From Millennials to Gen Z, both can agree that the internet needs a rewind in memes from the ones of today

Some of the great memes of the past like Nyan Cat, Harambe, Big Chungus and more could be returning to the internet after a decade in The Great Meme Reset of 2026 – a concept promoted by multiple creators on TikTok and Instagram to make memes good again by bringing back their favourites from the 2010’s and on. 

Meme culture has been a little lacklustre recently. What was once a flood of creativity and fun has become a thoughtless flood of AI or parroted empty references, leaving no nostalgia. Children today are ruining their childhoods with these brain rotted memes that aren’t funny nor creative. Instead of going to school and laughing with your friends about Nyan Cat, kids are chanting six-seven.  

No recent memes in the past year have really been as iconic as the classics. Memes from a decade ago were things like Sanic, a hilarious image of a kids drawing of the iconic Sonic the Hedgehog. Nowadays we have memes like AI baby, an artificially generated video of a baby smiling. 

A community of TikTok creators is pushing an idea proposing no more brain rot—not more random videos that explain absolutely nothing—but rather to bring back old school memes from the golden age of memes, 2016. An early post from September 2025 by TikTok user ieat_mangoes stated plainly, “memes from today are buns” and proposed The Great Meme Reset. The idea was also promoted by TikTok creator joebro909.  

This means no more six-seven, no more Khaby Lame mechanism  

For people like me who remember a more vibrant meme culture, this is an exciting moment. It feels like it could be the first step towards restoring that culture. Several creators on Instagram have made videos explaining the reset and showing a few of the old memes. One can’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia. 

These memes were at their worst in September, also known on the internet as The Great Meme Flood of September 2025. This is when memes were so forced that people were creating new memes as a chance to get on top. Some examples of memes during that time are Dudeman, Totя or My Mother Ate Fries. At that time, there was so many memes being produced that many Instagram users in my own social circle began to find it quite boring or flat. The meme flood was “painfully monotonous,” one friend said, and that it “had no creativity whatsoever.” 

Aside from the sudden influx of memes during September, March was a completely different story. This is when memes were scarce. No one was coming up with new hilarious videos to make and that resulted in the Great Meme Depression, or the March 2025 Meme Drought. 

This is basically the opposite of the flood in September. No new memes were becoming popular, even though people were trying. The memes that did seep out never became popular as they were more desperate than funny, so no one was laughing at it. Creators on Instagram and TikTok were becoming widely affected by it as well. They had no memes to share resulting in no exciting content getting out there.  

Then the thinkable happened: the meme drought itself became so commented on that it became a massive meme. That was the start of the end of the drought. Memes that became widely popular near the end of March were Italian brain rot, Ashton halls morning routine and JD Vance photoshops. Those were some of the biggest memes for a long time, which helped us get out of the drought and come back stronger than ever. 

Comparing the meme drought and the meme flood is a good reminder of why we need the reset. A decade ago, was considered the “golden age” of memes as there was a perfect balance between good quality and not too many coming out. In contrast to that, this past year we have gotten a month of absolutely no memes to a month of way too many. The way I see it, the reset will either be a massive comeback for memes, or just a huge disappointment for everyone. 

Now that the new year is here, it seems the reset stands a chance. Several creators on Instagram have been consistently posting videos that feature memes from 2016. The only downside is that brain rot hasn’t been fully eradicated. There are still some accounts posting the same memes that were supposed to be gone, which means there is a war: Brain Rot vs The Great Meme Reset. 

As 2025 is fading into the past, a new era of the internet is just around the corner, and everyone is on their toes waiting for something exciting to happen.