Happy Friday!

Apologies for the late newsletter. I was traveling yesterday and wasn’t able to get this bad boy up in time. 

Today, I present to you the year in memes (plus a few extras). Throughout 2025, I kept having this feeling that nothing was happening. It didn’t feel like anything in the culture was particularly sticky, including viral memes. Perhaps that was because every year we are presented with even more content to consume than the year previous, rendering our memories shorter. Or maybe it’s that this year has simply been terrible and the less we remember the better. Either way, I racked my brain for a timeline of this year in memes, just for posterity. Subscribe to the Yapper tier to read the full list. 

Also in this newsletter, the Oscars moves to YouTube, the woman from the Coldplay cheating scandal speaks out, an SNL cast exit, and more. 

Yap Year will be taking the last two weeks of the year semi-off <3 I will be sending a playlist (and maybe some links if there’s some really good stuff out there) on Mondays, but it won’t be the whole shebang. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming in January. Happy Holidays! Mwah!

Remember when TikTok went dark for exactly (1) day before the inauguration this year? Well, a lot of people expected the app to be down for much longer. In anticipation of the TikTok ban, people started spilling their secrets using the “Since we’re all gonna die” audio from Family Guy. Creators lifted the curtain on which parts of their content were fake. Influencers admitted to disliking products they previously touted. It was a refreshing reminder that the internet is not real and you can’t believe everything people say. Some posters may have regretted revealing what they did after the lights came back on, but it didn’t seem to have impacted anyone long-term. As for the TikTok ban, they have apparently reached a deal just yesterday, with ByteDance signing over control of U.S. operations to a group of American investors. 

Bringing one of the biggest cultural moments of 2024 to an end, Kendrick Lamar performed “Not Like Us” at the Super Bowl. Ahead of the performance, it was unclear if Lamar would actually perform the song due to Drake suing Universal Music Group for defamation over the song. (That lawsuit was dismissed in October.) He did anyways, addressing the doubts before launching into the song: “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue.” Lamar then called Drake out by name with a big smile on his face, instantly becoming a meme that became shorthand for winning. 

I’m putting this in March because I think that’s when this meme really started picking up steam, although it was pretty relevant throughout the year. What to say about Italian brainrot? For all of the focus on 67 this year, I’m surprised people haven’t gotten as worked up about this Gen Alpha meme. These AI-generated anthropomorphic characters, which aren’t really that Italian, have spawned Halloween costumes, a musical, and even toys. They’re ridiculous, catchy, and a little unsettling. So in a way, Italian brainrot is this year’s Skibidi Toilet.