The 9 Best Feel-Good Viral Moments of 2017

Logging on to the Internet these days can feel like signing up to get repeatedly pummeled in the face, often inspiring the type of rage that inspires throwing your belongings out of the nearest window. But it’s important to remember, especially while the Trump administration and Republicans at the FCC are trying to take away a free and democratic Web, that the Internet can also be a place of comfort. This year was a conflagration (as we’ve covered, both literal and figurative), but the Internet also gave us some tenderness, some hilarity, and some pitch-perfect memes to deploy when we needed them the most. While plenty of things made us laugh in a “Ha ha, we’re all doomed” kind of way, we mined the last year for the nine best feel-good viral moments of 2017. Relive them when you need to feel some optimism about 2018:

BBC Dad

When the children of Robert E. Kelly, a political scientist commenting for the BBC live from his home in South Korea, burst into the room on air, he and his wife regarded the incident as a total disaster. But it turned into Internet gold: If you thought his older toddler daughter marching in front of the screen wasn’t enough, her baby sibling totters in on a mobile high chair, only to be following by their harried mother, who drags them out with I Love Lucy levels of slapstick physical comedy. What’s more, we got to meet the family for real in a subsequent appearance, which made older sister Marion Kelly the breakout star of this blessed accident. Thank you, renegade babies.

Moonlight Actually Wins Best Picture Oscar

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty got the wrong envelope when announcing the Oscar for Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards, and when Dunaway said that Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, a film about white people and jazz, had won over Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’s heart-piercing coming-of-age story of a black gay man in Miami, we chocked it up to another blow from the worst year ever. But lo, in a miracle turn of events, Moonlight actually had won, and La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz inadvertently memed himself when very graciously coming to the microphone and showing that the correct winner card did indeed say Moonlight. This one was the victory that kept on giving.

Meryl Streep Singing

Though it came from a screen grab from the 2015 SAG Awards, Meryl Streep Singing became the perfect meme for expressing ourselves in 2017, especially as it progressed to become the year of Meryl. The photo is of Streep cheering on actress Debbie Reynolds as she went onstage to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, but the Internet used it for, well, everything, and especially for song lyrics we know and love. Bravo, Twitter.

Unlikely Duo Meets Via Words With Friends

Rosalind Guttman, 81, a retiree from Florida, met Spencer Sleyon, 22, an aspiring rapper from Harlem while playing Words With Friends because she played the word “phat.” Their friendship blossomed from there, with the two sharing hopes, dreams, and plans for the future. The cuteness peaked when the two finally met in person in Palm Beach, sharing adorable photos. Trigger warning: heartwarming, stereotype-defying pals.

The Babadook Is a Gay Icon

The Babadook, monster of the eponymous horror film, became a gay icon in a Tumblr joke that quickly became widespread on social media and Twitter, sprouting think pieces about why the LGBTQ community found a kindred spirit in the natty dresser—who might just be misunderstood.

Trump’s Account Deactivated

How can we forget the 11 minutes of bliss when President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was deactivated, which many users had been asking Twitter to do for months as Trump used the platform to bait North Korea and American NFL players, among others. It turned out that a contract employee had deactivated the account on his last day, though he says he didn’t realize it would actually go through as he walked out of the building. The reprieve was short-lived, but we’ll remember it forever.

Reclaiming My Time

Representative Maxine Waters (Dem., California) was questioning Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin about President Trump’s financial ties to Russia when he tried to run out the clock on her questions—Waters shut him down with the now infamous House of Representatives procedural phrase, “reclaiming my time,” which quickly became the refrain of the year for all of us, regarding the parade of White House exploits we were forced to endure—or, actually, of pretty much all the men.

“How am I doing? Not Well, Bitch”

Not unlike “reclaiming my time,” Dorinda Medley’s quick “Not well, bitch” in response to Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s seemingly benign “How are you?” also became a self-care mantra for many of us, who felt similarly when asked about our quality of life but didn’t have the guts to say how we felt.

Salt Bae

Last, but not least, a viral moment that had absolutely nothing to do with politics, or an awards show gaffe, or a certain orange-hued leader, Salt Bae provided so much hilarious Internet mileage that he should be credited for lifting our spirits in an otherwise dark year. When Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe sprinkled salt flamboyantly on his steak, he created a world of deliberately extra memes that almost distracted us from everything else.