Big Bird and Elmo next to the green Sesame Street street sign on a blue backdrop.

Sesame Street

1969viral videoclassic

Published September 26, 2026

Sesame Street is the long-running American children's show whose puppet skits and celebrity guest bits became a bottomless well of source clips for YouTube Poop, MAD remixes, and reaction edits. A 2008 Elmo segment with Jack Black defining the word octagon is the single most-recycled moment, spawning countless remix videos across YouTube.

childrens media memes youtube poop memes muppets memes mashup video memes tv show memes

Overview

As a meme, Sesame Street mostly lives on YouTube, where clips from the show get chopped, looped, and pitched around into YouTube Poop and MAD-style remix videos1. Elmo, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, and the many celebrity guest segments give remixers a rotating cast of instantly recognizable characters, which is a big reason the show is such a common source1.

The single most-quoted bit is Jack Black's Octagon, a 2008 segment in which Elmo asks Jack Black to define an octagon and Black responds with an oddly intense performance1. That mismatch between wholesome puppet and unhinged guest is exactly the kind of raw material remix communities gravitate toward, and the segment kept showing up in YouTube Poop videos for years afterward2. Beyond Black, other guest star clips and old classic Sesame Street sketches feed a steady drip of reaction GIFs, out-of-context screenshots, and edits1.

Origin & Background

Platform
PBS (source show) / YouTube (viral remix spread)
Date
1969

Sesame Street premiered on public television on November 10, 1969, created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett and built around Jim Henson's muppets1. By August 2014 the show had aired 44 seasons and more than 4,000 episodes, giving remixers decades of archived footage to pull from1.

The show itself is not a meme, but the meme-adjacent life of Sesame Street took off once clips started migrating to YouTube. Jack Black's Octagon segment aired in 2008 and became a signature source clip for remixers, cited on Know Your Meme as common material for YouTube Poop Music Videos and MAD video remixes12.

How It Spread

The remix afterlife plays out mostly on YouTube. The Jack Black octagon clip has been re-uploaded, pitched, and looped in various fan edits, and other Sesame Street segments have been used the same way23. Related videos surface across the platform under both official Sesame Street uploads and fan channels45.

Sesame Street the brand also grew a large official social footprint alongside the remix scene. As of August 2014, the show's Facebook page had roughly 840,000 likes, its Twitter around 860,000 followers, and its YouTube channel had passed one million subscribers1. Fan communities gathered on Tumblr blogs like fuckyeahsesamestreet, on the /r/sesamestreet subreddit, and on DeviantArt, which hosted over 12,000 pieces of Sesame Street fan art by that point1.

The show's status as a cultural fixture also kept it visible in awards coverage, with 11 Primetime Emmy nominations in Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming (six wins), a Grammy for Best Recording for Children in 1971, and Peabody Awards in 1970 and 19901. That decades-long run is a big part of why the show is still such a reliable well for remix creators1.

Timeline

1969-11-10

Sesame Street premieres on public television, created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett with Jim Henson's muppets[1].

1971

The show wins a Grammy for Best Recording for Children[1].

2008

Jack Black appears on Sesame Street with Elmo to define the word octagon, creating the clip that will become a staple YouTube Poop source[2].

2014-08

As of August 2014 the show has run 44 seasons and more than 4,000 episodes, with over 1 million YouTube subscribers on the official channel[1].

Frequently Asked Questions