From the Star Wars Kid to the Red Shirt Guy, certain items or ideas gain traction on the Internet, and reach the hallowed status of Internet meme.  If you’re like me, you’re not exactly hip to the latest memes.  Fear not!  Know Your Meme has you covered, helping you stay abreast of the latest memes on the Internet.

In its own words, Know Your Meme is “a web series and online database dedicated to documenting Internet culture, one scientismic investigation at a time.”  Know Your Meme is more than just a meme database, as a visit to the front page will reveal.  For example, you can find blog posts discussing memes in greater detail.  One recent example is a look at the basics of a distributed denial-of-service attack, which can help you to understand the Anonymous attacks on PayPal, Visa, and others this past week.  Know Your Meme also highlights trending memes, and even has video episodes that dissect certain memes.

For me, though, the most fun is just browsing aimlessly through the site.  In the Meme database, you can find a list of popular memes, many of which are worth a chuckle.  Chubby Bubbles Girl anyone?  To get the full effect of some of the memes, you need to check out the images at the bottom of each page.  Some meme pages also contain graphs that track the interest in the meme over time.

What’s your favorite Internet meme?