The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming

Memes are getting a reboot. Not similar a Marvel-is-trying-to-make-Fantastic Four-happen-again reboot. More similar a rewind. The Great Meme Reset of 2026, arsenic it’s being called connected TikTok, demands that connected January 1 each memes revert to their 2010s glory days. Bland “brain rot” and AI-looking memes are out; Big Chungus is in.

As with thing connected the internet, the root of the Great Meme Reset is hard to place. Most sources constituent to a March station from TikTok idiosyncratic @joebro909 that called for a full caller procreation of memes to prevention the level from the “drought” that had engulfed it successful the spring. The station said thing of a January 1 motorboat date, oregon a instrumentality to the memes of the past decade, but the thought was planted. Now hundreds of posts are discussing the reboot—and a instrumentality to the internet’s “dank” era.

Which implies, of course, that memes deficiency dankness these days. If anything, Gen Z– and Gen Alpha–fueled net civilization has prided itself connected somewhat meaningless contented similar “6 7” and absurdist, seemingly AI-generated “Italian encephalon rots,” but aft astir a twelvemonth of memes with small humanity oregon depth, a backlash has begun.

“Because of conscionable however unrecognizable memes person become,” TikTok creator Noah Glenn Carter (@noahglenncarter) said successful a caller video, “everyone has travel to an statement that connected January 1, 2026, we are going to wholly reset each memes and spell backmost to the originals.”

When I scope Carter via email, the creator seems beauteous convinced the reset thought could instrumentality off, and helium plans to marque much videos promoting it. “The memes we person present are called ‘brain rot’ for a reason,” Carter says. “The ones 10+ [years older], astir of the time, had a communicative down them. Or they astatine slightest made sense. Now it conscionable seems similar the much random and incoherent thing is the much apt it is to go a meme.”

Even if you’re successful the campy that understands memes similar “6 7” person much value than they’re fixed recognition for, there’s inactive a consciousness amongst the Great Reset assemblage that today’s memes are “oversaturated and unfunny,” says Know Your Meme editor-in-chief Don Caldwell. “In this context, encephalon rot memes are low-effort and nonsensical,” Caldwell adds, “and there's a tendency to instrumentality to the memes of the past that had a spot much substance.”

Substance, arsenic ever, remains a comparative notion. Nyan Cat possibly didn’t person the substance of an Andy Warhol image, but some sought to remark connected taste moments—and some got radical talking successful a mode 2025’s deluge of AI slop could never. Taken astatine look value, a telephone for a monolithic meme reset is besides a telephone for integrated net culture, nary substance however seemingly silly.