Method

Signal. Each day memeidea records Imgflip's 100 most popular meme templates and how many captions (memes) each has. Earlier measurements back to Nov 29, 2023 come from public Internet Archive copies of the same data. Momentum is new captions per day between two measurements.

More memes. Templates that have left Imgflip's top 100 keep their pages, marked Fading, with the history we measured while they were there. Memes with an English Wikipedia article are measured by monthly page views from the Wikimedia API (signed-in and anonymous readers, no bots), since July 2015, using the same stage rules with reads per day in place of new memes per day. The list of those memes comes from Wikidata's "Internet meme" class (CC0). A further set of templates comes from the open memegen catalogue; they have no usage measurements yet, so they carry no stage.

Stage. Compared with the format's own history: Rising = faster than its previous period and at least half its fastest; Peak = within 20% of its fastest; Fading = more than 15% slower than its previous period; Steady otherwise; New = recently arrived with little history.

Limits. Imgflip is one meme generator; it does not count memes made elsewhere (TikTok, X, Instagram). Gaps between older measurements are uneven, so older rates are averages over longer periods.

Labels. Meanings, brand-safety calls and captions are written by an AI model and reviewed as suggestions, not facts. Use judgment before posting.