The Memes That Made Us Laugh In 2025

2025 was not short on chaos, anxiety, or headlines that felt a little too close for comfort. Naturally, the internet responded the only way it knows how, by turning everything into a joke. From pop culture mishaps and political curveballs to economic dread and peak brainrot, memes became a collective coping mechanism. They flattened scandals, remixed tragedies, and made sense of a year that often refused to make sense itself. These are the memes that cut through the noise and gave us something to laugh at anyway.

Everything is a recession indicator

It started with lipsticks and skirt hemlines. By mid-2025, everything was a recession indicator. While economists debated Trump’s tariffs on the news, the internet decided the economy was in a free fall and turned collective financial anxiety into a running joke: if it existed, it was a sign.

Ba***ds of Bollywood

Aryan Khan’s debut delivered meta-Bollywood references, a Game of Thrones style climax that made us question what we just watched, and enough meme material to keep the internet fed for a solid month after it dropped on Netflix.

The Conclave and The American Pope

Art imitated life almost immediately when Pope Francis’s death triggered a real-life Conclave, just months after Edward Berger’s Conclave took over the internet. To add to that, the first American Pope, Leo XIV, turned out to be distantly related to Madonna and Justin Bieber, was revealed to be a club bouncer in his youth, and celebrated an archbishop’s birthday by throwing a literal rave inside a cathedral. Catholicism, but make it 2025.

Kendrick Lamar’s They Not Like Us

The Drake vs Kendrick Lamar beef dominated late 2024, but Kendrick won when it stopped being a diss track and became a group activity. A Super Bowl performance and a Grammy moment turned the Canadian rapper’s pedophilia allegations into a stadium-wide chant, sealing the internet’s verdict in real time.

The Coldplay Kisscam

A kiss cam, a CEO, an HR head, and one ill-timed cuddle turned a Coldplay concert into a corporate scandal speedrun. Chris Martin’s live commentary didn’t help. The internet did the rest.

Job Application Jump Scares

What’s a bigger recession indicator than applying to two hundred jobs and hearing back from two? In 2025, the word “job” started getting censored online (ironically), and a literal application for a job became the internet’s newest jump scare—basically the modern rickroll, but with emotional damage. Honourable job application mention: Vishal Mega Mart Security Guard.

Nothing Beats A Jet2Holiday

A single jingle hijacked the internet, soundtracked every mildly chaotic video, and proved once again that nothing, absolutely nothing, beats a Jet2Holiday.

6-7

A completely meaningless phrase that Gen Alpha turned into an inside joke. It blew up after a kid yelled “6 7” at a basketball court with a matching hand gesture. Soon it was everywhere. Classrooms banned it. Athletes celebrated with it. Even politicians referenced it. Dictionary.com crowned it 2025 Word of the Year. Yet it has no definition or logic. That’s 2025 wrapped up for you.

100 men vs 1 Gorilla

A few years back, it was men thinking about the Roman Empire. This April, the hypothetical question of the internet was whether 100 unarmed men could beat a silverback gorilla. 

India vs. Pakistan: A Meme War 

In the wake of the Pahalgam terrorist attack and Operation Sindoor, internet culture in the two countries took a hilarious turn when Pakistani netizens chose memes over fear, roasting their own government into oblivion.

Saiyaara Gets Viewers Sobbing

We've all seen the videos: fans bawling their hearts out in cinema halls, people tearing their shirts off watching Mohit Suri’s 2025 romance, patients watching the movie with IV drips in the halls. Was it really that big of a tearjerker, though, we asked, and went and watched it ourselves. News flash: it was not.

Can Someone Please Buy The Travis Scott Tickets?

Travis announces a Mumbai show, Delhi scalpers panic, black market prices crash, and group chats implode. Resellers lost their minds, memes spread like wildfire, tickets sold for as little as a quarter of the price. But hey, that’s just one incident, right? 

Everything Is Charlie Kirk

News of Charlie Kirk’s assassination hit, and the internet went completely unhinged.  No one agreed on tone, but everyone joined in. An AI song, “We are Charlie Kirk” flooded every timeline. People remixed his face into everything from Renaissance paintings to Fortnite dances. Meanwhile, his wife’s tours inspired a whole new array of Erica Kirk memes.

The Louvre Heist

After decades of movies teaching everyone lasers and alarms are deadly, someone decided to try a heist at the Louvre anyway. Turns out, it didn’t even take advanced hacking systems and ten full minutes to steal napoleonic jewels. No points for guessing what the Halloween costumes of the year were. 

Zohran Mamdani Plays Dhoom Machale

Young voters powered him to victory, as Zohran Mamdani took the stage as NYC mayor with Dhoom Machale blasting behind him. Memes ignite, timelines combust, and the city got a mayoral campaign the internet will never forget.

The Performative Male And The Embarrassing Boyfriend

Macha got gentrified, reading Dostoevsky and quoting feminist literature raised eyebrows, and it became embarrassing to have a boyfriend. When everything became performative, what was real and what wasn’t? We asked.