The Serial Meme Killers of 2012

A lot of the big viral things this year had shorter life expectancies than usual, thanks to the cool-hunters who singlehandedly ended them. Here's our interactive guide to the last 12 months in Internet obituaries.

Call Me Maybe, Ridiculously Photogenic Guy, Texts From Hillary ... this year brought the Internet more viral things than any of us every asked for, and in all sorts of incarnations. But we couldn't help but notice, in looking back for The Atlantic Wire's Year in Review, that the biggest memes of 2012 had shorter life expectancies than usual. As is the rule of Internet cool hunting and whatnot, there comes a point where a viral thing becomes obsolete, or at least completely ruined. And a lot of that ruining had to do with the people who single-handedly ended a meme, even if they were the meme incarnate. Scroll and click along for our Internet obituaries of the year: