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Identity (the Self) is an intersection of “what” and “who.” The fact we inhabit a unique, distinct, incrementally changing body, mostly answers the “what” part of the question. We can appreciate this when looking at photos of ourselves at successive stages of life.

The “who” part—our memories, dispositions, aspirations, and all the revisable, private and public, autobiographical stories we construct about ourselves—is more difficult to pin down. It seems that we construe who we are. Our waking experience is anticipatory. We distill fragments of past memories and imagine what's next?

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We live in an era defined by memes. True, meme-ifying images and videos is a practice as old as humanity itself, but the advent of the internet has made that process much... danker. Whether repurposed from YouTube videos, movie screengrabs, or viral catchphrases, these golden nuggets shape how we consume, criticize, and communicate through cultural touchstones.

But which ones have achieved lasting greatness? To answer that, we looked for memes with universality and malleability; a dank meme exists in many permutations, and can cross cultural and linguistic barriers. We confined ourselves to the internet, so only symbols and phrases that crossed from traditional media to the web qualify. (Sorry, Kilroy.) We also considered the ubiquity and persistence of a meme in determining its position on this list, which means more recent memes tend to wind up lower in the ranking, but may rise or fall in future update. As you'll soon see, though, this ranking is perfect and indisputable.
ALSO READ: The Best Memes of 2021
(Not so) long ago, there existed a Discovery Channel program titled American Chopper, about the Teutul family, a tough bunch of guys who built custom motorcycles. Today, this heated scene from said show, in which Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr. argue with words and then chairs, is back from the dead as a template for staging new arguments. Regardless of the stakes, the intensity always remains the same, which is very, very good.

Though the meme-stream media was charged with killing Dat Boi, the polarizing green frog that briefly invaded Tumblr and Twitter via unicycle, that doesn't mean you have to completely forget about the unexplainable joys he and his brothers gave the world.

Right before the end of 2017, British hotelier David Morgan-Hewitt inspired what some call the successor to the reckless " large adult son" phenomenon, which itself had found a second wind thanks to the exploits of Donald Trump's progeny. "Where the large son is unchecked energy, an absolute unit is the picture of poise," wrote MEL Magazine's Miles Klee, "proof that the seemingly uncontainable aggression of mammoth males can button itself up; that men may break with patrilineal pressure, becoming something other than bumbling junior apprentice. Unlike large adult sons, the unit isn't bound by the inconvenience of gender. Properly speaking, the absolute unit needn't be masculine, or even human-just absolute." Behold, marvel away.

The early-to-mid-2000s were the internet's awkward, adolescent phase, with a sense of humor and casual use of words like "bitch" to match. The Juggernaut video-an overdub of an old X-Men cartoon-presaged many of the facts we take for granted now, like absurdist, non sequitur one-liners that exploited the rabid fandom of the comic-book crowd, to the point that "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" made its way into X-Men: The Last Stand.

In March 2013, actor Danny DeVito tweeted "Antonin Scalia retire bitch." His reasons for doing so are still unclear. But four years later, the concise demand has bloomed into a popular refrain, a call for controversial men, especially politicians, to cut their bullshit and pack it in.
ALSO READ: The Best Memes of the '00s
The yee haw agenda. Yee yee juice. Months as the country's number-one song. A star-studded music video. Near-universal recognition in the elementary school market. Lil Nas X has completely taken over pop culture since his country-trap song became a TikTok sensation in late 2018 to early 2019, quickly jumping across platforms and age groups to achieve ubiquity. Just when you think the steam is running out on the "Old Town Road" train, it just keeps going, proving that Lil Nas X-and this meme-will stay true to the message of the song by riding until they can't no more, proven by massive hit ("Montero") after hit ("Industry Baby").

Shot by Antonio Guillem, the stock photo "Disloyal Man Walking With His Girlfriend and Looking Amazed at Another Seductive Girl" depicts... just that. The Meme Documentation Tumblr traces its birth as an image-macro meme back to as early as January 2017, but it didn't explode until it hit Twitter during summer of the same year, functioning as a metaphor for pretty much anything involving competing desires, getting remixed with other memes, and folding in on itself in that inevitably meta way. "I do not really have the time to follow these things," the guy in the pic told SelectAll, "but for what I have seen, I can say that it's crazy what people can imagine."

No. Though this anime still-from the '90s series The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird-has been making the rounds on the internet for years, it's been revived, like a sassy Lazarus, for remixes and Distracted Boyfriend-esque object-labeling. Read more about its legitimately fascinating origins here.

Well, aren't you? Russell Crowe's iconic line from Gladiator rings true today. And right now, frankly, as you have 82 more memes to dig through.

Remember "Friday"?! Gotta get down on Friday?! The vanity project of a poorly advised but decently well-funded teen created a viral furor on the internet which led to the creation of remixes, gifs, and lasting infamy for Black. Without conferring any of the benefits of fame. Well... actually. We'll see about that.

Dabbing is newish, but it has some famous exponents, for better and for worse. Cam Newton, for one, sunk his teeth into it. Migos popularized it. And Squidward turned it into the ultimate surprise. But then there were Bill Gates and this sociopath. The jury's still out, but the simplicity of the original could place it in the pantheon of celebrations.

The History Channel anticipated the internet's brazen race for eyeballs at all costs, thanks to a comedically liberal interpretation of the word "history." Eventually, things got so bad that this dude became an "expert" on historic events that, contrary to what you learned in school, were carried out by ALIENS. So, whenever you need an explanation for a difficult question, use this macro and all will be revealed.

Those of us who lived through the planking craze will tell our grandkids tales about the glory days of 2010 and 2011, when anything seemed possible, any situation ripe for a good ol' plank. Or at least we'll tell our mom's friends when she has them over for dinner, and we decide to come up from the basement to have some wine. This meme stands as the quintessential example of spontaneous brilliance subsequently ruined by others who tried too hard to replicate it. Remember "owling" and "Tebowing"? Yeah, those sucked so hard.
ALSO READ: The Best Memes of 2020
It says a lot about John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign that this is the most memorable Kerry moment, and it happened in 2007. Overzealous police officers attempted to remove a man who interrupted Senator Kerry's speech at the University of Florida; knowing what would happen next, the protester offered one final, futile plea: Don't tase me, bro! The line has become a response to any unpleasant experience, and its close relative, "Don't tease me, bro," has become an antidote for anxious anticipation the world over.

For those who think memes don't matter: Consider James Van Der Beek, who parlayed his horrendous cry-face in the teen show Dawson's Creek into a universally recognized expression of low-stakes bereavement, and a second, self-parodying act. Well done, Van Der Beek. Well done.

Remember Antoine Dodson? This is him like you've never heard him. Way before Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was doing it, other people (with The Gregory Brothers leading the charge) were Auto-Tuning the fuck out of the news and making gloriously awful masterpieces.

It really doesn't matter what Baby Goose does, shit will not stick to him. The man played Robert Durst, for God's sake! "Hey Girl" cemented Gosling's legacy as a dream catch for women, who was simultaneously (and somewhat confusingly) sensitive to the modern woman's needs, yet also ready to... be a husband? The Gossiping Gosling moment only added to the actor's meme legend status.

Thanks to this kid's talent show performance, this other kid's incredible Halloween costume, bottle flipping reached new heights in 2016. The only thing better than watching everybody's daring attempts to pull off plastic acrobatics were the heavily edited fakes that emerged as part of the " haters gonna say it's fake" meme, one that exists well outside bottle flipping.

Arthur, the PBS educational TV series based on the Arthur the Aardvark books that just ended its 25-year run, has generated some of the best memes. In particular: One Twitter user's insightful take on an Arthur freeze frame led to 2016's greatest representation of inner frustration. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Just a few months after the launch of YouTube, commercial editor Robert Ryang inadvertently kicked off a movement by recutting Stanley Kubrick's The Shining into a lighthearted family comedy. Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" clearly worked its beaming, inspirational magic; the viral success of The Shining trailer spawned countless recuts, with a few-see: Brokeback to the Future-catapulting the practice to legendary status.

The Slender Man-sometimes spelled as one word and occasionally referred to as "Slender"-is a towering, faceless humanoid who dresses in a suit and stalks lonely children. Entirely fictional, he was created in 2009, when a user of the internet forum Something Awful submitted a doctored photo for a paranormal image contest. The character quickly exploded in popularity and became a fixture of horror sites (namely Creepypasta), inspiring countless videos, photos, and pieces of fan fiction. He is the horror meme.

Casual stereotyping has fueled the internet for a long, long time. Before we had the starter packs you see today on Instagram and Facebook, we had the slightly related YouTube videos that poked fun at what certain types of people used to say.

This turn-of-the-millennium hit found second life in the irony-soaked hands of a new generation, who find that relentlessly mocking the song is much more pleasing than listening to it. Peak "All Star" is owned by the lovable, neck-bearded Jon Sudano, who poignantly squeezes Smash Mouth lyrics into other popular songs. Smash Mouth, who performed at a COVID superspreader event in Sturgis, North Dakota, had this to say about the meme: "It's funny because a large percentage of our fans don't even know what a meme is-heck, we didn't really know either at first." Yeah. Not the sharpest tools in the shed.
ALSO READ: The 'Shrek 2' Soundtrack Is Better Than the 'Shrek' Soundtrack
Parodied by such comedy stalwarts as Stephen Colbert and Arrested Development, this 2002 video of a kid wielding a ball fetcher like a lightsaber exploded onto the pre-YouTube internet, repurposed by any and every internet user with video-editing skillz. The bittersweet twist is that viral fame took its toll; after suffering emotional damage, Star Wars kid slapped the cyberbullies who leaked the video with harassment lawsuits.

Not long after the release of Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 film, Downfall-about Adolf Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker-YouTubers turned the climax into a subtitled burst of absurdist comedy. In the real version, actor Bruno Ganz fumes with German fury over a failed assault. But in many of the viral parodies that followed, he kvetches about trivial pop-culture matters, everything from late-night show politics to Taylor Swift. "The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality," Hirschbiegel told Vulture in 2010, noting that his favorites were the Michael Jackson and Billy Elliot ones. "It's only fair if now it's taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like."

It's hard to think that when Ice Cube was shooting Friday, his classic 1995 stoner comedy, he had any idea that a throwaway line like "Bye, Felicia" would go on to become a popular dismissive catchphrase-much less the source for countless GIFs, Twitter put-downs, and even the title of a VH1 show. But that's how the internet works. Once people latch onto a piece of culture, it takes on a life of its own. This particular phrase went from the movies to the internet and then back to the big screen: Friday director F. Gary Gray incorporated the line into his N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, where Cube's actual son O'Shea Jackson Jr. delivered the line while playing his father. Whoa.

Queen of the Macros, the Ermahgerd meme emerged from an immediate collective understanding that "ermahgerd gersbermps" is exactly how the subject of this macro would pronounce, "Oh my God, Goosebumps." This meme actually influenced the way people speak, turning "ermahgerd" into a stock nerdy response to any object of enthusiasm. Say it out loud and try not to laugh. We can't do this meme more justice than Vanity Fair has already done in its profile of the woman in the photo, so read that.

What time is it? It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Before this was a goofy Family Guy gag, this delightfully silly meme started on forums as a piece of Flash animation where a chipper banana dances around as "Peanut Butter Jelly Time," a track from the Buckwheat Boyz, blares in the background. Don't question it. Submit to the banana.

Whether he's sipping tea or talking to an evil doppelgänger, this Muppet has earned a decidedly different identity online. Warm and fuzzy? Nah. Friendly and caring? Not quite. When you see him from behind the keyboard, no longer is he Sesame Street's most famous protagonist. He's a devil for your shoulder, the king of minding his own business-the kind who has the same longevity and malleability as a SpongeBob. Long may he reign.

No one could have predicted that a mildly problematic line from Sean Connery's earnest drama Finding Forrester would become the emblem for repetitive internet nonsense, but hey, here we are! In 2001, Max Goldberg slapped Connery's line-reading with a tiled mosaic of the man's face and cast it off into an infinite loop. Goldberg would open the site up to user-created "YTMND" memes, both bite-size and epic, mesmerizing and irritating as hell. No other platform could support such gifts as the Master Control Program from TRON singing Katy Perry's "Hot N Cold."

The rare example of a meme that made its own news in real time, Crying Michael Jordan originated from Jordan's vindictive, self-serving Hall of Fame speech. If you haven't watched the source material, please do. Of the many gifts that speech gave the world (has a father ever told his kids "I wouldn't want to be you" in front of a bigger audience?!), a red-eyed, blubbering meme is surely the greatest. You can put MJ's face on just about anything to lighten the mood, but get your meme feet wet with a Drake album, Mount Rushmore, James Harden's beard, or Donald Trump's trunk.

Thank god for Conan O'Brien, who in 2004 effectively re-catapulted Chuck Norris back into the zeitgeist with his Walker, Texas Ranger lever. Ever since, the martial artist has become the subject of an almost innumerable number of hilarious alternative facts exaggerating his strength, virility, and badassery. (Seriously, there's a database full of 'em.) Chuck's favorite? "They wanted to put Chuck Norris' face on Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn't hard enough for his beard."

Nothing infuriates an angry or jealous person more than trivializing his rage or jealousy, which is exactly what the always appropriate response "U mad bro?" accomplishes. The simpler "You mad" first came to prominence when Cam'ron shut down Bill O'Reilly during a segment on whether rap was harmful to children (thank God those days are over... hopefully). Eventually, "u mad?" and "u mad bro?" became go-to quips on bodybuilding forums and during video gameplay whenever anyone got a little salty. Now, it can exist in virtually any format: on political macros, on group texts, in Vines (RIP), as its very own song, on top of other memes... you name it, bro.

Primitive Sponge. Stunned Patrick. Confused Mr. Krabs. If you needed any more proof that SpongeBob SquarePants was amazing, and not just for kids, all the show's hilarious screengrabs-turned-viral reactions should do the trick. They're versatile, recognizable, and proving immortal.

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From Doge to Deal With It, join us as we assess the best internet memes of all time.

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The Ship of Theseus (One Minute Philosophy)

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This example was famously supplied as a philosophical thought experiment by Thomas Hobbes, the British philosopher of the English civil war, into which he was born (he said that he was born twins with fear), but he drew the example from Plutarch, a Roman writer, and, of course, Theseus comes from Greek mythology.

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Argument:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argument

Authority: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/authority

Certainty
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/certainty

Claim:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/claim

Culture:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/culture

Evidence:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/evidence

Facts;
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fact?q=facts

Knowledge:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledge

Truth:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truth

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How does the Ship of Theseus link to this real life situation?

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How does the Ship of Theseus link to this real life situation?

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Elon Musk touts brain implant technology to treat health conditions, enable ‘telepathy’

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Elon Musk revealed that his stealth neurotechnology start-up, Neuralink, is poised to begin human clinical trials soon on brain implants.

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Elements of knowledge your arguments  and implications must be based on

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Elements of knowledge your arguments  and implications must be based on

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12 concepts are Evidence, Certainty, Truth, Interpretation, Power, Justification, Explanation, Objectivity, Perspective, Culture, Values and Responsibility.

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I require BLACK COFFEE TO FUNCTION

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I'm perpetually sleepy (I slept 12 hours last night and could sleep 12 more now)

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I hate waking up early in the morning

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I love sleeping

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This is because I love travelling