2020 is here and we are at the beginning of a new decade. In the past decade, we witnessed memes evolve to become one of the indispensable parts of the internet. With various meme formats and templates throughout the decade, picking the best meme can be difficult. Thanks to Imgur, we have a winner – Hide the Pain Harold.
To arrive at this result, the online image sharing platform shortlisted ten meme formats from two-thousand nominations and conducted a survey. The survey gained 54,768 votes in 72 hours.
As Imgur puts it, “Hide the Pain Harold represents a deep-seated emotion, a quiet dread, or existential anguish that resides in all of us”. I don’t know about you but I’ve personally related to the meme several times throughout all these years.
Hide the Pain Harold faced close competition with “A New Badly Photoshopped Photo of Michael Cera Everyday” and “This is Fine” meme to claim the glorious title. Take a look at the percentage of votes for memes below.
Imgur also gave us some insights regarding the meme’s timeline. According to Imgur, the meme started surfacing on the internet forums and social media back in 2011. In case you’re unaware, the man behind the meme is András Arató, a retired engineer from Hungary.
Initially, he didn’t even realize that he was part of a meme. “At first I saw only normal stock photos, where I was a doctor or a lawyer or a professor or something like this. Some months later I found my first meme photo. On an American site.”, Arató told The Independent in 2017.
So, which is your favorite meme of the decade? Tell us in the comments.
