“The Great Meme Reset” is coming

Memes happen Reboot. Not like a marvel-Tries to make-Fantastic Four-Reboot occurred again. More like rewind. The Great Reset Meme of 2026, as it’s called Tik Tokdemands that all January 1st memes return to their glory days in 2010. “Nice.”Brain rot“And Amnesty International– Memes looking out; Big Chungus He is in.

As with anything on the Internet, it’s difficult to pinpoint the origin of the Great Meme Reset. Most sources Point to March Post by TikTok user @joebro909 Who called for a whole new generation of memes to save the platform from “drought“That swept it in the spring. The post said nothing about a January 1 launch date, or a return to the past decade’s memes, but the idea was planted. Now hundreds of posts discuss the reboot — and a return to the “wet” age of the Internet.

Which of course means that memes lack moisture these days. If anything, the internet culture fueled by Generation Z and Generation Alpha prides itself on fairly meaningless content such as “6 7“And ridiculous, apparently produced by artificial intelligence.”Italian brain rot“, but after nearly a year of memes with little humanity or depth, the backlash began.

“Because of how hard it is to recognize memes,” said TikTok creator Noah Glenn Carter (@noahglenncarter“Everyone has come to an agreement that on January 1, 2026, we will completely reset all memes and go back to the originals,” he said in a recent video.

When I contact Carter via email, the creator seems pretty convinced that the Reset idea can work, and plans to make more videos to promote it. “The memes we have now are called ‘brain rot’ for a reason,” Carter says. “People over 10 (more than years), for the most part, had a story behind them. Or at least made sense. Now it seems that the more random and incoherent something is, the more likely it is to become a meme.”

Even if you’re in the camp that understands memes like “6 7” It has more importance More than they’re given credit for, there’s still a feeling among the Great Reset audience that today’s memes are “oversaturated and unfunny,” says Know Your Meme editor-in-chief Don Caldwell. “In this context, brain-rotting memes are low effort and meaningless, and there is a desire to return to memes from the past that had more substance,” Caldwell adds.

Essence remains, as it always has been, a relative idea. Nyan Cat may not have had the essence of an Andy Warhol image, but both sought to comment on cultural moments — and both got people talking in a way that the AI ​​deluge of 2025 never could. If we take it seriously, the call for a widespread retcon of memes is also a call for organic internet culture, no matter how ridiculous it may seem.