In a less than stellar year,??? ?????? ????? ????? memes were a saving grace in 2018.

Like a lighthouse, bringing us to shore, memes truly rescued us from the dark abyss of the internet bringing us hilarious and utterly absurd content.

SEE ALSO: Happy Holidays, internet: Here are 5 hilarious seasonal cards to send your loved ones

Just take a look at these 15 incredible memes that graced our eyeballs this year, and never forget the sacred power of the meme:

1. Moths

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This delightful, surrealist meme, revolved heavily around a moth's love of lamps and lights. In most of these memes, moths are either looking for lamps, fantasizing about them, or embracing them tenderly — despite how deadly they are to moths.

2. Don't say it

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The "don't say it" meme perfectly encapsulates the feeling of knowing when you shouldn't say something, but say it anyway. An extremely relatable feeling.

3. He's not your man

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The "He's not your man" meme lets you know which men are not yours. The basic structure of the meme begins with, "Ladies, if he's," followed by a list of traits specific to a person, animal, or object, and finishes off by stating, "He's not your man" and revealing who or what you're talking about.

People got super creative with this meme, drawing up lists of characteristics about everything and everyone, from hamburgers to Beauty and the Beast'sGaston.

4. They did surgery on a grape

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The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Australia used a grape to showcase the delicate and efficient surgical work that robots can perform in May. And for whatever reason, months later the internet became obsessed with this fact and began crafting beautiful, ridiculous "They did surgery on a grape" memes.

The memes did little more than mention of surgery being performed on a grape, but in some extremely creative ways: creating unique visuals, varied scenarios, and some even changed their user names.

5. A Star is Born memes

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Few films from 2018 made as big of an impact on memes than the smash hit A Star Is Born. Before the film was even released, people were crafting memes based solely on the film's trailers.

People poked fun at Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga's brief interaction, Gaga's intense vocal stylings, and their own unreserved love of the trailer.

6. Pee after sex

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These memes took the recommendation to pee after sex to avoid a UTI, and urged fellow Twitter users to pee after sex to avoid everyday problems. Some potential problems avoided by peeing after sex according to these memes are: DUIs, TGI Fridays, and YMCAs.

A perfect meme, truly.

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7. Squinting woman

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When Kalin Elisa was photographed after squatting to take a more posed picture, she had no idea that the photo would go viral, becoming a mark or symbol of being in a state of disbelief.

Per Fader, it seems Elisa is pleased to have become a meme and loves making people smile.

8. Johnny, Johnny

This cursed series of children's videos, which tells the tale of a boy named Johnny hiding his massive sugar intake from his father was all anyone could talk about in August — before most it was taken offline.

However, numerous additional videos, like the one above, created by the same production company continues to circulate, serving as a reminder of how bizarre a lot of the children's content on YouTube can be.

9. Let's get this bread

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The phrase "let's get this bread," originally rose into popularity when a bunch of mascots began pumping each other up on Twitter by echoing the inspirational phrase.

The "Let's get this bread" meme then took off like gangbusters, transforming into a variety of goofy iterations.

10. Ladies, imagine this

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After Mallori Taylor, wrote a sincere tweet asking women to imagine their future — one that includes a husband and watching your son play sports — the internet couldn't help but mock her uninspired fantasy.

People responded by crafting wild, alternative futures for "ladies" to aspire to, which included everything from being married to Stuart Little to eating nothing but wine and cheese.

11. Hurt me

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The "hurt me" meme begins in the bedroom with a simple: "hurt me." But instead of responding with physical pain, your imaginary partner says something that cuts you to your core, like they hate Ratatouille, or they don't believe astrology.

You can try to interrupt them, but it just gets worse from there.

12. By age 35

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After MarketWatch published an article indicating that people should have twice their salary saved by the time they're 35, Twitter, naturally, went the hell off.

People began lampooning the article and its suggestion by making ridiculous recommendations for what people should have accomplished by 35, like owning a big box of cables or having 40,000 pieces of avocado toast stashed away.

13. Not a cellphone in sight

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Young people, sick of the tired complaint older generations have about their "excessive" cellphone usage, retaliated this year with the "not a cellphone in sight" meme.

The memes typically of a picture, either from a terrible time in history, often when cellphones did not exist, or, a similarly strange fictional scenario, from films like Ladybirdand The Lion King.

Then, each photo is captioned with the sentence, "not a cellphone in sight, just living in the moment, absolutely beautiful, wish we could go back." A perfect response to the condescending sentiments issued by people who are under the impression that phones and screens are inherently bad.

14. Alexa, play Despacito

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"This is so sad Alexa play Despacito," became the go-to response this year upon hearing overly dramatic complaints, that are not as distressing as people believe it is.

Reminiscent of the tiny violin meme from days of yore, this meme became the perfect way to show how unimpressed you are with someone's (mostly) unimportant problems.

15. 5-year-old Cardi B

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A childhood photo of Cardi B quickly became a meme this summer when people paired the photo with captions expressing judgmental sentiments.

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