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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Naaman Zhou

From iSnack2.0 to Tony Abbott's onions: the best Australian memes of the decade

Tony Abbott eats a whole raw onion
We may never know why Tony Abbott ate the onion, but we are surely glad he did. Photograph: ABC

It was at the Happy Dogz grooming salon, 10 minutes from Wet’n’Wild on the Gold Coast, 60km from Brisbane, that the two dogs, both Yorkshire terriers, were dropped off.

As they were preened and patted, how could Pistol and Boo know that, within hours, they would be threatened with execution by a future deputy prime minister?

Or that, in coming years, that same politician would be found to be a dual citizen, and forced to resign as National party leader after fathering a child with his former staffer? And that they, just two dogs owned by Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, would become a beloved meme, referenced by countless humans every step of the way?

As the decade draws to a close, Guardian Australia has chosen some of the best Australian memes from the past 10 years.

This is a non-exhaustive list, spanning politics, pop culture and extreme online shenanigans. For eligibility, a meme was considered Australian if it derived from an Australian source (film, music or event), and the list includes both memes that are globally popular (from Australian origins) and those comprehensible only to people within the country.

Democracy manifest, aka succulent Chinese meal

Like God or the Mekong River, it goes by many names. “Succulent Chinese meal”, also known as “democracy manifest”, also known as “you know your judo well” is a viral Youtube video of an incredibly dramatic man being arrested in Australia.

Its origins are shrouded in mystery. Its appeal is simple. Watch it below if you haven’t had the pleasure.

Democracy manifest

The original video identifies the man as Paul Charles Dozsa, a Hungarian-Australian chess master who was recorded by numerous newspapers in the 1980s as a prolific dine-and-dasher.

It’s a good story – but there is no actual evidence that the video is of Dozsa, and people who knew him say the man in the clip does not look or sound like him.

The video could be someone else, a scripted skit, or it could be Dozsa. It really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that succulent Chinese meal is perhaps the pre-eminent Australian meme of the past 10 years. It has longevity, international popularity and relevance. Uploaded in January 2009, it has echoed through the decade.

Somehow, it has overlapped with news developments ranging from obscure A-League barbecue references to the extradition of Julian Assange. Succulent Chinese meal lives on, as beloved now as it was then.


Tony Abbott eating an onion

Politics by its very nature is notable. The people easily caricatured, the events dramatic. With the ever-loosening definition of meme, there must be a distinction drawn between the weekly churn of events – which become “memes” just through constant reference and topicality – and those with staying power.

There are some memes that sum up a person or political movement, that can colour a whole career. Highly commended in this category are: Well done Angus, Kevin Rudd getting angry at Mandarin, Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech, Bob Katter’s “I ain’t spending any time on it”, and Tony himself and his 28 seconds of silence.

But there is something visceral about the raw onion eating that you cannot go past. It is a baffling, earth-shaking thing to witness from anyone you would know, let alone the prime minister. From an incredibly worthy, crowded field it rises up like a towering mark in a grand final, a speccy on the shoulders of giants.

Tony Abbott eating an onion is the political meme of the decade, bar none.

The fact that he did it twice makes it otherworldly.

When Abbott left the prime ministership, he told the Daily Telegraph in a heartfelt, post-mortem interview: “I probably shouldn’t have eaten an onion.” We clearly do not agree.

iSnack 2.0

In 2009, the makers of Vegemite decided to mix it in with cream cheese. Then they held a competition to describe what they had done. You know how this ends.

The naming of iSnack 2.0 was so universally hated it was reversed after only four days. An ABC News article from the time described it as doing “immense damage” to the brand (even if it was a deliberate, desperate pitch for publicity) – in what was one of the mildest, most level-headed write-ups from the era.

Commercially, iSnack 2.0 was a failure. But culturally, it’s a foundational moment.

Looking back, iSnack 2.0 did much to popularise, and normalise, the concept of social media blowback. Launched during Twitter’s infancy, iSnack 2.0 become the first demonstration of its social power, for better or worse.

It may be gone, but iSnack 2.0 lives on through Boaty McBoatface (and Sydney’s own Ferry McFerryface), Tom Hooper’s Cats, and the live-action Sonic movie. iSnack 2.0 created “the internet reacts to” template, the spectre that haunts every launch.

And locally, it was a coming of age for Australian social media. The white-hot flame of iSnack 2.0 helped crystallise a unique, hyperlocal meme identity – a love of Woolies chocolate cakes, Shapes and Darryl Braithwaite’s The Horses. Current meme mills (and money-spinning machines) such as Brown Cardigan or the Betoota Advocate exist now through tapping into the community that came together to kill iSnack 2.0.

The hated condiment is dead, but its DNA lives on in “Aussie memes”, modern boycott campaigns and social-media reaction articles, concepts we all now take for granted. iSnack 2.0 was the day Kraft let the genie out of the bottle, and it’s never going back.

Smashed avo on toast

It’s a sentence that will (hopefully) make no sense to anyone outside this decade. But for now, we are living in a fleeting moment where the planets have aligned and the following words are comprehensible.

In 2016, the Australian’s economics columnist Bernard Salt started the worldwide meme that millennials cannot afford to buy houses because of avocado on toast.

When Salt first published, we thought it would be a radar blip. Such a niche intersection between Australian housing prices, Australian brunch culture and Australian media – why would anyone else care?

But then it spread across the world. It was picked up by the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian in the UK, and the same joke hangs on cafe menus from California to Barcelona. It’s been discussed by congresswomen, it’s become a symbol of generational warfare. Now the Wikipedia page for avocado toast includes the subheading: “Political symbolism – further information: Middle-class squeeze”. This is something so stupid it must be celebrated.


Shooting stars

The definition of a sleeper hit. Many people who have seen or heard Shooting Stars probably don’t even realise what it is, or that it’s Australian.

Shooting Stars, most popular in 2017, is a meme that shows a person jumping or falling over, set to the pumping beats of 2008 minor dancefloor hit Shooting Stars by Sydney band Bag Raiders.

It’s the gold standard in local kid come good on the international stage, the Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie of meme culture. At its peak, Shooting Stars became so popular it was featured in Katy Perry’s highly internet-literate video for her song Swish Swish.

Just waiting for a mate

A 2013 clip from Highway Patrol, where an obviously drunk man tells the police he is simply “waiting for a mate” is iconic.

More than any other meme on this list, it’s become a staple of everyday Australian speech, achieving a “Not happy, Jan!” level of catchphrase-worthiness that seems to hark back to an earlier era, thought lost in the internet age.

World is fukt


Three words. 11 letters. Say it, and Australian media infamy is yours.

In 2014, on Anzac Day morning, the Australian Financial Review went to print, an icon in the making. So littered with errors and mistakes and placeholders, it was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Every second, a new intricate detail bloomed.

“Japan headline,” it said. “Joe Hockey headline tk here”. And there, on the front page: “Arms buildup: Buys planes, World is Fukt”.

The typo itself is funny. And as layoffs and media concentration bit down hard in later years, “World is fukt” became a metaphor for media.

Worst of all, as the decade wore on there was the sad realisation that maybe, it actually was the best, most succinct way to describe what was happening. It’s the “Baby shoes, never worn” of news. Global, local, economic, environmental, social and more – “World is fukt” is elegant, resigned and increasingly accurate.

Pistol and Boo

Their story has already partly been told. In 2015, Johnny Depp and then-partner Amber Heard arrived in Australia to film a movie. They brought their two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, but did not declare them to Australian biosecurity. In return, Barnaby Joyce threatened the dogs with death.

It was a pun bonanza for subeditors. It was the War on Terriers. When they escaped alive, it was Who let the dogs out? Programming whizzes at Guardian Australia created an interactive countdown called “Countdown to Depp dog death deadline”, a sentence so beautiful it deserves its own award.

In April 2016, the pair were forced to film a hostage-style apology video praising Australia as “a wonderful island”, itself generating new memes. As late as 2017, Joyce was somehow still telling people that he could reinvestigate Johnny Depp.

And as the decade ended and Joyce himself stepped into the meme spotlight with multiple scandals, Pistol and Boo – or a happy Amber Heard – became their own meme shorthand for his troubles. As one waned, the other grew strong.

Honourable mentions

“It’s on”, aka not having a stable prime minister

Abbott and his onion wins on specificity, but the thematic political meme of the decade isn’t a moment, it’s a feeling.

It’s the Rudd-Gillard leadership spill of 2010, the Gillard-Rudd leadership spill of 2013, the failed Simon Crean spill, it’s the Killing Season, it’s the hashtag #libspill, 2015 and 2019, it’s the dual citizenship crisis. It’s declaring “it’s on” whenever anything happens.

“It’s on” is the sense of the merry-go-round, or disposability, of politics as bloodsport and fun. A two-word phrase that sums up the decade at the same time as it tracks crumbling public trust in politicians.

Ibises

For a few years in the mid 2010s, the hated bin chicken was flying high. The ironic deification of the bird resulted in Facebook pages such as Sydney University Ibis Watch growing by thousands of likes a year.

At peak ibis (2017), the meme was enough to propel the species to second place in the inaugural Guardian Australia Bird of the Year poll. For a few shining months, the country was defined by one curved beak: pro or anti-ibis.

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