Dank Memes is an ironic label for viral internet media and in-jokes that are intentionally weird or have burned out their comedic value to the point of being cliché. The word "dank," originally slang for high-quality marijuana, gets used satirically as a synonym for "cool" or "good"3. The tag sits between sincere praise and self-aware mockery, letting posters call something great while implying it is already past its prime.

Visually the term attaches to a wide grab bag of formats: crude image macros, absurdist edits, low-effort text posts, and montage parody videos. There is no single visual template for a dank meme. What ties the category together is attitude, an embrace of the weird, the overused, and the deliberately trashy1. Urban Dictionary entries from users echo that read, defining dank memes as anything from the "highest category of dank" to a running joke about Shrek, Pepe, and Harold4.

Dank memes work as a label rather than a fixed template. Common convention is to apply the term to content that is intentionally low-effort, edgy, absurdist, or so worn out it circles back to being funny again. Users typically post such content to communities like /r/dankmemes with minimal commentary, often layering ironic distance over already-tired formats like Success Kid or the gnome child image macro1.