Is It a Rat or This Year's Most Popular Meme? USU Folklore Announces Digital Lore of 2024

LOGAN — Utah State University’s Digital Folklore Project has announced that the Chicago Rat Hole meme, which is the imprint of a rat in the concrete sidewalk, has won Digital Lore of the Year for 2024.

The rat’s body imprint, which had apparently existed for a while, generated a lot of folkloric tweets and TikTok videos, particularly in 2024. People film and photograph themselves making pilgrimages to the site. They leave money. They argue over whether it was really a rat or actually a squirrel that left its mark. They generate funny memes about it: “Live. Laugh. Rat Hole.”

“If you ever felt like you were trying to pull yourself out of a rat hole and were being dragged down by concrete, this meme is for you,” said Jeannie Thomas, co-director of the Digital Folklore Project. “I also really like that some people argue that the rat hole represents hope because tracks are leading away from it.”

According to Lynne McNeill, who co-directs the Digital Folklore Project, “The Rat Hole really exemplifies the nature of digital folklore — seemingly trivial content that holds an unexpectedly deeper meaning.”

“People don’t make pilgrimages to a spot on the sidewalk for no reason. There’s a resonance here that speaks to how we’re collectively feeling,” she said. “There were a lot of examples of digital folklore this year that hit on what might be considered more ‘important’ topics, but the Chicago Rat Hole highlights a sense of shared compassion that many people feel is strongly lacking these days.”

Both McNeill and Thomas are members of USU’s Department of English. Each year, USU students and faculty identify digital folklore and select a trend that they think is culturally significant.

Coming in second place were Scram Leave Her Alone memes, which show comedian Kel Cripe saying, “This is a message for all of the guys trying to talk to my girl. Scram! Leave her alone! She doesn't want to talk to you. Get out of here!"

Other TikTok users picked up Cripe’s original content and repurposed it in new videos. In one example, they superimposed the comedian over a bottle of ibuprofen and captioned it, “How I imagine ibuprofen gets rid of my pain.”

Co-directors McNeill and Thomas note that part of the appeal of this trend is the use of the old-fashioned word “scram.”

Other 2024 Digital Lore of the Year contenders included TikTok memes about how the British wash their dishes, parodies of the untrue legends about people eating cats and dogs, TikTok memes employing the phrase “very demure, very mindful,” and memes of Moo Deng, a baby hippo.

For more information about USU’s Digital Folklore Project, please visit its website.