List of Internet phenomena

An Internet phenomenon is akin to a fad, in which something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, but usually for a short duration of time. It is nearly impossible to accurately measure the depth of a phenomenon's popularity, and different groups of the Internet may participate more than others. The Internet's lack of physical boundaries leads to a much faster and wider spread of information and ideas, especially when the subject is based around humor or curiosity. Some point to this sort of Internet phenomena as good examples of memes. In literature, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon — "the footage" — plays an important role.

Internet phenomena include:

Videos

Andy Milonakis — a teenage kid who rose to fame after releasing home webcam recordings of freestyle raps, silly and funny videos, and short films (such as the "Crispy New Freestyle" and "The Superbowl Is Gay") on the Internet.
Bad Day — a man takes out his rage on his computer.
Bill Gates Gets a Pie in the Face. Link to video here.
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 has had a popular video featuring a male in a female aerobics class, along with many spoofs. [1] The most famous spoof features a female in a male Naval aerobics class. [2]
Chin2 — supposedly Korean kids dancing topless in front of a mirror
Chuckie Akenz — A Vietnamese Rapper, famous for his "You Got Beef" video, his website http://www.jane-finch.com which has 1 million new visitors every day
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
Exploding whale — an old news story thought myth gets a second following with the postage of a news footage video.
Fan films — especially for Star Wars.[3] Fanfilms range from simple backyard antics to professional looking films such as "Duality" [4]
Is This the Way to Armadillo — spoof music video of the song "Is This the Way to Amarillo" made by UK troops stationed in Iraq. Link to video here.
Numa Numa — an overly enthusiastic kid (Gary Brolsma) singing along to a Romanian techno song (O-Zone's "Dragostei Din Tei")
Rock Paper Saddam
The Star Wars Kid — a video digitally edited numerous times of a Québecois teenager (Ghyslain Raza) pretending to be Darth Maul
STFU — A girl who does a bad job of singing, and then when she stops she is whacked from behind by a colleague who wants her to STFU. Link to video here.
Video Game Pianist — Extremely talented piano player who plays both old and new video games' themes. Formerly called "The Blindfolded Pianist"

Animation-based

Animutations
Badger Badger Badger
Bananaphone
Dancing baby — a 3D-rendered dancing baby.
The Demented Cartoon Movie [5]
The End of the World — a flash animation using Group X-style voices.[6]
Group X — makers of the songs "Bang Bang Bang", "SchfiftyFive" and a parody of the "Mario Twins" theme, adapted into Flash videos on various sites, but these aren't created by the band themselves.
The Hampster Dance — a page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters, linking to other animated pages. It now has its own CD soundtrack.
Happy Tree Friends — a series featuring cute animals that meet violent ends
Homestar Runner
How to Kill a Mockingbird — A parody of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird that quickly deviates into a fantasy about pirates, dinosaurs, robots, and ninja.
JibJab [7] — a Web site featuring many cartoons including those that satirize the 2004 Presidential Election
Madness
Neurotically Yours — a series featuring a goth and her pet squirrel
Peanut Butter Jelly Time — A dancing banana singing about peanut butter and jelly. Link to one version of the video here.
Prank flashs — flash animations that tend to catch people off guard. They can be heart jumping "screamers" or just simply annoying flashes such as "You Are An Idiot".
Red vs Blue — a popular machinima using the Microsoft Halo video game engine. A popular, fan-created outgrowth is Sponsors vs Freeloaders
Rejected — a story of an animator and the effects of rejection
Salad Fingers
Weebl and Bob
Weeeeee! (Gonads and Strife)
Xiao Xiao — a set of stick figure action animations. Xiao Xiao #3 was particularly popular.

Anime

Nevada-tan — an imageboard meme featuring CG artwork of a Japanese schoolgirl who murdered her classmate
OS-tan [8] — operating systems personified as cute mascots by various Japanese artists

Photos

Bert is Evil — Photoshopped pictures placing the muppet Bert with questionable people and situations
Boilerplate
Bonsai Kitten
Ceciliantas — an EverQuest II player whose "cybering" was revealed by screenshots from an invisible player in the same room
Clock Spider — who "ate" a clock and fought Limecat
Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten
Fatmouse — a large mouse with large ambitions
Hopkin green frog
Limecat — a cat with a lime on its head (aka Meloncat)
Moshzilla — a girl moshing at a show
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. Spawned an entire Yahoo! category under Tasteless Humor → Ate My Balls.
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
Tourist guy (http://www.touristofdeath.com) — the same person Photoshopped into photos of different events, mostly disasters
Tubcat — a very fat cat

Shock sites

Goatse.cx — a shock site frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels.
Lemonparty — a shock site frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels.
Tubgirl — a shock site frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels.

Websites

Crying, while eating [9] — Users submit 30 second videos of themselves crying while eating food.
Dickcream — a website containing various amusing video loops set to music, many of which have circulated around the Internet. Click here for front page and here for song/video selection (click any number at top except date).
eBay auctions that are unusual, such as the 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich with a supposed semblance to the Virgin Mary
Emotion Eric — a person that makes various emotional expressions by request
Neurocam — neurocam.com, art project / social experiment / life role play /mysterious unknown
Ninja Burger — ninja who deliver fast food
Webcomics — various comics and their characters have gained large followings. They come in multiple formats ranging from hand drawn illustrations to sprite comics
Wikipedia
YTMND — a simple humorous website becomes a template for hundreds of similar sites
Zombo.com — parodies the dot-com boom

Personal sites

Hello My Future Girlfriend [10]
Mahir Cagri — personal website of a Turkish man; has received mass adoration by fans, mainly for its overly enthusiastic text.

Fan sites

Big Trouble in Little China — devoted to the Jack Burton movie.
Real Ultimate Power — devoted to ninja

Blogs

The Best Page in the Universe — 100 000 000+ visits to a website operated by a pirate. The individual articles from this site often spread memetically.
Currently Stationary — The original Engrish cult classic
Rachelle Waterman — "Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered." Over 5,000 comments in her LiveJournal blog
Tucker Max — Millions of hits as well as a cult following to a "man's man," whose skill with alcohol, women, and witty insults is "supposedly" unmatched.

Audio

Arnold Schwarzenegger prank calls — Various recorded prank calls (which spun off Flash versions of these calls), from soundboards which were created from Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice as a cop (Detective John Kimble) in the film Kindergarten Cop (1990).
Asian Pride — a phenomenon which began with a rap song "Got Rice?" which represented Asia and the staple food of that continent (rice), with the backing instrumental being 2Pac's song "Changes". This spun off various songs representing Asian countries, sometimes credited to Asian Pride, Azn Pride or AZN Pride and various "sequels" to "Got Rice?".
Combo No. 5 — a parody of Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega in a Chinese accent based on Chinese take-away meals
The "Crazy Frog" ringtone/"The Annoying Thing" video which originated as a sound file spread on the Internet and used in Insanity Tests
Kerpal — "You kicked my dog!" prank call
Jared: Butcher of Song
MC Hawking — a text-to-speech rapper based off Stephen Hawking
Tai Mai Shu — an Asian freestyle rapper
Yatta — a song by the fig-leaf wearing group Happa-tai that was also made into the animutation "Irrational Exuberance."

Text-based

All your base are belong to us — a phrase from the English translation of the video game Zero Wing, which later was adapted into a popular Flash animation.
First post, participants strive to be the first person to add a comment (post) to a new article or discussion thread.
Kurt Vonnegut's supposed 1997 "wear sunscreen" commencement address at MIT, widely circulated on the Internet. In fact, the commencement speaker at MIT in 1997 was Kofi Annan and the putative Vonnegut speech was an article published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997 by columnist Mary Schmich.
Leet speak and AOL speak may also be considered forms of memetic Internet phenomenon.
There Is No Cabal — a phrase used on Usenet.
Timecube — the profound yet incoherent rantings of a schizophrenic philosopher.

Advertising

Anabukinchan
The Spongmonkeys
The Subservient Chicken
Whazzup? [11] — Budweiser commercial series that took a new life when it was parodied with the SuperFriends [12]