The Great Meme Depression🥀

During early March, after memes of “Lebonbon glaze” and “Foenum grave bruh,” unemployed scrollers on a social media platform referred to as TikTok noticed a lack of new, funny, and original meme content. This period will soon be known as The Great Meme Depression of 2025.

This affected not only the social media platform, Tiktok, but also Instagram. Many social media creators were comparing this period to the 1929 Great Depression and that is how it got the title of The Great Meme Depression. During this time, creators were pushing forced memes as an attempt to end The Great Meme Depression. However, none were successful, and many people found them unfunny. While affecting the two platforms, it also affected the consumers on the app.

Eighth grader Kimberly Segura stated, “Like there were some memes, John Pork and Tim Cheese. I guess that was okay. It wasn’t like a funny meme that you would like to laugh at, but like, you would look at it on your phone and would be like ‘Oh, like this is funny, I guessss.”

Eighth grader Isabella Samayoa-Yanez added, “I felt a lack of joy and I wasn’t laughing as much on Tiktok or on Reels. It impacted me in a very bad way because I felt like I couldn’t even laugh on the app anymore.”

Soon, at an estimated two weeks later, with creators making videos recognizing and regarding the meme drought, the Meme Depression started to become a meme itself. Users of the platforms began to grow happier as the MASSIVE Great Meme Depression slowly faded away and as new memes started to develop. “I felt way better now that I can laugh on the app,” Isabella stated.

Some memes that contributed to the end of The Great Meme Depression were “Frank Heffley schizophrenia,” “We got 8 free pizzas,” and “Ashton Hall 4 minutes in the air.” The end of the meme drought also revived old memes such as the “lebonbon glaze” and “John Pork” with the new addition of “Tim Cheese” and “Agent 5.5” (the one without a j*b).

Despite The Great Meme Depression bringing grief, sadness, and terror in this time, it impacted new and more creative memes than we’ve gotten before. There are many theories on why this occurred, but the most notable being the death of the MASSIVE low taper fade meme caused this and the fact that too many memes were created, that it burned out the creativity to make even more funny memes.