# Meme Speedruns
Meme Speedruns are joke speedrunning categories where runners race to complete absurd, non-game feats as fast as possible, like getting banned from Club Penguin or recreating Peter Griffin in Mii Maker. The trend started in February 2017 with a YouTube video by ButtonWalls and grew into a running parody of the speedrunning community itself.
## Overview
Meme Speedruns are parody speedrunning categories built around silly, non-gameplay goals rather than legitimate video game completion. Runs typically involve getting banned from an online service, recreating a specific character face inside a limited avatar editor, or achieving some other absurd feat against a stopwatch[1]. Some later subgenres skip the actual run entirely and use video editing software to fake glitch exploits, most notably the American Dad theme song edits[3].
The visual style borrows heavily from real speedrunning: on-screen timers, category tags like 'Banned%' or 'No BLJ', and long-form retrospective videos that mimic YouTuber Summoning Salt's World Record Progression documentaries[1]. Categories cluster around whatever platform, game menu, or Discord server is currently ripe for abuse[3].
## How It Spread
Runners started shaving seconds off almost immediately. On February 20th, 2017, YouTuber Camelogical posted a 1:08 run, and within a week Canadian speedrunner 2KRN4U had pushed the world record down to 39.53 seconds using faster account registration and captcha handling[1]. Speedrun.com added an official 'Banned' category for Club Penguin[2]. PC Gamer, Polygon, and Digg all covered the trend that same week[1][2]. Camelogical eventually set the final WR of 33 seconds on the day Disney shut Club Penguin's servers down on March 29th, 2017[3].
The format then jumped to new targets. On March 28th, 2018, YouTuber turnipp uploaded a 24.80 second Peter Griffin Mii Maker speedrun on Nintendo Switch, and a 19.49 second follow-up went viral in May 2019 via YouTube's recommendation algorithm[3]. American Dad Speedruns started July 7th, 2019, when YouTuber Lyve posted a fake 'floor glitch' edit of the theme song that hit 50,000 views, with copycats swarming the format that November[3].
YandereDev's Discord Ban Speedruns broke out in January 2020 after Twitter user @JonVaginal claimed a nine second ban, pulling 5,200 retweets and 19,600 likes. YouTuber Bonkinson's Summoning Salt style retrospective on the category racked up 792,500 views before YandereDev locked his server to Twitch subscribers on February 3rd, 2020[3]. Later spinoffs included Pokimane Discord Ban Speedruns, Black Emoji Speedruns (Instagram user @unholy_chungles, December 27th, 2019), and NSFW / Google Search Speedruns[3].
## How to Use
Common convention is to pick a target with a clear success condition (a ban message, a finished avatar, a specific search result), start an on-screen timer, and record the whole run in one take. Category names typically use speedrun jargon like 'Banned%', 'Any%', or 'No BLJ' regardless of whether those tags make literal sense[1]. Retrospective edits often copy Summoning Salt's slow zoom clips and narrated history-of-the-record structure[3].
## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Meme Speedruns?
A joke speedrunning genre where runners race to complete absurd, non-gameplay tasks as fast as possible, like getting banned from Club Penguin or building Peter Griffin in Mii Maker[3].
### Where did Meme Speedruns come from?
The trend started February 19th, 2017 with YouTuber ButtonWalls' video 'Banned From Club Penguin Speed Run 1m 54s,' which hit 600,000 views in a day[2].
### What does Meme Speedruns mean?
It refers to speedrun categories that parody the competitive speedrunning community by treating silly online feats like Club Penguin bans as timed record attempts[1].
### How do you use Meme Speedruns?
Runners typically pick a target with a clear stop condition, run a visible timer, and present the clip in the format of a real world record attempt with a category tag like 'Banned%'[1].
### Is Meme Speedruns still popular?
The format peaked between 2017 and early 2020 across Club Penguin, Peter Griffin Mii, American Dad, and YandereDev Discord ban categories, and is now treated as a classic speedrunning parody genre[3].
## References
1. [https://www.pcgamer.com/getting-banned-from-club-penguin-is-now-a-speedrunning-competition/]()
2. [https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/22/14698354/club-penguin-ban-speedruns]()
3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meme-speedruns]()
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