As part of Google’s annual round-up of the people, places, and events that garnered the most attention on search in the U.S. in the past year, the search engine has identified the 10 memes that produced the greatest spikes in traffic over the longest period of time in 2015. However, it seems like none of the terms below originated in 2015, perhaps a sign that these cultural references have longer life spans than we thought. Below is Google’s list. As for what the terms “Nothing much meme” and “Who Knows” really mean, the search results for them bring up so many results that are…well…nothing much, so…who knows?
1. Pepe the frog (the frog from Matt Furie’s comic Boy’s Club is an inside joke on the social network 4chan)
2. Rickrolling (the practice of tricking readers by hyperlinking text with a YouTube video of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley)
3. Who Knows (search results bring up the shrug emoticon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
4. Florida Man (to search for any weird news happenings in the Sunshine State, also the name of a Twitter account that aggregates these items)
5. O Rly (a photo of a grinning snowy owl that looks like it is saying those words)
6. Rick Astley (same as “rickrolling” above)
7. Jontron (a YouTube show that reviews games)
8. Ceiling cat (a photo of a cat peaking out from a hole in the ceiling)
9. Bread meme (photos of bread that are supposed to be funny)
10. Nothing much meme (search results show that phrase in block letters over photos)
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