Indeed, 2017 may have been the year that our two American realities (the real one and the alternative one) fully and finally cleaved apart, severing communications for good (more precisely, for bad). Like a brain split for study in a lab, it’s as though our two hemispheres don’t even have access to each other anymore; no longer can we process each other’s functions or reconcile our competing impulses. Even our senses defy consensus.

For all the ways social mediasuck us in,chew us up, andspit us out on the daily, they do at least provide a space for us to encounter one another. And while our discourse might be a disaster area, the imaginative vistas of the Internet are far more vast than the modest plot of our feeds. That is to say, in 2017, the clearest vision of your fellow Americans could only be found in dreams — or the Internet equivalent, memes.

Like the dream state, the memeverse has a way of assembling familiar colors, shapes, and forms from the reality we more consciously occupy; but the images it conjures and captures (and captions) are unstable — they change shape, or shift premise, or take off on a tangent and turn into something else. We share them despite not knowing what they mean. And at their most inscrutable, they seem to capture something essential about who we are.

The Meme Class of 2017 was a gang of avatars for American angst; below, a yearbook page of select superlatives among them.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

Though Danielle Bregoli’s 15 months of fame technically kicked off in September of 2016 when her episode of “Dr. Phil” ( “I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime!”) first aired, it wasn’t until early 2017 that her iconic threat to beat up the good doctor’s entire studio audience — “Cash me ousside, how bow dah?” — earned its place as worldwide utility catch phrase for people trying to sound like a hot mess. Threatening to punch dozens of people proved an auspicious career move, as Bregoli’s star trajectory swiftly took off, scoring her areality TV show deal, a buddingrap career, and a few heavily clicked videos of herclawing and slapping various people (oddly absent fromher IMDb page).

I shudder to think what Bregoli’s image in the reflecting pool means for most of us; but certainly, her certitude, her ethos of no ethos, her performative rudeness — she’s a ringer for our worst selves online. An incarnation of the disaffected vitriol we tend to spill all over strangers when we’re cranky or merely correct.

CLASS PREZ

Donald J. Trump, thePresident of the United States after the Hadron Collider Created an Alternate Dystopian Timeline, has technically probably undone more than he’sdone-done, but in the meantime he’s given more to the world of memes than any president in history . . . with Internet service. Where to begin? Covfefe?Tiny Trump?Trump watching the eclipse?Trump feeling the orb?Trump feeding the fish?Trump’s Hollywood star? Trump himself? Come to think of it, it’s possible that Trump is our first meme president.

But out of this quite literal embarrassment of riches, one meme reigns supreme. “Trump Draws” was one of the earliest memeifications of newly-sworn President Trump, capturing the childlike delight that (at first) attended his signing of fancy documents with spiffy pens. In the midst of a cold winter,Trump’s First Order of Business bloomed into a forever-stretching meadow of mocking GIFs.

It was a collective coping mechanism for a new political reality. It was a petty way to vent post-election frustrations. But most importantly it was yet another reminder for all of us that holding up a piece of paper in 2017 can have dire consequences.

BEST PERSONALITY

Thedancing hot dog on Snapchat is the best (and maybe thelast best?) thing Snapchat has ever made. If you haven’t seen/Snapped it, it’s essentially a happy little hot dog wearing headphones and dancing like it hasn’t a care in the world — despite being afully dressed hot dog with all of the implications that carries.

We’re not going to get too deep on this one, but there’s a lesson to be learned from dancing hot dog. I think? Is he blithely grooving into doom? Is he blissed out with acceptance of his fate as snack? Do we have any hot dogs in the fridge?

BEST COUPLE

This year, I’m happy to name a more iconic duo meme than “Name a More Iconic Duo” and that is the young couple torn at the seams in theDistracted Boyfriend meme. A simple stock photo setup — a girl passing by in a blur and a red tank top, a boyfriend with straying eyes and a lecherous look, a spurned girlfriend scowling in outrage — gave rise to an entire field of comparative analytics. The saga of the Distracted Boyfriend became a staging ground for parsing out all kinds of complicated philosophical love triangles (Socialism/The Youth/Capitalism;Me/Work/Literally Anything Else;Me/A Cold One/The Boys).

Distracted Boyfriend helped demonstrate that dualities fail to capture us completely; that we are beings of complicated desires and drives; that we are a community of crisscrossing perspectives and values. Oh, and that men are scum. Definitely needed that reminder.

CLASS CLOWN

This one’s easy.Roll Safe. Lifted from a clip of the 2016 BBC series “Hood Documentary,”  Roll Safe is shorthand for an image of actor Kayode Ewumitapping his temple with a wily, knowing look. Abducted from the context of the show, Ewumi’s face has become a symbol of the confidence that immediately precedes poor decisions, or the gusto that drives spectacular critical error. (e.g. “Can’t get fired if you don’t have a job”; “Due tomorrow, do tomorrow”)

Roll Safe was a gentle reminder that sometimes, like atreally really important times sometimes, we make very bad choices and should maybe think harder about things.

VALEDICTORIAN

In2014, Shruggie the shrugging emoticon “displayed the character required to make it unscathed through the mean streets of today’s Internet” and took top honors. In2015, the blue and black (or was it white and gold?) dress “gave us crucial training in that great American exercise: agreeing to disagree.” In2016, the existential identity crisis of Pepe the Frog “embodied the split personality of our country at this moment in its history.”

This year’s head of the class, the Thing of the Year, is none other thanWhite Guy Blinking. Video producer Drew Scanlon probably had no idea that his stunned blink (triggered by a friend’s possible innuendo and captured in a livestream of a gaming broadcast) would be preserved and ensconced into the visual lexicon of memes as the purest possible expression of bemused confusion, but here we are.

White Guy Blinking was named themost popular GIF of 2017 according to Tenor’s metrics (beating out “Excited Jonah Hill”!) and it’s small wonder why. In a year when nothing made sense, Scanlon’s silently looping loss for words spoke volumes.

Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached atmbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter@MBrodeur.