Most Popular Memes Trending on Social Right Now (Updated May)

While it’s important to share product releases, sale reminders and more, memes are an incredibly effective way to gain engagement on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. 

Not only do they provide fun and fast entertainment for your audience, but they also help develop your brand’s voice, identity and infuse personality into your social profiles. Memes can be an impactful way to engage your community — when done right.  

In this blog, we discuss:

• May 2025 trending memes. 
• Monthly trending memes.
• What are memes?
• How to find trending memes. 
• Should brands share memes? 

Ready to laugh? May’s trending memes are low-effort to create, but high-impact for your audience. Here are the memes trending on social this month: 

Ballerinin Capuchini 

Once the meme du jour among Gen Alpha, the ‘Italian Brainrot’ trend is making its way to older demographics, too. The most popular example of this trend right now is ‘Ballerinin Capuchini’, which is being used to describe anything from cats with pointed toes or coffee itself. 

Jaws Theme

This is a very easy trend to replicate for your social profiles, and is trending across Instagram and TikTok. Simply use the associated song (the jaws theme!) and film yourself pacing back and forth as if you’re ‘circling’ something (in this case, the camera). Use the text overlay feature to describe something — whether it’s an activity like pilates, a food you love to eat or anything else that captures your attention, for example, something like this: “Me when someone opens a bag of chips,” and voila — your meme is complete.

Brands love to tap into April Fool’s and have some fun with their customers — here’s one notable meme that caught user’s attention this month. 

April Fools - Poppi x Tower 28 

This was a very clever example of a brand partnership outside of the norm — Poppi and Tower 28 partnered to prank fans with a ‘drinkable’ Tower 28 SOS spray that people could apply topically and sip on. It was just whacky enough that fans knew it was a joke, resulting in lots of playful comments and fun for audiences.

POV: Waking Up In…

This is a fun trend that’s particularly useful if you’re attempting to build community on social media with niche communities — users are taking a fun play on the AI POV trend, creating their own versions of the trend to poke fun at their daily lives. To partake in this trend, film your hands first (IYKYK) and some other point-of-view footage of your daily life.

‍

‍

‍

We'll Have a Look

This is a fun meme that’s easy for anyone to participate in. Simply use the trending audio (no need to lipsynch) that says ‘we’ll have a look, of course we’ll have a look’ to describe what captivates you while shopping or anything else that catches your attention — while sharing a video of your subject, of course.  

Do Not Come to My Town

This is another fun meme that’s easy to partake in. Simply use the trending audio that says “I do not like this song, Santa Claus is coming to town…do not come to my town.” Either lip synch to the audio or simply share a video or series of images that speak to something you don’t enjoy or that you’d rather do alone. Popular examples include pets that don’t want to interact with people, people having a night in and more.

Aside from a trenchcoat buttoned to the TOP and ‘my shayla!’, this meme is making user’s laugh across social media this month. 

Muppet Storytime

If you’ve been sitting on a particularly memorable story, this is the perfect meme for you. Simply share a carousel post (as long or short as you want, but this meme is often used with multiple images) with this fairly distressed-looking image of the muppet Pepe the King Prawn, whose expression lends itself well to an especially wild story. Be sure to add the ‘Like a Prayer’ sound from the Deadpool movie.

So, what are memes, exactly? Memes are often funny copy, images, videos or other online content that usually spread rapidly and are reproduced by other users in the form of jokes or incorporating the original joke or visual in online content.

Why Are They Called Memes, and What Makes a Meme?

Memes earned their name from Richard Dawkins, who used the term in his book 'The Selfish Gene'. The word ‘meme’ is derived from the Greek word ‘mimema’, which means ‘imitated’ — this name fits memes perfectly, as they transcend a joke when they become duplicated, edited and widely shared.

If a meme is something used and widely spread, is a GIF a meme? Not necessarily — GIFs could be derived from a popular meme, but since users can’t edit GIFs for reproduction in the same way they can text and video, GIFs aren’t the exact same as memes. 

Luckily for social marketers, there are many ways to find trending memes — sharing outdated memes (even by 1-2 months) can make your brand or social team appear out of touch or out of the loop. To prevent this, your social media marketing strategy should leave room for agility so your team doesn’t rely on pre-scheduled memes that could become irrelevant quickly. 

To find trending memes, social marketers should:

• Follow a variety of meme accounts. Popular accounts include @daquan and @epicfunnypage. Some of the most popular aggregate meme accounts contain profane names, so take a peek around Instagram and follow a few accounts that share a variety of funny content. 
• Bookmark blogs like this that are regularly updated with round-ups of the latest memes. 
• Utilize Reddit for marketing — Reddit is a trove of funny, humorous content and trending memes that are often shared there before anywhere else. 

Should Brands Share Memes?

Overall, depending on your industry and audience, entertaining content can help drive conversions and engagement — but this isn’t always the case. One way to discover if memes would resonate with your audience include creating buyer personas. Buyer personas involve diving into existing and target audience demographics, researching their likes, dislikes, online habits and more to help inform your content marketing strategy. For example, if you plan to target Gen Z, including memes is likely beneficial for your content mix. Insider Intelligence reports Gen Z is more likely to stay on platforms that embrace memes, illustrated by just 2.4% of Gen Z planning to leave Twitter (or X), compared to 9% of users from other generations.

Why are memes so popular?

Memes are so popular because they’re a form of social entertainment that’s quick and easy to read and digest. Entertaining audiences is paramount to attracting them and engaging on social media, and memes are one of the most common ways to do this, that also let social marketers express their brand’s humor and personality. 

How to make a meme popular?

It can be challenging to make an original meme popular, as the nature of memes are quite organic. 

However, there are some tips you can use to increase your chances of creating popular content: 

• Dive into competitive insights and use custom reporting to discover what memes competitors share and set benchmarks for your own meme performance. 
• Revisit your buyer personas biannually or annually in case the content your target demographic engages with has changed.
• Take time weekly to explore what memes are taking over TikTok and Instagram — even if you don’t incorporate these into your content schedule, it’s helpful to know what type of humor and jokes resonate with a wide range of users. 

What is the most popular meme ever? 

When it comes to determining the most popular meme, this is a little tricky as the platforms and type of memes commonly shared have changed over time.

Some of the most popular memes of all time include: 

• Keep calm. 
• Woman yelling at a cat during dinner. ‍
• Troll-face meme.