With We’re Obsessed picking this year’s internet main characters, one team has revealed its scouting reports

By • -

Each year on the We’re Obsessed podcast, I battle it out with my Ringer sisters-in-arms-and-scrolling, Kate Halliwell and Nora Princiotti, to assemble teams of the year’s most chronically online moments. Drafting these moments requires a keen eye for memes that stood above the rest and a thick skin to weather deep-thinking online discourse that threatens our good fun. What happens in the Chronically Online Draft decides the viral standing of these internet main characters, memes, and moments, not only for 2025 but also into eternity. Your online footprint is forever, after all—just ask your dad. He read an article about it 12 years ago.

The goal of this draft is the goal of any draft: to assemble the best team. And “best,” in this case, is defined as a collection of the most unforgettable viral stories of the year, the memes that moved our spirit, the new internet it girls who swept the nation. Building the best team almost always means killing a darling or two to grab our favorite dirtbag scam, a viral bit of campy chaos, or the year’s ultimate turducken of internet lore. Of course, the Chronically Online Draft can never be entirely objective—each of us has a different vibe, loved and loathed different memes, dived into different rabbit holes, and explained different lore to our less online friends and colleagues when they, in a moment of vulnerability, texted us to ask about it.

2025 was a particularly cursed year that makes drafting the internet’s best* *moments and main characters even fuzzier. No it girl reigned supreme quite like Moo Deng did last year, so it was more crucial than ever to come to the podcast prepared with a sturdy but nimble draft board—a tool I totally know about now after studying and emulating Danny Kelly’s incomparably rigorous work on The Ringer’s NFL Draft Guide. To help make sense of such a freewheeling year of virality, and as part of the second annual We’re Obsessed Chronically Online Draft, I’m taking you behind the scenes of my own draft board so that you *too *can have the best chance of becoming the person your friends text in 2026 to ask, “Wait, *what *did Katy Perry do in that piranha tank on Instagram Live?” This is how we win.

If you want to see whom my opponents and I ended up drafting, check out this episode of We’re Obsessed.

Monocultural Curiosities

Coldplay Kiss Cam (First-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Discourse Driver, Freak Accident, Mom Called for Explainer, Le Scandal!, As Seen on GMA, Eat the Rich, Visually Compelling, As Seen on TikTok

This viral story had it all: a good-old-fashioned bout of eat-the-rich infidelity, caught on candid camera during a feel-good Coldplay concert. This scandal didn’t even need a whiff of celebrity for people to become obsessed with its lore, its details, its every twist and turn.

**Why it’s the right pick: **When the married CEO of a billion-dollar AI tech company, Andy Byron, was spotted canoodling with his also married chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, on the jumbotron at a random Coldplay concert this July, it didn’t just create a viral moment—it finally gave focus to an otherwise listless pop culture summer. Illicit Affair Summer, as it was dubbed on We’re Obsessed, never gained as much name recognition as “Brat Summer” or “Hot Girl Summer” before it, but it went down in infamy and infa-meme-y (sorry)—along with half of the C-suite at Astronomer.

**Easiest detail to forget: **The way this man left this woman *in the dust when the jumbotron camera turned to them. The immediate visual cues of this sub-10-second clip are what spun it into viral orbit. First, Cabot’s hands fly to her face, at which point Byron immediately flees the scene altogether, making it clear to anyone watching that these two were not meant to be seen together and that if anyone happened to be filming, the pair would *be the viral story of 2025.

Why it’s the wrong pick: Technically, *maybe *these people didn’t opt into a public life and were simply having a private moment that happened to be uploaded on TikTok, and therefore they didn’t deserve all of this very public and very negative attention ... but. Did they also choose to have a tryst in a wildly public place and sway softly to the music together, the erotic pull of the Coldplay concert apparently so strong that they couldn’t possibly realize that the camera was swinging around the stadium for something Chris Martin does called the “Jumbotron Song” (it wasn’t even a kiss cam!), putting them at incredibly high risk of being exposed as AI tech executives in a compromising situation? Yes, they did.

**Funniest detail to remember: **It cannot be overstated that this happened *at a Coldplay *concert. Certainly a place for white people shenanigans but an unlikely locale for scandal, and precisely not a part of the monoculture in 2025—until July.

**Will we remember this in 2026? **Mark my words: When we’re having a boring ol’ Ethically Monogamous Summer in 2026 as the world burns down around us, we will long for Illicit Affair Summer. (Also, The New York Times just ran a *lengthy *profile of Cabot titled “The Ritual Shaming of the Woman at the Coldplay Concert,” which, I guess, is proof of this discourse’s staying power.)

Le Heist (First-Round Prospect)

Badges:*** ***Le Scandal!, As Seen on GMA, Recency Bias, Eat the Rich, Previously Established Lore

*A heist in the style of Robin Hood, Ocean’s Eleven, and Lupin—a mystery so compelling that it spun off into multiple hoaxes, created its own world of lore, and gave everyone the chance to talk about the last time they were at the Louvre (and also to use the word “diadem” again). *

Why it’s the right pick: It’s so rare when a real-life plot that’s lifted straight out of the movies doesn’t also make you feel too morally itchy to enjoy the scandal—excuse me, le scandal—of it all. Sure, the four Animaniacs who broke into the Louvre stole an estimated 88 million euros’ worth of French royal jewels. But they also just straight-up dropped one of the nine pieces they stole in a gutter on the way out of the museum—Empress Eugénie’s crown, featuring 1,354 diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds, and 56 emeralds. Truly found dead in a ditch. You kind of have to say slay.

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **I don’t know, maybe romanticizing heists and convincing ourselves that all of the thieves were sexy and in love will come back to haunt us when 2026 just turns into the Purge—but instead of cunty uncanny valley masks, everyone is just wearing construction vests and riding mopeds. But for now, the stealing wasn’t from me, so who cares? (OK, maybe the French do, but perhaps they should focus on digging through gutters for loose diamonds.)

**Easiest detail to forget: **These bold-ass motherfuckers rode a monte-meubles—an electric ladder often used for moving furniture into apartments in Paris—up to the jewelry floor of the Louvre like it was their own personal service elevator for *thievery. *The fact that they were in and out in under eight minutes really makes these guys seem like Clooney-level heisters who just might get away with it—-but it’s very important to remember that, on the way down, they unsuccessfully tried to light the *monte-meubles *on fire and fumbled crowns like a grandma trying to successfully hold a phone and whisk eggs in an infomercial.

**Funniest detail to remember: **The best parts of le heist were les hoaxes, specifically the viral photo of the young man wearing several layers of tweed and a jaunty fedora tilted just so whom everyone was convinced was a picture-perfect French detective on the case, even though that young detective looked like a 15-year-old in his dad’s clothes. It turned out that he was, in fact, a 15-year-old wearing his father’s Yves Saint Laurent waistcoat and Tommy Hilfiger trousers. But that vintage Soviet watch he’d repaired with parts sourced from Bulgaria? That piece was all his.

**Will we remember this in 2026? **Museum professionals will remember this heist until the end of time. As a culture, *we *will remember it in six months when a kind of janky documentary by Netflix comes out (or, let’s be honest—an Investigation Discovery documentary, repurposed for Hulu). Meanwhile, I will remember that jaunty kid not-detective forever and ever, fin.

Girlbosses in Space (First-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Plot out of ABC’s 9-1-1, As Seen on GMA, Celebrity Name Recognition, Mom Called for Explainer

*As inflation skyrocketed and families struggled to afford groceries, a handful of celebrities dared to do what many, many women had done before them: go to space. Barely. *

**Why it’s the right pick: **If there was one single thing your mom was going to ask you about this year, it was whether you knew that Katy Perry was going to space. But if you were a chronically online individual, you had been tracking that shit for weeks. You already knew that “the first all-female crew to go to space” meant that Jeff Bezos’s then-fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, was taking Katy Perry, Gayle King, and some actually qualified women on an 11-minute round-trip ride up into orbit, mostly so that Katy Perry could tell Elle, “We are going to put the ass in astronaut.”

Easiest detail to forget: That is to say nothing of when Perry said, "I think from up there, we will think, ‘Oh my God, we have to protect our mother.” And then she just went up there and showed her new album track list on a Post-it note, amassing the same carbon footprint as someone else would in their entire lifetime in the process. I must, as always, quote the Wendy’s social media account when I say: “Can we send her back?”

**Funniest detail to remember: **Yet Katy Perry will always win me back again and again by flopping so outrageously, so unlike any starlet before her, by going up there and singing “What a Wonderful World” for all of the other girlbosses, in what I have to assume was her best Louis Armstrong voice.

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **I never like seeing Gayle King upset. Even if she *is *doing pretend feminism for Jeff Bezos.

**Will we remember this in 2026? **There is something about the phrase “girlbosses in space” that rings so eternal, I fear it might one day be a chapter in the history textbooks.

Gonna Have a Conclave (Second-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Previously Established Lore, As Seen on GMA, As Seen on Twitter, Dad Called to Explain

*Why is the ancient art of men dressing up in robes, playing with ribbons, and lighting unnecessary fires so compelling? The world may never know—but the world *does have its first American pope.

**Why it’s the right pick: **What started as a campy little internet obsession with the 2024 film Conclave turned into the very IRL cultural event of the season when Pope Francis died one day after meeting JD Vance (remember that???). A real conclave! So much detail! So many fineries! So much lore! Almost a thousand years of it! To keep up with what promised to be rounds and rounds of conclaving, Twitter required the rise of a new supreme: Pope Crave, a half-parody, half-proper-pope account for pope updates, run by two 30-something Harvard grads. And then the Catholic Church went and did the funniest thing possible: It elected the first American pope.

**Funniest detail to remember: **The pope is from Chicago! CHICAGO! Home of deep dish pizza, Daaaa Bears, and Jeppson’s Malört, a self-aware liqueur from the depths of hell with many excellent slogans like: “Malört: Tonight’s the night you fight your dad.”

Why it’s the wrong pick: It was fun while it lasted, but around the time the footage of that one cardinal singing “Imagine” karaoke dropped, this whole thing was getting far too close to actually stanning the Catholic Church.

**Easiest detail to forget: **Referring to every cardinal as “pope” during the conclave. *That *was a good time.

Will we remember this in 2026? We will when it’s inevitably time for a new conclave following a Malört-related incident.

**Internet Main Characters **

Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl (Second-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Discourse Driver, Mom Called for Explainer, Dad Called for Explainer, Previously Established Lore, Le Scandal!

One iconic pair of flares, one smirk, and two words—“Say Drake”—turned Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance into a story even your parents could get invested in.

**Why it’s the right pick: **The legend of Kendrick Lamar’s beef and subsequent diss-track battle with Drake preceded his Super Bowl performance, at which point we knew he’d be tapping into a few of those very tracks on the country’s most watched stage—the ultimate victory in a beef that had never been on even footing. But the reveal that those steady yet featherlight feet would be hopping around the stage in flared jeans, while their owner stared directly into the camera to smirk, “Say Drake—I hear ya like ’em young” created an instant internet sensation. (And kind of my whole vibe for the year, I think?)

**Funniest detail to remember: **Those Old Navy flares? They were actually Celine flares, originally sourced for Timothée Chalamet by their shared stylist, Taylor McNeil, and worn by Kendrick in a women’s size 29, hems dragging the ground like he was a brave ninth grader on a rainy day in 2006. It simply doesn’t get funnier or more fashion-forward than that.

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **This was such a big time in 2025 that it’s difficult to confine it to just one chronically online moment.

**Easiest detail to forget: **Samuel L. Jackson, what are *you *doing here?!

**Will we remember this in 2026? **I can’t speak for everyone, but on the day that I die, I will be thinking of Kendrick Lamar’s size 29 Celine flares.

Jordon Hudson Interrupting Bill Belichick’s CBS Sunday Morning Interview (Fourth-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Le Scandal, Dad Called for Explainer, Previously Established Lore, It Girl X Factor

“We’re not talking about that.” OH, YES, WE ARE!

Why it’s the right pick: Even though football fans were lightly aware that Bill Belichick was dating a woman nearly 50 years his junior—and even though the chronically online among us knew that Jordon Hudson had been styling Belichick as a lobster fisherman to her beached mermaid and as an aerial yogi, and that she’d carried a piece of firewood as a purse to the Super Bowl—the wider world wasn’t exposed to Jordon until Belichick took part in a perhaps ill-advised CBS Sunday Morning interview in which interviewer Tony Dokoupil first described her in voiceover as “a constant presence during our interview.” Then, when Belichick was asked how he met the woman sitting angrily stage left, Jordon interrupted—looking, as she always does, like she might steal your voice and store it in a seashell (complimentary)—to hiss, “We’re not talking about that.” And thus, an internet obsession was born.

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **Because what is going on here??? How these two met is already public knowledge because Jordon posted it on Instagram. Why would she not tell CBS the same story, which is that they met on a plane … where he signed her textbook … because she was in college. OK, yeah, I guess that’s why we’re not talking about that.

**Funniest detail to remember: **The thing that predates Jordon’s relationship with Bill Belichick and has stuck through all the twists and turns of media and ACC scrutiny: Jordon’s on-again, off-again relationship with competitive adult cheerleading.

**Easiest detail to forget: **As we like to say on We’re Obsessed: There is a certain type of woman who’s always trying to get herself in a mermaid tail. You’ll know her when you see her; she is the one who, even at the most minor opportunity … is wearing a mermaid tail. But even when she’s not—that sometimes-betailed woman is one to be feared. And possibly respected to the highest degree. Only time will tell here …

**Will we remember this in 2026? **Oh, this is *not *going away. This is a chronically online feast for the senses.

Robbie Williams as a Monkey in *Better Man *(Fourth-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Visually Compelling, Know Your Meme, Previously Established Lore, Animals on the Internet

“The entire film is Robbie Williams’s life story except he is a monkey.” —@discussingfilm on Twitter

**Why it’s the right pick: **From the moment I read that Robbie Williams was making a biopic about himself, except he is a monkey, I knew that 2025 would be off to the chronically online races come January. First, Americans had to remember who Robbie Williams was, and then they had to figure out why he was being played by a CGI monkey, all before they decided to go to a theater to see this movie. Still, I never could have imagined that Robbie Williams, Except He Is a Monkey: The Movie would become *such *an internet phenomenon … and that’s probably because I didn’t know quite how much cocaine that monkey would be doing!

**Funniest detail to remember: **Hands down, it’s that the movie is good. And it’s because of the monkey, not in spite of him (*it *… THEM?).

**Easiest detail to forget: **THE MONKEY WORKS.

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **There is nothing wrong with casting yourself as a CGI monkey. It’s almost *the only way *you can nail a musical biopic these days.

**Will we remember this in 2026? **I’m not positive that I didn’t dream it to begin with.

The Gassy Anglerfish of Doom (Fifth-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Animals on the Internet, Visually Compelling, As Seen on TikTok, It Girl X Factor

Every year has its animal it girl of choice, and this year’s was appropriately doomed, perfectly cursed, and shockingly petite.

**Why it’s the right pick: **In early 2025, a black seadevil anglerfish—previously best known for being the scary fish with the bulldog jaw, milky eyes, and bioluminescent rod (no offense) in Finding Nemo—somehow swam all the way to the surface of the ocean off the coast of Tenerife, where scientists just happened to already be taking some aquatic photographs and captured the little monster. This was unusual because the anglerfish is a deep-sea fish, never meant to see the sun—hence the rod. She swam somewhere between 200 and 2,000 meters to get up to the surface, and all of a sudden, everyone was sort of … deeply moved by this obvious harbinger of death?

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **Well, because there’s no way it’s *a good sign *that this little deep-sea gal swam all the way to the top of the ocean. What was chasing her? Why is 2025 like this? Yet, joy endures. An artist on TikTok illustrated two wildly viral images of the anglerfish in all her ugly beauty, with the caption “And for my last day … I will go see the sun.” And the girlies wept.

**Funniest detail to remember: **After fans of Ms. Fish (gender somehow determined by those scientists) decided that she swam up to the surface to find a source of light that she didn’t have to generate herself (and after they created poems and art and got tattoos), scientists determined that she probably just had IBS like every other hot girl. She literally tooted her way to the top of the ocean. Allegedly, she may have had a gas gland issue. One scientist told National Geographic, "It’s the sort of thing that, once you get started, it’s hard to control it.” And on that note …

**Easiest detail to forget: **You simply know you’re that bitch when you cause all this conversation. And let’s never forget—this bitch is tiny. Like, 6 inches long. (I love her.)

**Will we remember this in 2026? **Well, we know that Little Miss Anglerfish, unlike Moo Deng, will not low-key fall off. Mostly because she is already dead. And, again, for that reason, she is the mascot of 2025.

**Maximum Meme-age **

Ashton Hall’s Morning Routine (Second-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **As Seen on TikTok, Le Scam!, Discourse Driver, Visually Compelling

After what felt like a viral meme recession, one man’s outrageous morning routine rose above the rest—and literally floated in midair—to bring a bored internet back together again under the banner of its greatest tradition: a good old-fashioned roasting.

**Why it’s the right pick: **On February 7, Ashton Hall posted a GRWM video showcasing his morning routine, a gateway drug to selling his glamorous, extremely wet lifestyle to other men aspiring to be glamorous, extremely wet online fitness coaches. The video came complete with time stamps that, once tweeted out on X by an account called “Tips For Men—Fashion | Essentials | Luxury,” created quite a stir among men looking for tips before reaching the wider world. Per Ashton, a proper morning routine should begin at 3:50 a.m. because “sin lives late at night.” To bypass such sin, one should—this, again, is according to Ashton—wake up at the ass crack of dawn, rub a banana peel on one’s face, plunge one’s face into icy-cold Saratoga Spring Water, hit the Nicki Minaj “Anaconda” squat on a balcony, do that routine more time, and then sit in front of various screens doing Mr. Burns hands. And most importantly, one must post it on the internet.

**Funniest detail to remember: **Definitely the part when he suspends time and space to jump into a pool at 7:36 a.m. and land in the water at 7:40 a.m. That jump, plus the constant Saratoga Spring water facials, is the reason this meme took over your favorite sports teams, the most trusted dictionaries, and our greatest National Historic Landmarks and sanitation departments over the course of one perfect week in April.

**Easiest detail to forget: **That part when he journals for two minutes and then stares at his phone for 35 minutes. Deeply relatable, actually (except for the part where he’s topless).

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **Ashton Hall represents a meta-commentary on what it *really means to be chronically online, to post and consume so exclusively on the internet that you forget to account for the reality of the three-dimensional world it represents. To watch Ashton Hall’s five-hour morning routine condensed down to two minutes online is to ignore that this man is spending a lot *of time just … moving a tripod around. It’s *so much *tripod work and ultimately only a medium number of ice plunges.

**Will we remember this in 2026? **I doubt that I’ll ever see Saratoga Spring water the same way again.

The Summer Adults Discovered the Incestuous Teens of *The Summer I Turned Pretty *(Fourth-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Mom Called for Explainer, As Seen on Twitter, Know Your Meme, It Girl X Factor

TSITP* finally blew the millennial dog whistle by making Belly the latest in a long line of capable young women who didn’t go to Paris because of their no-good, mediocre, hacky-sack-ass boyfriends—creating a born-again life of memedom for the show in its third and final season.*

**Why it’s the right pick: **TSITP becomes the latest Illicit Affair Summer draft pick. Because even though TSITP has always been about a girl named Belly, and she has always been waffling back and forth in her romantic involvement with two brothers, the meme life of this show went to a new level when she got engaged to one of those brothers and completely sent the other one into constant crash-out mode. This is the year I wanted to hit Jeremiah Fisher with a baseball bat. This is the year the image of Belly flashing that impossibly tiny engagement ring was inescapable.

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **As an adult, I don’t feel *good *about being this invested in a show about literal children conducting romantic relationships that realistically wouldn’t survive a two-hour road trip. But what should we do? Just die?

**Easiest detail to forget: **TSITP was actually a really excellent horror TV show disguised as a pretty bad romantic TV show.

**Funniest detail to remember: **Forever and always, it is Belly’s indignant face as she shows that tiny engagement ring to her mom. Stay strong, girl—you’re so beautiful, no one cares that you’re dead-ass wrong all the time!

Will we remember this in 2026? Jenny Han will never let us forget these little monsters—see you back here in 2027 for the Summer I Turned Pretty movie!

100 Men vs. One Gorilla (Fifth-Round Prospect)

**Badges: **Animals on the Internet, As Seen on Twitter, Dad Called for Explainer, Know Your Meme

*Science! *

**Why it’s the right pick: **The internet was made for nerds to pose hypotheticals to which other nerds could earnestly respond. And while I can’t guarantee that the “100 men vs. one gorilla” question was posted on X by an original internet nerd who may have once engaged in the Reddit classic “Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?,” I can tell you that laymen, women in STEM, and one particular wildlife biologist approached the hypothetical with the dedication and practical application of someone completing a PhD dissertation. Ultimately, that wildlife biologist, @cowboykal3b, with his “actual degree, specifically in monkeys,” concluded that “30-40 men would probably be enough to take on the average silverback, and that’s all assuming he has a counter-instinctual bloodlust rather than fleeing from a large group of aggressors like any wild animal (exc elephants/hippos).”

**Why it’s the wrong pick: **Way too many dudes already think that they could land a plane if they needed to—and now, *way too many dudes *also think that they could fight a gorilla with 30-40 of their buddies.

**Easiest detail to forget: **MrBeast *saw *this discourse. MrBeast is out there. Always out there. Watching. Waiting. Getting lightly legal access to a gorilla.

**Funniest detail to remember: **

**Will we remember this in 2026? **We won’t remember how this debate shook out when AI takes over the controls for our zoos and we’re facing down this hypothetical in real life, without any access to @cowboykal3b’s tweets. But if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that the warm and fuzzy feeling of good old-fashioned discourse will linger until my—and my 99 closest friends’—last breath.

**Late-Round Dart Throws **

You’re going to need these for your fifth- and sixth-round picks, so just get comfortable with pledging your allegiance to something you hate and have no faith in!

• 6-7 and Labubus: You’ve heard of “too big to fail.” These are “too big to be for the chronically online,” in my humbly online opinion. But draft them if you must!
• **Recession Indicators: **I simply *cannot *keep thinking about the inverted yield curve or the lipstick index as it relates to women wearing tights under shorts again or a Dunkin’ shutting down in Boston!
• **The Rapture: **Girl, it absolutely was NOT the rapture.
• Sydney Sweeney’s Eugenics Pants: Sometimes—*very occasionally—*being chronically online *isn’t *fun!
• **The Protein Arms Race: **So much cottage cheese in “ice cream”! So many protein bars named after men! So much lead in private equity protein???
• Baby Head JD Vance: I don’t think this is a meme. I think that’s just JD Vance?
• **“Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” and “Are Women Ruining the Workplace?” Discourse: **“Yes,” and, “Yes, you’re fucking welcome,” respectively!
• **Those Astronauts Who Were Lost in Space: **Are they back yet? Can we get Katy Perry to check in on that?
• **Olivia Nuzzi–Ryan Lizza–RFK Jr. Love Triangle: **Because this reemerged so recently, it’s hard to determine whether this should be drafted higher, but: RFK Jr.’s brain worm reveal of 2024, this was not.

Jodi Walker

Jodi covers pop culture, internet obsessions, and, occasionally, hot dogs. You can hear her on ‘We’re Obsessed,’ ‘The Morally Corrupt Bravo Show,’ and ‘The Prestige TV Podcast,’ and yelling into the void about daylight saving time.