List of Internet phenomena

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of phenomena specific to the Internet, such as popular themes and catchphrases, viral videos, amateur celebrities and more. Such fads and sensations grow rapidly on the Internet because its instant communication facilitates word of mouth. The search and rating features of sites like YouTube and Google then amplify this interest.

Contents 1 Advertising 2 Animals 3 Animation 4 Dance 5 E-mail 6 Films 7 Games 8 Geography 9 Images 10 Music 11 People 12 Trading 13 Videos 14 Websites 15 See also 16 References 17 External links

Advertising

• Flea Market Montgomery — Rap ads by Sammy Stephens for this Montgomery, Alabama, shopping center proclaiming "It's just like a mini-mall" gained fame from appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show^[1] and through the internet via YouTube, BoingBoing, and similar sites.^[2][3]
• FreeCreditReport.com — series of TV commercials that were posted on the Internet; many spoofs of the commercials were made and posted on YouTube.^[4]
• Lowermybills.com — Banner ads from this mortgage company feature endless loops of cowboys, women, aliens, and office workers dancing.^[5][6]
• Three Wolf Moon — A t-shirt with many ironic reviews on Amazon.^[7]

Animals

• Badger Badger Badger — A hypnotic loop of animal calisthenics set to the chant of "badger, badger, badger".
• Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures - A popular meme in the People's Republic of China regarding a series of mythical creatures, with names which referred to various Chinese profanities.^[8][9] Seen as a form of protest against increased Internet censorship in China introduced in early 2009.^[10][11]
• Crasher Squirrel - A photograph by Melissa Brandts of a squirrel which popped up into a timer-delayed shot of Brandts and her husband while vacationing in Banff National Park, Canada, just as the camera went off. The image of the squirrel has since been added into numerous images on the Internet.^[12][13][14]
• David Motari — A Marine in Iraq who threw a puppy off a cliff. The video that was made quickly gained viral status.^{[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]}
• Dramatic Chipmunk — A prairie dog turning its head suddenly toward the camera, with a zoom-in on its face while a suspense music is playing.^[23] From 2007 to 2008 the clip was featured regularly on the CNN newsmagazine Anderson Cooper 360 to introduce its "Dramatic Animal Video" segment.
• Keyboard Cat — Footage of a cat playing an electric keyboard, appended to the end of blooper or other videos as if to play the participants off stage after a mistake or gaffe.^{[24][25][26][27]}
• LOLcat — image macros featuring cats with humorous captions, typically in Internet slang or leet.^[28] Originated on 4chan.^[29][30]
• Oolong — A rabbit famous for its ability to balance a variety of objects on his head.^[31]
• Rose the goat — Married a Sudanese man after being caught in flagrante.^[32]
• Tyson — A skateboarding bulldog.^[33]

Animation

• "Caramelldansen" — A spoof from the Japanese visual novel opening Popotan that shows the two main characters doing a hip swing dance with their hands over their heads imitating rabbit ears, while the background song plays the sped up version of the song "Caramelldansen" sung by the Swedish music group Caramell. Also known as Caramelldansen Speedycake Remix or "Uma uma dance" (ウマウマダンス) in Japan, the song was parodied by artists and fans who then copy the animation and include characters from other anime performing the dance.^[34][35][36]
• Charlie the Unicorn  — A three-part series of videos involving a unicorn who is repeatedly hoodwinked by two other unicorns, who bring him on elaborate adventures in order to steal his belongings or cause him physical harm.^{[37][38][39][40][41]} The series was created by animator Jason Steele, who has created a number of other videos via his website FilmCow, many of which feature similar elements to Charlie the Unicorn, including frequent use of random humor, much of which was inspired by Steele's friend and musician Logan Whitehurst, who composed the opening theme for one of his early films, Secret Agent Bob.^[42][41] Steele originally created the video as a flash animation test for his mother, known on video sharing website Newgrounds by her username "TypeQueen", who enjoyed talking about unicorns.^[43] Steele claims that the concept was envisioned "all at once".^[43] The video was then handed to TypeQueen, who uploaded it on Newgrounds.com claiming official ownership with authorization from her son.^[43] However, the video was seized by YouTube user "Gswanson17" and was uploaded to the site, where it gained rapid internet popularity.^[43] Approximately a year following the release of the original Charlie the Unicorn, Jason Steele decided to begin writing the script for a sequel.^[44] Production of the script took over "two and a half" years, and went through multiple rewrites.^[44] One of the changes from the original was to revise the characters of the blue and pink unicorns into more vile and twisted characters with larger emphasis on their magical powers, similar to that of Genie from the 1992 film Aladdin, in order to assure the video did not get boring.^[44] The videos have gained widespread internet popularity, and has been viewed over 50 million times on YouTube, their primary outlet.^[40] The first video in the series has been reviewed by popular online magazine Salon.com^[45], and the characters have transitioned to the real world in a line of merchandise from Hot Topic, ranging from T-shirts to "Charlie the Unicorn Candy Mountain Perfume Spray".^[46]
• Joe Cartoon — Alias of online cartoonist Joe Shields. Best known for his interactive Flash animations Frog in a Blender^[47] and Gerbil in a Microwave,^[48] released in 1999.^[49] Two of the first Flash cartoons to receive fame on the internet.^[50]
• Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin)^[51] — Loop of Orihime Inoue from Bleach twirling a leek set to the music of Loituma.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny — A battle royale between many notable real and fictitious characters.^[52]
• Happy Tree Friends — A series of flash cartoons featuring cute cartoon animals experiencing violent and gruesome accidents.^[53]

Dance

• Dancing baby — A 3D-rendered dancing baby first appeared in 1997 by the creators of 3D Studio MAX, and became something of a late-'90s cultural icon, featured many times in the TV show Ally McBeal.^[54]
• Dancing Banana — A banana dancing to the song "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" by the Buckwheat Boyz.^[55]
• Where the Hell is Matt? — Matt Harding dances around the world.^[56]
• Hampster Dance — A page filled with hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It spawned a fictional band complete with its own CD album release.^[54]
• JK Wedding Entrance Dance — A wedding march in St Paul, Minnesota to Forever by Chris Brown.^{[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64]}
• Little Superstar — A video of Thavakalai, a short Indian actor, break-dancing to MC Miker G & DJ Sven's remix of the Madonna song "Holiday", in a clip from a 1990 Tamil film Adhisaya Piravi, featuring actor Rajnikanth.^[65][66]
• Techno Viking — A Nordic raver dancing in a procession in Berlin.^[67]
• Prison Thriller — A recreation of Michael Jackson's hit by prisoners in the Philippines.^[68]

E-mail

• Bill Gates Beta — An e-mail chain-letter that appeared in 1997 and was still circulating as recently as 2007. The message claims that AOL and Microsoft are conducting a beta test and for each person you forward the e-mail to, you will receive a payment from Gates of more than $200. Pseudo-realistic contact information for a lawyer appears in the message.^[69][70]
• Goodtimes virus — An infamous, fraudulent virus warning that first appeared in 1994.^[71] The e-mail claimed that an e-mail virus with the subject line "Good Times" was spreading, which would "send your CPU into an nth-complexity infinite binary loop", among other dire predictions.^[72]

Films

• The Blair Witch Project — The first film to use the Internet for astroturfing. Its makers spread rumors that the material they shot was authentic and that the three protagonists really disappeared in Burkittsville.^[73] Many websites began to feature "stolen" clips of the film, later discovered to be supplied by Artisan and the filmmakers, and planted reviews of the film, which disguised their origin with intentional spelling mistakes and poor design.^[74] Other filmmakers accused the producers of creating a fake fan buzz to generate a real one, stating "That was an organized effort. What happened is that they tricked the press."^[75]
• Brokeback Mountain — inspired many online parody trailers.^[76]
• Cloverfield — Paramount Pictures used a viral marketing campaign to promote this monster movie.^[77]
• Downfall — Clips from the 2004 film are subtitled in English with references to Hitler getting angry about Australian Rules Football, online gaming, the Super Bowl, the downfall of Morris Iemma and other events — this meme is current in late 2008 ^[78]
• Party Girl — First feature film shown in its entirety on the Internet (June 3, 1995).^[79][80]
• Snakes on a Plane — Attracted attention a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released, due to the film's working title and seemingly absurd premise. Producers of the film responded to the Internet buzz by adding several scenes and dialogue imagined by the fans.^[81]

Games

• "All your base are belong to us" — Engrish from the opening cut scene of the European Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version of the 1989 arcade game Zero Wing, which has become a catchphrase, inspiring videos and other derivative works.^[82]
• Giant Enemy Crab - The embarrassing Sony conference from E3 2006 in their promotion of the Playstation 3, particularly focusing on Kaz Hirai's presentation and the demonstration of Genji 2; the presentation coined such phrases as "Giant Enemy Crab", "599 US Dollars" and "Riiiiiidge Racerrrr!"
• Leeroy Jenkins — A World Of Warcraft player charges into a high-level dungeon with a distinctive cry of "Leeeeeeeerooooy... Jeeenkins!", ruining the meticulous attack plans of his group and getting them all killed.^[83]
• Line Rider — A Flash game where the player draws lines that act as ramps and hills for a small rider on a sled.^[84]
• I Love Bees — An alternate reality game that was spread virally after a 1 second mention inside a Halo 2 advertisement. Purported to be a website about Honey Bees that was infected and damaged by a strange Artificial Intelligence, done in a disjointed, chaotic style resembling a crashing computer. At its height, over 500,000 people were checking the website every time it updated.
• "so i herd u liek mudkips" — A phrase originating on another website, members of 4chan adopted it as an in-joke. Since then, the meme has grown steadily, now including thousands of Mudkip tribute videos on Youtube and has been named by the Wall Street Journal as one of 4Chan's "Greatest Hits".^[85]

Geography

• Argleton — A non-existant settlement which appears on Google Maps near Aughton, Lancashire, England.^[86]

Images

• Ate my balls — An early example of an Internet meme. Created to depict a particular celebrity or fictional character eating testicles.^[87]
• Bert is Evil — A satirical website stated that Bert of Sesame Street is the root of many evils. A juxtaposition of Bert and Osama Bin Laden subsequently appeared in a real poster in a Bangladesh protest.
• Goatse.cx — A shock image of a distended anus.^[88][89]
• Little Fatty — Starting in 2003, the face of a student from Shanghai was superimposed onto various other images.^[90][91]
• Lootie — An Associated Press photo taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, under the caption "A looter carries a bucket of beer out of a grocery store in New Orleans." The original photo shows a black man in waist-deep waters carrying a tub full of bottles of beer. This image and the man's face were incorporated into various parody and gag images.^[92][93]
• O RLY? — Originally a text phrase on Something Awful, and then an image macro done for 4chan. Based around a picture of a "surprised" owl.^{[citation needed]}
• The Saugeen Stripper — A female student at the University of Western Ontario performed a striptease at a birthday party and dozens of digital images of the party ended up on the Internet.^[94]
• WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS? - A phrase that originated in an angry post concerning erotic fan fiction. The phrase was then copied onto various images and photographs on several websites, becoming an image macro.^{[95][96][97][98][99][100][101]}

Music

• "Canon Rock" — A rock arrangement of the Canon in D by JerryC which became famous when covered by funtwo and others.^[102][103]
• "Chocolate Rain" — By Tay Zonday, noted for his unusually deep voice and movements while he sings.^[23][104]
• Hannes Coetzee — A slide guitarist who plays using a teaspoon held in his mouth.^[105]
• "Here It Goes Again" — Grammy-winning music video in which OK Go dance on treadmills.^[106]
• Hurra Torpedo — A Norwegian band whose coast-to-coast tour was a viral campaign to promote the Ford Fusion car.^[107]
• Literal music video — Covers of music videos where the original lyrics have been replaced with ones that literally describe the events that occur in the video, typically disconnected with the original lyrics of the song.^[108][109]
• Lucian Piane, aka RevoLucian — Created several popular celebrity techno remixes, including a spoof on actor Christian Bale titled "Bale Out"^[110]
• McDonald's rap - Two amateur MCs from Indiana who rapped their order into a McDonald's drive-through speaker^{[111][112][113]}
• "Never Gonna Give You Up" — The music video commonly used for rickrolling.
• "Tunak Tunak Tun" — Bhangra song by Daler Mehndi.
• "Twelve Days of Christmas" — By a cappella group Straight No Chaser went viral in 2007 and led to the group being signed by Atlantic Records.^[114]

People

• Alphacat — Username on Internet websites of actor-impressionist Iman Crosson, who won Denny's Restaurant's nationwide contest^[115] for best impressionist of Barack Obama and received national attention^[116] as an example of professional promotion using the Internet.
• Amber Lee Ettinger — Also known as Obama Girl, is famous for her YouTube videos about Barack Obama called "I Got a Crush... on Obama".
• Angry German Kid — A German boy becomes furious while attempting to play Unreal Tournament.^[23] Also referred to in Japan as Keyboard Crusher (キーボードクラッシャー^?).^[117] Since then, people have added captions to the video and/or drawn animation to show the Angry German Kid killing Chris Crocker, Sniping Rick Astley, and other comedic acts. This phenomenon of changing videos to show something other than what was originally shown in the video is known as "Youtube Poop" and has long existed before the release of the Angry German Kid video.
• Boxxy — Videos by a hyperactive teenage girl caused much dissension which led to a denial of service attack and breakdown of 4chan.^[118][119]
• Bus Uncle — A middle-aged man reacted furiously after the young man seated behind him on a Hong Kong bus tapped his shoulder and asked him to lower his voice while speaking on the phone. His outburst spawned catchphrases in Chinese communities around the world.^[120]
• Chris Crocker — Had a growing following for his YouTube and MySpace vlog postings until 2007 when Crocker gained international mainstream media attention after a video he made in support of Britney Spears became viral email and landed him on CNN, Howard Stern, ABC and numerous other shows.^{[23][23][121]}
• Chuck Norris Facts — Archetypal joke, in which the five-times-world champion, eighth degree black belt is portrayed as the ultimate hard man with incredible attributes.^[122]
• Cory Kennedy — An intern, model and girlfriend of the fashion photographer Mark Hunter.^[123]
• Dr. Steel — Musician, entertainer and self-styled mad scientest bent on world domination, with a growing street team known as the Army of Toy Soldiers; among other things, posts humorous, thought-provoking "public service announcements" on YouTube on a variety of philosophical topics, as well as his own darkly humorous internet show, aptly named "The Dr. Steel Show."
• Dog poop girl — A Korean refused to clean up after her dog and so was exposed and shamed on the Internet.^[124] Similar to Bus Uncle (see above)
• Fred Figglehorn — A six-year-old who uses his mother's camera to create videos.^[125][126] Parodies of Fred made on YouTube.
• Germano Mosconi — An Italian journalist on some off-air bloopers, irately shouting swearwords and blasphemy due to problems during the recording of some news programs.^[127]
• Glenn Beck — was the subject of the satire involving a parody of his commentary style and a spoof website entitled DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com.^[128]
• Honglaowai — An American singing Chinese Communist songs.^{[129][130][131]}
• Kanye West at the 2009 MTV VMAs - A series of pictures parodying Kanye West's outburst in which he interrupted Taylor Swift's prize acceptance speech.^[132]
• Lisa Lavie — A Canadian-born singer-songwriter whose YouTube music videos brought national attention^[133][134] as an example of independent music promotion outside any major record label.
• lonelygirl15 — A popular video blogger whose work turned out to be a professional hoax.^[23]
• Magibon — A young woman who attained celebrity status on YouTube.^{[135][136][137]}
• Mahir Çağrı (i kiss you) — A Turk with a website.^[54]
• Moymoy Palaboy — A Filipino comic and singing duo known for their uploaded lip synch videos in YouTube. In 2008, their videos and their YouTube profile garnered over 5 million hits and they have more than 7,400 subscribers from all over the world. Most Mexicans, Americans and Filipinos gave positive remarks for the duo's uploaded videos.^{[138][139][140]}
• Randy Constan — Dresses in Peter Pan costumes.^[141]
• Ron Paul — US Presidential candidate whose campaign made use of the Internet to attract donations and support. His YouTube channel, Facebook page, and so on, were the most heavily subscribed of any candidate.^[142]
• Shakeel Bhat — A Muslim activist whose face became a personification of angry Islamism in western media.^[143]
• Star Wars kid — A Québécois teenager became known as the "Star Wars Kid" after a video appeared on the Internet showing him swinging a golf ball retriever as if it were a lightsaber. Many parodies of the video were also made and circulated.^[23][144]
• Tila Tequila — A Vietnamese American female who became the most friended person on MySpace with over 3.5 million friends. Although she initially started her career as a model, she also grew to become a musician, pornographic actress, television personality, clothing designer, and author.^[145][146]
• Tourist Guy — A photograph of a tourist that appeared in many edited pictures after the September 11, 2001 attacks.^{[147][148][149][150]}
• Tron Guy - a pudgy middle-aged man who became famous for dressing up as a character from the movie Tron.
• Zinedine Zidane — In the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals, French player Zinedine Zidane rammed his head into Italian Marco Materazzi's chest after a provocation. The image inspired various parodies, including images, videos and online games.
• Tay Zonday - singer/songwriter who became famous for his YouTube music video Chocolate Rain.

Trading

• Freecycling — The exchange of unwanted goods via the internet.^[151]
• One red paperclip — The story of a Canadian blogger who bartered his way from a red paperclip to a house in a year's time.^[152]

Videos

• 2 Girls 1 Cup — Videos of two girls engaging in coprophilia.^[153] This video has also originated a series of amateur videos showing the reactions of people seeing the original video.
• Ask a Ninja — Popular podcast featuring a ninja who answers viewers' questions.^[23]
• Boom goes the dynamite — Brian Collins, a nervous sports anchor, fumbles highlights, concluding with this infamous catch phrase.^[23][154] Popularly used in an episode of Family Guy among numerous other popular references, and made popular by Will Smith when he flubbed a line on stage during the 81st Academy Awards telecast. As of March 2009, Collins was a reporter for KXXV in Waco, Texas.
• Charlie Bit My Finger — Most viewed video on YouTube. It features two young brothers; the younger bites the finger of the older brother.^[155][156]
• Diet Coke and Mentos — Geysers of carbonated drink mixed with Mentos.^[23][157]
• Edgar's fall — A video in which a Mexican kid trying to cross a river over a branch, is thrown off by his cousin.^[158][159]
• Don't Tase Me, Bro! — An incident at a campus talk by Senator John Kerry.^[160]
• Impossible Is Nothing — An ambitious video resume by Yale student Aleksey Vayner.^[161]
• Jag har mensvärk! (Swedish for I have period pains!) — Nattliv quiz show hostess Eva Nazemson, suffering from menstruation-related nausea, vomits on-air while taking a call from a viewer.^{[162][163][164]} She later went on to discuss the incident on The Tyra Banks Show^[164] and The Graham Norton Show^[165] after the video was posted on YouTube. The original video received four million views by 2009.^[166]
• "Ken Lee" — Badly garbled song by Bulgarian Music Idol hopeful Valentina Hasan.^[167][168]
• Kersal Massive — Three young chavs, apparently from Kersal (near Manchester, UK), attempting to perform a gangsta rap and expressing their dislike for the nearby suburb of Levenshulme.^[169]
• The Last Lecture — Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch, dying of pancreatic cancer, delivers an upbeat lecture on Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.^[170]
• Music Is My Hot Hot Sex — Used in advertising then reached the top of YouTube's most watched list, due perhaps to a hack.^[171][172]
• Numa Numa — Gary Brolsma lip-syncs the Romanian song "Dragostea din tei" by O-Zone.^[23][173]
• Rickroll — A bait and switch link to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".^{[174][175][176]}
• Very erotic very violent — An internet catchphrase in the People's Republic of China, after a report by Xinwen Lianbo, the most viewed of China's state-sponsored news programs, where a young girl was reported to have come across content on the internet which was "Very erotic, very violent". This incident sparked wide forms of parody on the internet, and also questioned the credibility of the state broadcaster's newscasts.^{[177][178][179]}
• What What (In the Butt) - A viral music video set to a song about anal sex by gay recording artist Samwell.^[180]
• Wii Fit Girl - A YouTube video titled Why every guy should buy their girlfriend a Wii Fit, of 25 year old Floridian Lauren Bernat doing hula hoop exercises on the Wii Fit balance board in just a T-Shirt and panties. The video, which garnered 2 million views. Initially upset at the unknowning release of the video by her boyfriend, and then facing accusations that the video was a Nintendo publicity stunt, Bernat later adopted the moniker Wii Fit Girl as her own, and was used by EA Sports in the launch of their EA Sports Active Wii game.^{[181][182][183][184]}

Websites

These websites play a significant part in the creation of Internet phenomena or are a phenomenon in their own right.

• 2channel — A Japanese Internet forum (the largest in the world). The site has significant influence on Japanese culture and popular opinion.^[185]
• 4chan — The English equivalent to Futaba Channel, responsible for creating many popular Internet memes.^[186]
• Cake Wrecks - An entertainment photoblog featuring user-submitted images of "unintentionally silly, sad, creepy or inappropriate" cakes.^[187]
• Facebook — A social networking website.^[188]
• Fark — A community website created by Drew Curtis allowing users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites.
• Flying Spaghetti Monster — A deity with its own following religion, called Pastafarianism, that lampoons creationism.^[189]
• Homestar Runner — A popular website with various cartoon characters and cartoons that became popular by word of mouth.
• JibJab — Hosts political flash animations and is best known for the song "This Land Is Your Land" which parodied the 2004 US presidential election.^[23]
• MySpace — One of the most popular worldwide social networking websites.^[190][191]
• Newgrounds — A freeware flash animation webpage in which people and users can upload their own work.
• Real Ultimate Power — Upon which a fictional young boy obsesses about ninjas.^[192]
• Second Life — An Internet-based virtual world video game.
• SomethingAwful — Forum responsible for many popular images, documented events, pranks and oft-repeated catchphrases.^{[citation needed]}
• Twitter — A popular micro-blogging website.^[193]
• Weebl's Stuff — The website of the creator of the Badger Badger Badger video and many other flash animations.
• YTMND — A website which allows users to create their own mini-sites.^[194]

See also

Blog List of YouTube celebrities Meme Phishing

Spam (electronic) Urban Legends Usenet celebrity Virus hoaxes Web 2.0

Internet Meme Wikipedia:Unusual articles

References

External links

• Memes on the Internet. Article regarding the spread of Internet memes.
• Know Your Meme research into internet phenomena.
• Snopes page on Urban legends