List of Internet phenomena
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An Internet phenomenon (sometimes called an Internet meme) occurs when something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content made feasible by the Internet; however, the popularity of the phenomenon usually wanes as rapidly as it was acquired: the Internet's lack of physical boundaries leads to a much faster and wider spread#redirect — but also dilution — of information and ideas, especially when the subject is based around humor or curiosity.
Unlike previous human communication methods, the Internet has some features of many older communication methods, which are not possible in any one type of the older methods - multiple cross-cultural translations, but done in real-time, and free of high costs of money, time or languages. The Internet also allows other features not possible by any previous communication methods, very cheaply and very quickly, in most formal (human) languages: access to archives, access to historical records, identity verification, simultaneous multi-channel (text, graphics, voice, video) real-time communications.
It is nearly impossible to accurately measure the depth of a phenomenon's popularity, and different groups of Internet users may participate in spreading the phenomenon more than others. Most of the internet phenomena gained popularity by being featured on certain websites, which include 4chan, Albino Blacksheep, B3ta, EBaum's World, Fark, GameFAQs, Offtopic.com, Newgrounds, Slashdot, Something Awful, General [M]ayhem (Gen[M]ay), YouTube, YTMND, and Tribalwar. Some people point to these sorts of Internet phenomena as good examples of memes. In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon—"the footage"—plays an important role.
People
Celebrities
- Andy Milonakis — Before he got his own show on MTV, he posted several short films on the World Wide Web, including guitar songs like "The Superbowl is Gay" and freestyles like "Crispy". Those songs were infamous for their very bizarre, obscene, and unrealistic lyrics about topics such as zoosadism, avisodomy, homophobia etc.
- Antoine Walker — Various Photoshopped pictures of him appeared on the internet in February of 2006 as fans were invited to transplant a photo of Antoine doing his trademark "wiggle" into other images.[link]
- Chris Taylor — An Australian comedian and star of The Chaser's War on Everything. He "appeared" on the live morning talk show, Sunrise, with an announcement to his long-time partner, which was assumed by the hosts to be a proposal, but which ended up being, "Get the fuck out of my life!", leaving the hosts in shock. Later on in a radio interview, Taylor admitted it was a set up, and it was not actually broadcast live on Sunrise.
- Christopher Walken - An American film actor whose [presidential campaign] made headlines -- as a fabulous hoax.
- Chuck Norris — Major historical accomplishments and superhuman feats are attributed to the actor in the form of fake "facts" spread across the Internet, which originated as an offshoot of the "Vin Diesel Facts" and "Mr T. Facts" meme. A chapter of the book The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox was dedicated to Norris and used many of these Internet factoids.
- Cindy Margolis — A woman who started a modeling career by posting pictures of herself on the Internet. Her image became one of the most highly-downloaded on the Internet.[link]
- Colin Baker - early 70's photos of the ex-Doctor Who actor, shirtless and sporting a handlebar moustache, surfacing on the Internet. Lovingly dubbed "Seventies Porn Colin" by Who fans.
- Colin Mochrie — A Canadian improv actor, who is best known for his appearances on the improv TV show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He is a popular symbol in the so-called Animutations, such as "[The French Erotic Film]"
- FPS Doug - One of the main characters in the popular "[Pure Pwnage]" video series. He is best known for having stated 'Everyone runs faster with a knife!' and 'BOOM! HEADSHOT!'
- Howard Dean — 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and current chairman of the DNC. His famous 2004 "scream" has been widely parodied, sometimes referred to as the "Dean Scream". [link] The USA Today described the scream as having gained "cult-like status" on the web [link].
- Kim Jong il — The mysterious leader of North Korea has all sorts of absurd and outlandish achievements attributed to him. It is unclear how much of this is propaganda and how much of this is simply a hoax.
- Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf — Iraqi Minister of Information, nicknamed Baghdad Bob, who became popular for making outlandish comments during the 2003 Iraq War, such as that the American invasion had been repelled when the U.S. Marines were about 200 meters away from him.
- Robert Tilton — An American televangelist whose preachings were dubbed with flatulence in a series called Farting Preacher.
- Sam Cassell — NBA basketball player with the Los Angeles Clippers who, due to his uncanny resemblance to popular depictions of an extraterrestrial alien, has a cult following across the Internet. Fans have created sites, blogs and photoshopped images ([link][link][link]) depicting him as a Martian, E.T., the "Alien" in the film of the same name, the Star Wars character Yoda, the Lord of the Rings character Gollum, a Conehead, etc.
- Sean Connery — Actor who is best known for his role as the title character in the James Bond series of movies. A website, YTMND, was created honoring a scene in the film, Finding Forrester, where he says, "You're the man now, dog!"
- Sid "Vicious" Eudy — During the January 14, 2001 WCW PPV "Sin" event Sid was set to fight Scott Steiner. During the fight, Sid jumped from the ropes and suffered a double compound fracture. The footage exploded across the internet.
- Stephen Colbert — The comedian gave a sharply satirical lampoon of President Bush and of the mainstream media at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, with Bush watching him from just a few feet away; videos of his performance and commentary related to it and reactions to it dominated Internet search terms and website traffic for several days afterward.
- Tila Tequila — She was discovered by Playboy scouts, but became popular as being [the most-viewed profile] on MySpace. Her song "Straight Up" is included in the MySpace compilation record.
- Vin Diesel — The actor was the subject of the original version of the "Facts" phenomenon, where often ludicrous "facts" about Vin Diesel's supposed abilities are invented for humorous purposes.
- Zinedine Zidane — video parodies spawned after his headbutting of Marco Materazzi in the FIFA World Cup 2006 final match.
Non-celebrities
- Amir Massoud Tofangsazan — A victim of "the eBay avenger", a disgruntled buyer who claims Tofangsazan sold him a faulty laptop. In retaliation, the buyer posted on a web page personal details, embarrassing photographs and other information about Tofangsazan that was gleaned from the laptop's hard drive. The website is an example of Internet vigilantism.
- Anton Maiden — Known for his MIDI and vocal renditions of Iron Maiden songs.
- Brian Peppers — An Ohio sex offender with a facial malformity whose photo in the Ohio eSORN (Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification) database became widespread. Snopes has since confirmed the photograph to be real [link].
- Brooke Brodack — A 20-year-old female whose parody of the Numa song won her a contract with Carson Daly.
- Ellen Feiss — A teenage girl featured in an Apple Computer advertisement, whose slurred speech and disoriented eyes provoked speculation that she was under the influence of illicit drugs.
- Elena Filatova — Under the nickname KiddOfSpeed posted photographs of her alleged motorcycle trips in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
- Henry Earl — A homeless African-American man from Kentucky, Earl became famous primarily because of his extensive police record, mostly for non-violent alcohol-related offenses, and the subsequent often humorous and widely varied mug shots. Henry has made numerous talk show appearances and has been featured in national and international media venues, including MSNBC, the UK Sunday Mail, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.
- Joe Bermudez — A relatively well-known techno artist who is often mocked, mainly on Facebook, for making songs that are much longer in length than those of a typical musician. He was also, partially in jest, made the mascot of the International Idiocy forums when the administrator of the boards posted [this thread].
- John Titor — A man claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036 who made many strange statements about future events. Supposedly documented on various message boards in 2000 and 2001, many people claim his words are, in fact, accurate predictions.
- Katilce Miranda — a Brazilian girl who received a kiss from Bono during a U2 show. People watching the show on TV quickly discovered her Orkut profile and in less then 48 hours she received more than 1,500,000 scraps on the relationship site.
- Kimbo Slice — a 32-year-old Miami, FL based underground boxer and street fighter. He has appeared in three full-length bare-knuckle fights available through the Internet and P2P file-sharing networks.
- Lee Hotti — A young adult who was a frequent poster on Sherdog.com who received wide criticism on the forums while posting pictures of himself, family, and friends for all having long straight spiked hair, overly tanned skin, a flipped up shirt collar, and headband. Subsequent videos and pictures were created using the original pictures. The original and edited pictures spread across the Internet in a matter of weeks. A website, [link] was created within a month.
- Marguerite Perrin — A woman on the FOX program Trading Spouses whose obesity, maniacal rants about gargoyles and psychics, and proclamations of religious superiority quickly made her an overnight punchline.
- Nintendo64 Kid — A kid receives a Nintendo64 for Christmas, and proceeds to scream "Nintendo 64!!" several times, and slaps at the box in hysteria [link]
- Peter Chung — A young man who was fired from his job at the Carlyle Group for emailing colleagues about his sexual exploits in South Korea [link].
- Star Wars kid — A Quebecois teen named Ghyslain Raza taped himself acting like the Star Wars character Darth Maul. The video was subsequently placed on the Internet by classmates. It became widely parodied on the Internet and on TV shows such as Arrested Development, The Venture Bros. and American Dad. He also appeared in a secret place in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.
- Steve Vaught — A California man who weighed 400 pounds decided to walk across the country, not only to lose weight, but also to achieve happiness with his life. Beginning in April 2005, his trek from Oceanside, California to New York City was documented on his website (fatmanwalking.com) and several Yahoo groups. He completed the trip on May 9 2006 by entering Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge.
- Tom — Creator of MySpace, who automatically adds himself as a friend to everyone who joins, he has become the subject of numerous parodies based on his well-known default photo.
- Tron Guy — A slightly overweight computer consultant who made a costume inspired by the programs in the movie TRON, Jay Maynard's website showing the costume's creation in detail quickly became a parody fixture. Maynard appeared on numerous episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2004.
- William Hung — A Civil Engineering student from Hong Kong and failed American Idol contestant who became famous for his poor singing and dancing abilities. His talent (or lack thereof) ironically led to a record deal and CD titled Inspiration, in which he performs more songs by Ricky Martin, among others. Hung has done numerous performances at football games as well as a guest appearance on Arrested Development.
- Ze Frank — A personal site with loads of flash, video, interactive games, etc. Ze Frank gained popularity after he videotaped himself dancing and sent it to his friends.
Bands
- Beatallica — A satire band that played music combined from songs written by the Beatles and Metallica. The band received most of its initial fame (and its name) from Milwaukee resident David Dixon who created a web page about them in 2001.
- Dschinghis Khan — A late-70s to mid-80s group that was practically unknown in the US until the "Moskau" fad. Besides being a short video with crazy dancing and happy German music, the Dschinghis Khan clip is also included in some Flash files.
- Electric Six — A disco-rock band that became infamous after a video for their song "Gay Bar" surfaced on the Internet featuring dubbed vocals with George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
- Gröûp X — Makers of the songs "Bang Bang Bang", "SchfiftyFive", "Too Many Guys", and "Mario Twins," the latter of which is a parody of the Super Mario Bros. theme song. Many of their songs have been adapted into Flash videos.
- Mats Söderlund — A Swedish pop singer, club owner, and former model who is best known under his stage name Günther. His band, Günther and the Sunshine Girls, started their musical career with the song "Ding Dong Song", which became an Internet meme, in part due to Söderlund's mullet, moustache, large black sunglasses and facial expressions featured in the song's video.
- Hurra Torpedo — A Norwegian band that appeared in a video where they cover a Bonnie Tyler song using kitchen appliances, later being sponsored by Ford Motor Company for a mock U.S. tour.
- Lemon Demon — A one-man band by Neil Cicierega, music videos were animated, particularly by Andrew Kepple and Shawn Vulliez.
- Lodger — Finnish indie rock band famous for its Flash music videos, most notably "I Love Death", "God has Rejected the Western World" and "Doorsteps".
- Loituma — Finnish folk group that became famous on the web after their "Ievan Polkka" was used in a short flash loop.
- OK Go — Their complicated, nontraditional and synchronized dance routine to "A million ways" became an internet meme and many copies have been made of it.[link]
- O-Zone — Became famous in the United States due to the Numa Numa Dance meme.
Videos
- Aicha — A Belgian teenager with acne going by the name of Gellieman lip-synchs a love song for his girlfriend. Numerous parodies have resulted as well as a false rumor of him committing suicide after the video.
- Ask a Ninja — A comical question-and-answer based home video series hosted by an overenthusiastic ninja. "You got questions, Ninja got answers."
- The Amazing Racist — A series of sketches by Jewish comedian Ari Shaffir in which he pretends to be an obnoxious racist. They are featured on National Lampoon DVDs Lost Reality and Lost Reality 2.
- Back Dorm Boys — A Chinese male duo who gained fame for their lip-synch videos to songs by the Backstreet Boys.
- — A very poor Chinese translation of a pirated copy of . The final scene has Darth Vader bellowing a long, anguished "No!" that is translated literally as "Do not want".
- Bad Day — A man takes out his rage on his computer.
- The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins — Leonard Nimoy sings an up-tempo bubblegum pop song about the J.R.R. Tolkien character in a 1968 music video.
- Boom goes the dynamite — Brian Collins, a nervous and extremely awkward sports anchor attempts to call highlights for his college's news show, fumbling through most of the segment until finally uttering this now-famous catch phrase. [link]
- Brokeback Mountain parodies — The movie Brokeback Mountain inspired many parodies in 2005, Chocolate Cake City's Brokeback to the Future probably being the most famous of them all. Created by two Emerson College students, the mock trailer re-worked scenes from the Back to the Future trilogy to show a previously non-existent romance between Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett Brown, which led to many other movies and TV shows to be re-worked in the same way.
- Bubb Rubb — A man who rose to fame thanks to a humorous local TV broadcast where he was interviewed on the topic of whistle tips.
- "Call On Me" by Eric Prydz — A popular music video based on the song, featuring a male in a female aerobics class. Many spoofs followed, the most famous of which features a female in a male Naval aerobics class.
- Chin2 — Two Korean youths dancing in front of a mirror.
- Dance, White Boy, Dance - Hidden video of an air-force cadet dancing in his room. [The video] recieved over 2 million views on glumbert.com.
- Edgar se cae (Edgar falls down) — Edgar, an overweight Mexican boy falls into a creek when one of his friends moves the log he's standing on. Edgar desperately pleads before falling to the water. The video was quickly spotted on blogs, and even a flash-based game and an entire website dedicated to Edgar were created along with a spoof presidential campaign.
- Elektronik Supersonik — An allegedly Eastern European pop song and music video, featured on the Molvania website. It was intended as a parody of Eastern European pop culture.
- Evolution of Dance — A comedian performs a medley of various popular dances throughout the history of pop music, from Elvis Presley to 'N Sync.
- Exploding whale — An old news story, thought to be an urban legend, gets a second following with the postage of a news footage video
- Hot Hot Hot — Appalachian State University promotional video that had an unintended response.
- Is This the Way to Armadillo — Spoof music video of Peter Kay's version of "Is This the Way to Amarillo" made by UK troops stationed in Iraq. It was so popular it crashed the army's server.
- John Daker — A singer who makes up for his lack of ability and his unusual voice with bizarre facial expressions.
- K-Fee Coffee Commercials — The German coffee company released horror-themed commercials to simulate the effects of caffeine; the most (in)famous of the commercials was titled Auto and was linked, e-mailed, and mirrored extensively by horrified people wanting others to see what they had seen.
- Kill Christ — Parodying The Passion of the Christ, this is one of many mock trailers made from re-cut footage of existing films.
- Kure Kure Takora — A Tokusatsu children's comedy show from Japan.
- Lazy Sunday — A music video starring Saturday Night Live cast members Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg that aired on the December 17, 2005 episode of the show.
- Leeroy Jenkins — A party of World of Warcraft players gets wiped out thanks to the actions of one of their group.
- Matrix ping pong — A group of people playing ping pong "Matrix style" with the aid of several stage-hands. The clip originates from a Japanese game show.
- Mariko Takahashi's Fitness Video For Being Appraised as an "Ex-fat Girl" — A "fitness video" which shows people inexplicably dressed as poodles.
- Milk and Cereal — two college guys lip-synch to "Milk and Cereal" with milk and cereal props in their dorm room.
- More Cowbell — The popular line from a famous April 8, 2000 Saturday Night Live comedy sketch about the recording of the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult featuring guest host Christopher Walken and series-regular Will Ferrell.
- Moskau — An excerpt from a German music video with happy lyrics and crazy dancing.
- Mrhands - This video shows Kenneth Pinyan having sexual relations with a horse.
- Numa Numa Dance — An overly enthusiastic kid (Gary Brolsma) sings along to a Romanian-language dance song ("Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone). It was featured in the February 25, 2005 issue of the New York Times.
- Prophet Yahweh — This video of the prophet supposedly summoning UFOs was widely circulated on the Internet in June of 2005.
- Real Life Simpsons Intro — A video created for the British BSkyB network that very accurately depicts The Simpsons intro with real actors.
- Rubber Johnny — A short film by music video director Chris Cunningham, accompanied by music from Aphex Twin, which was thought by some to depict an actual mutant teenager in a wheelchair when excerpts from it began appearing on the Internet.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
- Soup of the Day - The story of one man dating three women at the same time told completely in viral shorts over 19 episodes. It is the first movie that is told using viral video as a story telling device.
- The Spirit of Truth — A one man show by an unnamed man who would profess that he came "in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit" originally aired on Los Angeles public-access television in 1997. He gained wide spread attention across the Internet in 2006 for his energy and frequent swearing while preaching the name of God. Only two "episodes" are available and the man hasn't been identified (as of May 2006).
- Star Wars fan films — Fan films range from simple backyard antics to professional looking films such as Duality.
- Stealth Disco — Videos of people rocking out behind unknowing victims.
- Tunak Tunak Tun - An Indian music video by Daler Mehndi.
- The Bus Uncle - A video clip incident of a middle-aged man scolding a teenager for nearly seven minutes on a bus in Hong Kong. The incident spread across Asia, and two clips of dialogue became extremely well-known, being used in multimedia and advertising.
- Video Game Pianist — Piano player who plays both old and new video games' themes. Formerly called "The Blindfolded Pianist."
- Where the Hell is Matt? — A video of a man dancing a jig in various locations around the world.
- Wizards of Winter — A display of Christmas lights synchronized to a song (The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter") by electrical engineer Carson Williams, this video was recently adopted by Miller Lite for a TV advertisement.
- Yatta — A music video featuring a Japanese boy band. The members wear nothing but a green leaf over each of their crotches, and the video is filled with positive, care-free quotations, such as "Easy come, easy go go go" and "Don't Worry, Be Happy!"
Animation-based
- All your base are belong to us — A Flash animation with a montage of images depicting the famous Zero Wing quote, "All your base are belong to us" in various images. This quote is more familiar with the video gaming world since Zero Wing is a game that received its infamy from its poorly translated dialogue. The phrase is an example of Engrish.
- Animutations — Simple Flash animations usually containing foreign music and pop-culture references, such as "We Drink Ritalin". The fad first gained widespread popularity with "Hyakugojyuuichi".
- Badger Badger Badger — An animation to a repetitive song about dancing badgers, a mushroom, and a snake produced several variations.
- Bananaphone — Various animations with the song "Bananaphone" by Raffi Cavoukian have been created, the first and most widespread featuring Osaka with a "Gundam Bananaphone".
- Bear is Driving — A scene from in which Dante and Randal find themselves in a car driven by a bear, just one of the surreal events that occurs after the episode is handed over to Korean animators.
- BT Pipeskater — A repetitive game, loosely based on BT Broadband, hosted on the BT website as an advertisement for their wholesale broadband product. The game has become phenomenally popular with schools in England in which Safety Filters block out most games sites.
- Dancing baby — A 3D-rendered dancing baby first appeared in 1997 by the creators of 3-D Studio Max, and became something of a late-'90s cultural icon.
- Dancing Banana — A sprite animated banana became famous after being adapted in an animation dancing to the Buckwheat Boys' "Peanut Butter Jelly Time". It was paid tribute in an episode of Family Guy.
- The Demented Cartoon Movie — A very long, minimalist Flash animation full of silliness (about 30 minutes long).
- Dr. Tran — An animated short series which originally premiered on Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation and soon after aired on G4 has since been downloaded and spread over the internet. The most popular is a 7.25 minute animation which features a small Asian child named Tran distraught over the claims that he is an amazing action star coming from a movie trailer-like voice over. Created by Breehn Burns and Jason Johnson.
- Hampster Dance — A page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It ranked #1 on CNET's [Top 10 Web Fads list] and has spawned a fictional band complete with its own CD album release.
- Happy Tree Friends — A series featuring cute animals that meet violent ends.
- Hatten är din (The hat is yours) — A Swedish animation featuring an assortment of bizarre imagery (centered around a floating hat) and Swedish phonetic "subtitles" to Middle Eastern music.
- Homestar Runner — An online series that features cartoons of varying lengths, games, and the popular "Strong Bad Emails", in which viewers can email one of the main characters, to which he wittily responds. The site is updated on a weekly basis; thus, it is more of an Internet fixture rather than a short-lived phenomenon.
- How to Kill a Mockingbird — AwesomeFunny.com is best known for this video, which is a parody of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird that quickly deviates into a fantasy about pirates, dinosaurs, robots, and ninja.
- Loituma Girl — A 26-seconds-cutout from a cheerful Finnish song in combination with four anime-pictures on endless repeat.
- JibJab - This website's Flash animation "This Land" became wildly popular for its satirizing of the 2004 Presidential Election.
- The Juggernaut Bitch — Part of an episode of the X-men cartoon was dubbed over by two amateur filmmakers; the recreated episode features comedy based upon the series' characters, as well as a gangster version of the Juggernaut infamously yelling "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" This line was most notably homaged in the major motion picture .
- Kenya — This Weebl cartoon extolls the virtues of a holiday in Kenya: "We've got the lions/tigers, Only in Kenya! Come to Kenya, we've got lions/tigers..."
- Kitty cat dance — Flash-based video featuring a dancing cat saying "Cat, I'm a kitty-cat, and I dance, dance, dance, and I dance, dance, dance."
- The Llama Song — A Flash animation to a song about llamas accompanied with pictures to fit the repetitive lyrics. It is often rewritten to fit one's fandom.
- Madness Combat — A highly violent series.
- Magical Trevor — A Flash cartoon about a magician.
- Neurotically Yours — A series featuring a Goth and her pet squirrel.
- Postman Pat - Dubbed - A dubbed Postman Pat replete with foul language.
- Potter Puppet Pals — This spoof of the Harry Potter series created by Neil Cicierega uses animated puppets to tell comical stories. Its storyline, limited movements of the puppets and the character's mindlessness contribute to the humor.
- Prank flashes — Flash animations that tend to catch people off guard. They can be heart jumping "screamers" or just simply flashes such as "You Are An Idiot".
- Red vs Blue — A popular and commercially successful machinima series using the Microsoft Halo and Halo 2 video game engines. A popular, fan-created outgrowth is Sponsors vs Freeloaders.
- Rejected — Animation created by Don Hertzfeldt originally created as commercials for The Learning Channel that were rejected outright because they were too bizarre and gruesome.
- Retarded Animal Babies — An obscene Flash series about the vice-filled lives of various pet animals.
- Salad Fingers - A series of eerie, absurdist flash movies (created by David Firth) about a bizarre character who engages in dialogue with nonexistent persons and enjoys touching rusty objects with its "salad fingers".
- Soy Sauce Warrior Kikkoman — Flash movie of a superhero that defends soy-sauce as the best sauce to put on everything. It contains the popular line "Destroy all foreign sauces." It also features a good deal of Engrish.
- Star Wars Gangsta Rap — Featuring Star Wars characters rapping through A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, this was one of the first popular Flash movies.
- Stickdeath.com — A website featuring several animations done in Macromedia Flash of stick figures dying in various, often gruesome ways. This site featured updates and was more of a running series than a shortlived fad.
- There she is!! — A Korean series about a girl rabbit that fell in love with a cat.
- Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny — A fight to the death from various pop culture icons and other characters. Animated by AltF4 and audio by Lemon Demon
- Weebl and Bob — A series about two egg shaped friends.
- Weeeeee! (Gonads and Strife) Another wacky Flash song/animation.
- What Is Love — A scene taken from a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring characters from the movie A Night at the Roxbury headbanging in a car.
- Xiao Xiao — A series of stick-figure action animations. "Xiao Xiao #3" was particularly popular.
Images
- Batgirl - A meme that began in January 2006 that quickly spread through sites such as Live Journal and Deviant Art. Participants drew thousands of variations of the DC Comics character Batgirl in a variety of costumes/situations. Original post [link] meme index [link]
- Bert is Evil — This fad using Photoshopped pictures of the Muppet Bert placed with questionable people and situations gained notoriety when one was seen on a poster in a crowd of Osama bin Laden supporters.
- Boilerplate
- Bonsai Kitten
- Bunchies
- Dog poop girl — A woman's dog relieves itself on a subway car floor and she refuses to clean it up; the Internet community heard about the story and punished her.
- Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten
- Fatmouse — A large mouse with large ambitions.
- HA! HA! guy — A customizable image of a laughing Quaker minister gained popularity on Fark.
- Icy Hot Stuntaz — Three white rappers whose image on their website attracted insults and numerous parodies on the Internet.
- Image macros — Pictures with superimposed text used in discussions. Common accompanying texts include "Owned", "STFU", and "O RLY?".
- The Laughing Man — A face/mask from the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
- Limecat — A cat with a helmet made from a lime on its head (a.k.a. Meloncat).
- Lootie — This man was photographed looting beer while walking through waist deep waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
- Mr. T Ate My Balls — a Yahoo! site with images of Mr. T, captioned with various absurd and questionable statements. Repeatedly done with other subjects, both fictional and non-fictional, it spawned an entire Yahoo! category under "Tasteless Humor → Ate My Balls".
- Mustard Man — Picture of a supposed fast food employee spilling mustard all over himself.
- Naked tea kettle guy — A seller submits a photo of a tea kettle to eBay unaware that the picture is revealing a reflection of his naked image. The photo led to a trend known as "". [link]
- Nevada-tan — An imageboard meme featuring CG artwork of a Japanese schoolgirl who murdered her classmate.
- Oolong the Rabbit — A Japanese rabbit whose owner placed various objects on top of its head (the most well-known being pancakes) and then posted pictures (also known as "Pancakebunny").
- OS-tan — Operating systems are personified as cute mascots by various Japanese artists.
- Preved bear — A bear from the modified John Lurie's watercolor Bear Surprise is placed into pictures, photographs and videos. The phenomenon currently made its way outside internet.
- That guy - A "that guy" picture occurs when a pciture is taken and someone not meant to be in the picture is caught doing something that either is not meant to have a picture of or is intentioinally goofing off in the background (knowing that the picture takers will have a surprise when they develop the film). These are very popular at collegehumor.com.
- Tourist guy — The same person Photoshopped into photos of different events, (mostly disasters), it was originally a hoax based on the 9/11 attacks.
- Tubcat — A very fat cat.
Films
- Snakes on a Plane — This 2006 film starring Samuel L. Jackson became an Internet meme due to its ridiculous title and premise a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released. Producers of the films responded to the wide Internet buzz by adding several scenes to the film which catered to the fans. [link] The Internet buzz surrounding the movie has been featured several times by Keith Olberman on his MSNBC news show Countdown.
Things
- Ghost in a Jar — A set of Mason Jars for sale on eBay which supposedly contained evil spirits. This sparked a follow-up of "I bid on the Ghost in a Jar, and all I Got was this lousy T-Shirt" spoofs.
- eBay Haunted Painting — A painting for sale on eBay which was believed to be haunted.
- Hipster PDA — A paper-based personal organizer.
- Mercedes SLR Replica — A scratch-bulit replica of a Mercedes SLR (concept project, not the one produced), which was constructed in Poland. It was posted in 2003 on the [VWvortex forum] and gained great popularity among car fans, as the thread was viewed more than one million times through the years. The extremely high popularity was achieved because of many publications (with link to the thread) in car magazines and TV programmes around the world, as well as being posted on Slashdot.
- Unusual eBay auctions — Examples include a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich with a supposed semblance to the Virgin Mary. Often shown on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
- — Became a fad after E3 2006 when the producer of Genji 2 claimed the game was based on "famous battles that actually took place in Ancient Japan." However, the gameplay shown after this contained a "giant enemy crab," indicating that it may be more based on Japanese legend than history.
- How NOT to steal a SideKick 2 — An example of Internet vigilantism which exploded in popularity within only a few days on Digg, Slashdot and hundreds of blogs beginning on June 6, 2006. Members of a family in New York were accused of taking a lost T-Mobile Sidekick from a New York City cab. Photos from the phone had been saved to the AOL account of the previous owner, and were retrieved and posted online [link].
- P-P-P-Powerbook — A disgruntled eBay user scams a scam artist into thinking he has bought a PowerBook and finds out it is fake.