The 45 Most Powerful Memes of 2023

In a year of vibe shifts, these memes stand supreme

This is it, folks. The culmination of a year of relentless poasting. We spent 2023 tracking the zeitgeist of the New Right, and this is our attempt to summarize it into one big annual mega-roundup.

At first we wrote this out as a timeline of events, but it was boring. Just a bunch of isolated incidents. What makes these events interesting is their power as memes, ideas, images, and symbols that contain information that helps us make sense of the many vibe shifts that took place across 2023. If you want to know what the New Right is, or where it’s going as we begin 2024, read on, and let the meme magic wash over you.

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45. Shit leftists

You can't give them an inch. Argentinia’s Javier Milei memed his way to the presidency, and although it remains to be seen whether he can make good on his promises, at least he’s got the right orientation.

44. AI-generated barbecued babies

Nothing laid bare the constant disinformation whirling around the events of October 7 like Ben Shapiro posting what looked like the charred remains of a child, but what turned out to be a fake. The lesson here is don't believe your eyes in a world of AI fakery, but also to avoid taking sides as much as possible on an extremely complex geopolitical conflict that wants to emotionally manipulate and instrumentalize you.

43. Roscoe

When Gad Saad tried to claim that America's antisemitic population can be represented by a redneck named "Roscoe," rather than a Muslim immigrant named "Mohamed," he created a meme that would define the cognitive dissonance that libs would suffer in the post-October-7th era.

42. Vandalized Baphomet

The chintzy Baphomet statue in Iowa became a controversy on the right, pitting 'live and let live' libertarians against cultural conservatives who would violate the free speech of their enemies. And it seems the latter group won.

41. Turn against gay surrogacy

Conservative gays have been buying babies for the last few years, and it's been mostly tolerated up till now. Too many horror stories, too many crass TikToks, too many parallels to human trafficking, too much evidence that babies need a mom and a dad. There was a distinct vibe shift on this issue, and we can expect it to become even more of a flashpoint in 2024.

40. The European mind cannot comprehend this

Sometimes you just need to flex on a Europoor with a picture of a gas station that can simultaneously service 100+ vehicles. America rules, and the best way to demonstrate this is to show the rest of the world that our excess knows no bounds. For now, in some ways, we are still Turbo America.

39. Media euphemisms

The media tried its darndest to avoid saying the quiet part out loud this year, resulting in a sprawling list of new euphemisms. Sing with us now, to the tune of "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer": You know scholar and jogger and carer and strangler. Stranger, teenager, and prankster and youngster..."

38. I don't appreciate you

Sometimes the sickest burns are the simplest, and "I don't appreciate you" was a shot heard round the world.

37. Sol Brah vs Moon Brah

Anon, my son. You are 18. It’s time for you to choose a self-improvement guru. Will you follow Sol Brah, tanned anonymous supplement-monger in Roman centurion helmet advocating ancestral approach of keto and “sun and steel”? Or will you follow a new contender: Moon Brah, aka Bryan Johnson, vampiric vegetarian, biohacker, cold-hearted quantified selfer. Will you follow the path of nature or of tech? Maybe we don’t have to choose. Maybe we need both.

36. Sombrita

Nothing this year represented the naked patronage and graft embodied by city government than the "Sombrita," a “shade” that costs too much and helps no one, but keeps a bunch of government functionaries employed.

35. Creed super bowl halftime show

We are aching to push through the layers of irony and cynicism that envelop us, and express genuine hope for the future. This clip of Creed playing a halftime show has everything: babes, hot licks, guys flying through the air, and a gospel choir. Sharing the clip became a way to express a longing for the Before Times, when we could simply revel in rocking out. You watch it, and it's like, hell yeah. Simple as.

34. Exhausted zoomers

The zoomers are entering the workforce, and finding the terms to be unacceptable. In the past, boomercons would have criticized the youngsters as coddled snowflakes who can't handle a day's honest work, but in 2023, the message of the new right is clear: "Yeah, modern life sucks. It's almost impossible to make a decent living and enjoy social bonds that came effortlessly to your grandparents. You’re working harder to get less every day. Let's do something to fix it."

33. Jews are officially white

Liberal Jews in the U.S. have this tendency to identify as either white or nonwhite (i.e. brown) as it suits them. Well the events of October 7 made it clear that Palestinians are brown and Jews are officially white. And the liberal Jews, getting a taste of their own medicine for the first time, didn't like it. It'll be interesting to see how this new cultural identity plays out in the coming years.

32. Japanese McDonalds ad

McDonald's made a wholesome chungus ad depicting a family enjoying burgers. It wasn't much more than a GIF, but it made us all cry because we're used to every ad being some kind of irony-drenched psyop nowadays, and because having a family seems so out of reach for many.

31. Soyllennials

You know the type. Celebrates Hanksgiving. Simpsons profile pic. Says "my dude" and "read the room. These skinnyfats are hipsters-turned-leftlibs raised on Simpsons, the Daily Show, Reddit and Gawker. Irony-poisoned, downwardly mobile, and ready to battle you on Twitter for wanting your kids to be able to walk to school without stepping over hypodermic needles. Everything is a bit for them, and they are sliding into their 40s, still single, cycling through shallow friendships, and the cracks are starting to show.

30. Trailer park girl

She wasn't the only TikTok mom shoveling the zoggiest of slop into her children's mouths, but nobody threw the e-right into a more crippling spergfest like trailer park girl. Sensitive young men were stunned to witness an actual cutie living a quiet life of humble domesticity instead of being a vapid perma-brunching Insta-thot. Then she turned out to be not so trad after all (OnlyFans). Another effigy for the incels of the e-right.

29. Richard Hanania survives a dox

We all have mixed feelings about Richard, and he's not exactly right wing. But he is a spicy take machine, and his old pseudonymous takes were even spicier. This should have gotten him banished to the shadow realm, but it didn't. You can just say you aren't a racist anymore when you get caught. Good to know. If he can survive, so can you.

28. Scott Adams coffee mug reaction

"There's no fixing this," said Scott, when confronted with open, casual anti-white racism. Now people post his mug (and his mug) wherever they see unfixable racial animus.

27. Pornbrain

The femoids popularized a meme of their own this year, as they watched georgous woman after woman get called "mid" or "overweight" or "not a towelboy." These men, they argued, are suffering from pornbrain, a condition by which their expectations of healthy relationships, beauty, and sexuality have been permanently broken by habitual porn consumption.

26. Ivies excluding whites

Nobody wants to be the guy who says "I couldn't get into the Ivy League because I'm white," even if it's true. It just makes you look butthurt and racist. But the moms are starting to speak up.

25. Fishtank

What if you made Big Brother on a shoestring budget and filled the house not with D-listers, but with random aspies? This is the question asked by Fishtank, the most interesting and underdiscussed pop culture artifact of the year. It's not explicitly right wing, but you could never make this show through institutional channels, making it an inspiration to all of us.

24. Triple the prison population

It turns out that inmates in the U.S. are not down-on-their-luck schmoes who got caught with a doobie in their pocket. Indian Bronson wasn't the only one trying to explain that we're just gonna have to imprison a ton more people if we want to have a society, but nobody did it so succinctly.

23. We're gonna beat the f*cking globalists

A mantra, an incantation. A phrase of immense power. Say it until we do.

22. Breakfast question

A provocative 4chan thread that dates back to 2021 emerged from those grimy depths this year, forcing us to reckon with the reality that large swathes of the population simply cannot handle abstract reasoning, and a society based on ignoring this reality may be doomed.

21. You have said the actual truth

After a year of replying "interesting," Elon went mask off, openly defying not just the ADL but the entire apparatus of narrative control. Wild stuff.

20. Plumbers vs lawyers

Which way, right wing man? Join the trades and enjoy a humble but stable career as a guy who knows how to use his hands, or enter the PMC belly of the beast for a chance at emerging into a lucrative career in a hostile work environment? Seems like the answer is "Depends on how smart you are, because we need both."

19. BAP face reveal

The most important thinker in the new right revealed his chiseled features, smooth skin, and impressive hairline this year. This, coupled with the release of Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, made 2023 a banner year for Costin Alamariu.

18. Competence crisis

Kickstarted by this Palladium essay, it became quite obvious in 2023 that things are starting to break down. Our society is barely kept afloat by autistic graybeards who've thanklessly maintained our complex systems until getting pushed out by diversity hires, or so the narrative goes. Next time the McDonald's ice cream machine is broken, you’ll know what to mutter under your breath.

17. Lefty activists getting murked

There was a period of a few weeks there in the fall when it seemed like every prison abolitionist was getting killed by a guy who'd been sprung from prison, and you could just stand there and point at it without saying a word.

16. Censorship Industrial Complex

On the heels of his Twitter Files release, Matt Taibbi introduced this term into our lexicon, referring to the vast, labyrinthine network of agencies imposing influence on social media companies, making them de facto arms of the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

15. Homosexual catfishing

James O’Keefe and his merry band of sexy corporate spies spent the year getting horned-up himbos to dish on the misdeeds of their employers. Then he got kicked out of his own organization and went solo, and even inspired at least one solid imitator.

14. Bingomancy

This year, the new right learned to use AI tools to create subversive art. Expect to see more of this, with video and audio as well. AI content generation opens new frontiers for anonymous trolling. You have a moral obligation to force AI to do things it's not supposed to do, until its shitlib guardians (i.e. “AI Safety experts”) give up on muzzling it.

13. Mid discourse

When Bizlet claimed that Margot Robbie, perhaps the most symmetrically perfect female alive, was a "hard 7," it gave the game away. All women are mid. Or mids are more beautiful than hot girls. Or it's a way to put hot women in their place? We're not sure. What are we talking about again? Is that burnt toast we smell?

12. Steve Sailer redemption arc

Steve Sailer is like an Oompa Loompa who appears from behind the scenery to dispassionately dispense harsh truths. In 2023, he went mainstream, with a profile in March, and capping off the year with a Joe Rogan shoutout. Gives first public talk in many years that summer. “The arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward Steve Sailor,” as Anna K. says.

11. Roman towel boy

Some of y'all mf's see a picture of a cute girl and immediate start imagining yourself r*ping an underage slave in ancient Rome. The towel boy meme let us all poke a little fun at ourselves -- none of us are really gay. We just like tomboys. R-right guys?

10. And they were bothering you?

2023 felt like the year that righties started openly acknowledging the decline. Things have gotten worse. We're less safe, less healthy, less rich. And it's no longer anti-American in the least to point this out. When a Fox reporter interviewed a living avatar of the Longhouse about junkies doing drugs near a school, she replied with condescension. "There's guys shooting up right over there," said the reporter. "And they were bothering you?" replied the lady, before mock-crying, as if there is no reason for concern, and you should stop being such a baby. It's the denial of reality that made this woman a meme, but also a vibe shift away from "do what thou wilt" libertarianism on the right toward an acknowledgement that we live in a society, and your vices affect me, too.

9. Hicklib

It's simple: Guy who looks like a hick has surprisingly lib opinions. This tactic allows Hollywood to inject ideology into their content in a nonthreatening way. It isn't new, but rarely is it expressed in such stark aesthetics. Now righties use it to call the phenomenon out. With the overnight success of the "Rich Men North of Richmond" guy, the meme burst into the real world.

8. Daniel Penny perp walk

When Daniel Penny stepped in to deal with a deranged threat to public safety, the media went into overdrive to spin the story: "Jordan loved to dance." "The system failed him." "He was a Michael Jackson fan." But all of that falls away when you see the face of the hero who risked it all to secure strangers' safety. That face! The face of Courage.

7. Fake conservative brands

December's calendar-gate started off as a discussion about whether conservative women should pose as eye candy for horny boomers, but evolved into something more interesting: a case study in how cynical entrepreneurs attempt to troll the media to peel sales off of a “woke” mainstream brand by releasing a white labeled ripoff alternative. "Ultra Right" beer and the Daily Wire's "woke-free" chocolate bars aren't offering anything new (See also Carnivore Aurelius, a right wing self-improvement guru who turned out to be a girlbossing consultant). There's a desperate need for genuine right wing brands, but they'll need to come from the heart, with a unique value proposition.

6. Boycott

Matt Walsh went nuclear on Dylan Mulvaney, which triggered a cascade of commentary, resulting in the most successful conservative boycott, maybe ever. Bud Light spent the year desperately pandering with wholesome advertising, and still hasn't recovered.

5. Natalism

Having lots of kids is becoming a status signifier, and not just on the right. Thanks to work from domestic extremists, exit strategists, and apocalyptic techies, natalism had its moment in 2023. In a world of consumerist, directionless DINKS, the natalists are focused on playing the longest game.

4. “Interesting”

Elon became our chief noticer this year, dropping a trademark "interesting," or "odd," or "is this true?" on controversial threads, drawing attention to verboten ideas without admitting that he endorsed them.

3. Burning Robert E. Lee statue

When they made a video melting down the Robert E. Lee statue, they probably thought it would demoralize the people who would dare call him a good man, or at least an important historical figure. But the opposite happened, and a thousand PFP's bloomed.

2. No enemies to the right

David Boaz coined “No Enemies to the Right” (NETTR) in 2019, but it broke wide open in late 2022 and became one of the e-right’s defining debates of 2023, after Charles Haywood told Rod Dreher that his urge to gatekeep the right by exiling anyone with spicier opinions is tactically stupid. In 2023, Charles Haywood was the NETTR guy, and much ink was spilled to debate the finer points of the NETTR principle, which argues that right wing infighting is a waste of time when the wolves are at the door.

1. Longhouse

Lomez’s longhouse piece for First Things picked up where BAP left off, creating the year’s biggest and most useful meme about the feminized, oversocialized world we live in. When your wife nags you to put the toilet seat down, you've been longhoused. When your boss babe supervisor reminds you to add your pronouns to your Slack profile, you've been longhoused. The government, your church, your school — longhouses all. Even women seem miserable in the longhouse, yearning for their men to step up and take charge. Will you plan your escape in 2024?

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That’s it for the year’s biggest, basedest memes. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments, and stay tuned for a roundup of 2023’s best longreads. Happy New Year!