2012: The year of the meme

I declared 2011 "Year of the meme". However, a bunch of other people seem to have beaten me to proclaiming 2012 to be the "Year of the meme" [1, 3, 3 ].

Looking at the search statistics below, they have a point:

Here are the latest Google Trends results for "meme":

History of "Meme" searches (with news information)

Here are the current Google Trends results for "memes":

History of "Memes" searches (with news information)

The exponential rise of memes seems to have halted. If isn't clear if we have had peak meme.

Was my proclamation ahead of its time? Will 2013 also be the year of the meme?

Update: Merriam-Webster Inc., has announced their "Top Ten Words of 2012". For the first time, "meme" made it onto the list!