance instructor’s mesmerizing moves quickly went viral, inspiring numerous people to recreate, imitate, and parody the memeified dance move.^{[5]
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- Example: This TikTok from @brianmichaelhinds_ shows the user recreating the dance while moving across an outdoor walkway.
- Honorable Mentions:

6

June: It’s Not Clocking to You

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In June 2025, Justin Bieber’s “It’s Not Clocking to You” speech went viral. In June 2025, Justin Bieber was swarmed by paparazzi and recorded on video telling them, “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business.” The video quickly went viral, as did the phrase “It’s not clocking to you,” which became an instant meme. The memeification of the phrase was mostly due to the fact that several parts of Bieber’s speech came from AAVE (African American Vernacular English) slang, but he used the slang in an inaccurate and comically odd way.^{[6]
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- Example: This Tweet from X user @croissantom shows a picture of young Coriolanus Snow in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with the caption, “LUCY GRAY, HAS IT EVER ONCE CLOCKED TO YOU THAT I’M STANDING ON BUSINESS”.
- Honorable Mentions:

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July: Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday

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Just in time for vacay season, we have “Jet2 Holiday” as the top meme for July. This TikTok-viral meme paired a real advertising jingle used by Jet2, a British airline company, with videos of not-so-relaxing vacation moments. The videos, which all revolve around travel, usually share inconvenient, chaotic, funny, or even dangerous travel moments. And, with the overly positive jingle, it makes for a totally ironic and hilarious meme.^{[7]
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- Example: This TikTok video shared by @alfred_m08 shows a person being attacked by a camel.
- Honorable Mentions:
  - Coldplay Kiss Cam
    - Like this meme? Discuss it in our wikiHow forum: “Is Kristin Cabot married?”
  - Trump Take Egg
  - Weapons Run

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August: Clanker

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In August 2025, “clanker” became everyone’s new fave slang word and meme. “Clanker” is another Gen Alpha meme and slang term that refers to any AI or robotic being that gets all up in your face. It’s (somewhat jokingly) considered a derogatory term or slur, and the memes usually feature skits of a dystopian future where humans discriminate against robots.^{[8]
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- Example: This TikTok video from @jackjmoore_ shows an AI-generated video of a man hitting a robot with a stick, with the caption “My old ahh in 2079 using my cane to beat up my daughter’s clanker bf.”
- Honorable Mentions:

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September: Totr

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September 2025 was marked by the rise of the mysterious Totr meme. The Totr meme started with a screenshot from SpongeBob, which shows two naked, armless SpongeBob characters. The image is usually captioned with “Тотя. ❤️,” a Russian gibberish word. As trend expert and TikTok influencer Jemaree Jay explains, “the Totr meme is really just random letters over a SpongeBob scene…It’s thought to be a Russian meme, but it doesn’t mean anything in Russian,” so it’s pretty much turned into a meme where the joke is that no one knows what it means.”^{[9]
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Jemaree Jay
Trend Expert & TikTok Influencer

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- Example: Watch this TikTok from @kuznichela.
- Honorable Mentions:
  - Homelander Blowing
  - “All Roads Lead to Rome” White Rabbit

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October: "EARLY STREAM!"

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In October, IShowSpeed's "EARLY STREAM!" meme reigned supreme. This popular reaction meme came from a YouTube livestream hosted by IShowSpeed (or Speed), a popular streamer. The original stream was actually posted in 2021, but screengrabs from the video became memeified and hugely viral on X (formerly Twitter) in October 2025. The meme is usually used to express that someone’s trying hard not to laugh at something funny.^{[10]
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- Example: This Tweet from @mosthiphop shows the meme with the caption “They’re saying Taylor Swift’s album leaded & she’s on it dissing Charli XCX.” It was also retweeted by @SonOfYeezuss, who wrote “Bro EVERY week there’s a new gif from that f*cka*** stream 😭😭”
- Honorable Mentions:

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November: Tough Baby

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November’s hottest meme was the Tough Baby, or AI Baby Holding Laugh. This meme started with a video of an AI-generated baby’s face being overlaid onto an adult man’s face and body. The man did gestures like covering his mouth or holding back a laugh, all with the baby’s eerily manipulated face. This meme has been widely used as a reaction GIF.^{[11]
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- Example: The original video was posted on Instagram by @daily_upl.
- Honorable Mentions:

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December: Bird Game 3

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To close out 2025, we have December’s Bird Game 3 meme. Bird Game 3 is a fake video game that only exists through a series of AI-generated videos that have been uploaded and circulated on TikTok. The original videos came out in October 2025, but the trend hit its peak in December! Most of the AI videos show a man finding the game in a store and talking to the camera, but various social media users and creators have added more AI videos to expand the meme lore behind the “video game.”^{[12]
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- Example: This TikTok video by @psyclonepman shows an AI-generated video screen recording of the video game, showing a red bird flying through a forest with the caption “just got bird game 3 🔥🔥.”
- Honorable Mentions: