At the beginning of 2025, most of the new popular memes came from TikTok and Instagram. However, by March, things changed drastically. Users stopped posting their usually funny and weird things, seemingly running out of ideas. People seemed to struggle to find ways to express themselves through humor. Almost as if they had run into a creative drought, the Great Meme Depression of 2025 began.
What Caused this Downslide?
The TikTok user by the name of goofangel summed the situation up perfectly, posting a video on the 10th of March with the title “TikTok Great Depression March 2025”. Goofangel complained that there has not been one original meme ten days into March. The video gained hundreds of thousands of views, which spread the name of the Great Meme Depression.
Other users only fueled the fire that was burning down the memes, such as BenJammins, who only recreated originally funny GIFs but plastered his face on them. People felt that he was being unoriginal and stealing GIFs that were funny, but lost all humor when his face was on it.
Normally, users would rapid-fire new memes and they would have a decent lifespan. Recently, old memes are being recycled and new memes are being flung out seemingly every hour though most don’t last a week. A school news website Bulldog Bugle said that memes “were okay…but not funny”.
The Bigger Picture
While the term might just be a joke, meaning nothing but just a lack of jokes, the situation highlights two broader points; the relationship between creativity and online platforms causes formats to spread fast, making uniqueness die faster. However, the reflexivity of internet culture made the idea of the Great Meme Depression has become a meme of itself, showing that creators can self-referentially collapse trends.
Is the Depression Over?
Yes and no. In recent months, newer memes have become more funny and last longer, and people have mostly forgotten about the Depression in October of this year. Though this still raises the question; what happens when the meme engine slows down, or even stops?
Final Thoughts
While the term Great Meme Depression is somewhat hyperbolic, the internet felt stuck and endlessly recycling old memes. Whether this marks a turning point in meme culture or fade into obscurity, the future of memes is still unknown.
