List of Internet phenomena

An Internet phenomenon (sometimes called an Internet meme) occurs when something relatively or completely unknown becomes hugely popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content made feasible by the Internet. Sometimes internet phenomena can gain popularity by being featured on certain popular community-based websites, which include, but are not limited to 4chan, Albino Blacksheep, b3ta, Digg, eBaum's World, Fark, GameFAQs, LiveJournal, Newgrounds, Offtopic.com, Slashdot, Something Awful, YouTube, MySpace, YTMND, IGN, Tribalwar, or The Best Page in the Universe. Often, Internet phenomena are started by a single user on an Internet Forum.

In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon—"the footage"—plays an important role.

What defines an Internet phenomenon is purely subjective; this list will attempt to document things that have had that term applied to them.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Bands

• Basshunter — Swedish musician who is famous for making songs, related to the internet and gaming community. He has made songs such as "Boten Anna" (Anna the Bot) and "Vi sitter här i Ventrilo och spelar lite DotA" (We're sitting here in Ventrilo playing some DotA).
• 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 German pop group that was practically unknown in the US until the "Moskau" fad. Besides being a short video with crazy dancing and happy German Disco music, the Dschinghis Khan clip is also included in some Flash files.
• 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.
• Gröûp X — Makers of the songs "Bang Bang Bang", "Schfifty-Five", "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.
• 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. The band's popularity breakthrough comes from The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
• JerryC — Taiwanese guitarist and composer best known for his song "Canon Rock", a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D.
• Laziest Men on Mars – The nerd techno band that Created the famous Zero Wing Parody song All Your Base are Belong to Us
• Lodger — Finnish indie rock band famous for its Flash music videos, most notably "I Love Death", "God has Rejected the Western World" and "Doorsteps". Internet buzz caused I Love Death video to be streamed over 3,000,000 times from the band's website in only few months
• Loituma — Finnish folk group that became famous on the web after their "Ievan Polkka" was used in a short flash loop.
• 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.
• OK Go — Their complicated, nontraditional and synchronized dance routines to "A Million Ways" and "Here It Goes Again" became internet memes and many copies have been made.
• Tally Hall A rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan who gained significant publicity when their music video for "Banana Man" was featured on Albino Blacksheep.

Videos

• DUDE PLAYS WORLD OF WARCRAFT 24 HOURS STRAIGHT FOR EXPANSION — Robert AKA "SyF The Giver" plays World of Warcraft for 24 hours in a timelapse video, hilariousness ensues along with energy drink sponsorships.[1]
• Aicha — A Belgian teenager with acne going by the name of Gellieman lip-synchs the song "Aïcha". Numerous parodies have resulted as well as a false rumour of him committing suicide after the video.[2]
• 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.
• Angry Halo Player - A teen by the Gamertag of "Croyt" plays Halo 2 on Xbox Live and freaks out after getting killed. Some of the situations include, getting lagged out of a game, giving his TV the finger, yelling at one of his opponents and getting mad at his friend for phoning him while he was playing. It was sponsored by Halo2Forum.com
• The Angry Video Game Nerd (formerly known as the Angry Nintendo Nerd) - A series of videos about an angry, stereotypical nerd who reviews old video games in a satirical manner, using dry wit and excessively vulgar language while emphasizing all the negative aspects of these games. [3]
• Ask a Ninja — A series of comedy videos about the image of ninjas in popular culture. The videos consist of a ninja answering fan questions in a silly manner.
• Back Dorm Boys — A Chinese male duo who gained fame for their lip-synch videos to songs by the Backstreet Boys.
• The Backstroke of the West — A very poor Chinglish translation of a pirated copy of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The final scene has Darth Vader bellowing a long, anguished "No!" that is translated literally as "Do not want".[4]
• 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.
• Beatboxing Bush-Video clips of George W. Bush merged together using beatboxing sounds, Bush's mouth moving in time with the sounds. The video pauses to show footage of Condoleezza Rice applauding.
• 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. [5]
• Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out - Uploaded to YouTube on January 18, 2007, this video of a Canadian bride so upset with her hairstyle on her wedding day that she starts cutting it off drew 2 million views and received wide news coverage as viewers, and even film director Norman Jewison, pondered whether it was real or staged.[6] It has since emerged that the "bride" was a young Toronto actress, Jodi Behan, made to promote Unilever's Sunsilk Canada line of hair care products[7] and has since been removed from the site.[8]
• 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.
• "Captain Planet and the Planeteers": The 1990's environmental-themed animation series developed by Ted Turner came with a particulary memorable theme song played during the end credits ("Captain Planet, he's our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero!"), several videos emerged featuring people dancing or/and covering the song in their bedrooms together in groups or alone. An episode of the series, "If This Is Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast", which focused on Wheeler trying to prevent young Protestant and Catholic members from triggering nuclear devices, has also gained a new surge of popularity due to the absurity of the situation and for the American interpretation of the conflicts that raged at the time in Ireland.
• "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.
• Catherine Bosley — A video of the anchorwoman appearing nude during a wet T-shirt contest.
• Crazy Bus Driver – Footage from a bus surveillance camera of a bus driver hitting a passenger.
• Crazy Old Xbox 360 Lady – Xbox 360 advertisement casting audition in which a man and an old lady pretend firing various guns.
• Crazy German Kid- The video of a boy screaming in German until he's literally gasping for breath and smashing his keyboard on the desk until keys fly because his game of "Unreal Tournament" wouldn't load fast enough. At first, the video appeared without translation, but later, the video was translated with subtitles into English. One such translation begins with an apology for his behavior and a disclaimer that the boy represents 'the very worst of the German people'.
• Dance Monkeyboy — A viral video of Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer at an employee convention. The video features Ballmer dancing and screaming wildly to "Get on Your Feet" by Gloria Estefan for roughly 30 seconds.
• Dick in a Box — A Saturday Night Live digital short featuring cast member Andy Samberg and singer Justin Timberlake as two men singing about giving their lovers their genitalia in a box as a Christmas present.
• Edgar Falls (La caída de Edgar / Edgar se cae) — A video that shows a mexican boy called Edgar, falling into a blackwater river, while screaming bad words in a childish and girly way. It became a widely spread internet phenomenon in Latin America and in the United States after being published on popular video hosting site, YouTube. [9] Recently, a famous Mexican cookie company hired Edgar to film a promotional "revenge" to Hector, the kid who throwed him into the river. The clip shows almost the same scene of the original video. When Edgar gets angry, he calls a team of Roman guards to help him get out of the situation, and the other two guys get thrown into the river instead. [10]
• Evolution of Dance — A comedian (Judson Laipply) performs a medley of various popular dances throughout the history of pop music, from Elvis Presley to 'N Sync. Currently the most viewed video on YouTube.
• Exploding whale — An old news story, once thought to be an urban legend, gets a second following with the postage of a news footage video.
• funtwo — Guitar player (Jeong-Hyun Lim) from South Korea. The New York Times wrote an article about him. [11]
• Geriatric Gripes and Grumbles — A British 79 year old, known as geriatric1927 or Peter, explains how he became addicted to the popular website Youtube. It became so popular that many started producing their own versions, some of them Old Age Pensioners, others are teenagers.
• Hot Hot Hot — Appalachian State University promotional video that had an unintended response.
• How to be: Emo – Mock Documentary about the emo subculture and how to join it.
• Impossible is Nothing – An inadvertently humorous video resume by Aleksey Vayner.
• Indian Thriller – A clip from the 1985 Telegu film Donga featuring Chiranjeevi and Radha in a spoof of Michael Jackson's Thriller.[12]
• Inside Landmark Forum – 2004 exposé documentary about Landmark Education, made by France 3's investigative journalism program Pieces a Conviction. Landmark Education has created a chilling effect over the internet by making legal threats against YouTube and Internet Archive. The video can currently be viewed and downloaded at Google Video, under the heading 2003 Inside Landmark Forum.
• 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.
• Lazy Sunday — A Saturday Night Live digital short starring 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.
• Little Superstar — A video from the 1986 Tamil film Adhisaya Piravi, featuring a midget dance scene.
• Lynne and Tessa – A duo of Internet lip syncers who become popular on Google Video
• Mackenzieheartsu - Known at first as the Spoiled Rich Girl, she became famous in early January 2006 through a video purportedly taken by her brother in which she reacts to receiving a red Saab convertible for her birthday by whining and complaining that she had wanted a blue one. She then posted a series of responses in which she eventually gets a blue car and announces she's selling the red one on eBay for $9.99, at which point it was revealed the whole series was a staged promotion for a special Domino's Pizza offer.[13]
• 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.
• The Matt Fiedler Show — Matt Fiedler, a film student attending Full Sail Real World Education in Winter Park, Florida, puts this show out on YouTube. It features segments like "Joke of the Week", "Graffitti", and "Guest of the Week", where the star "interviews" celebrities and the outcomes are usually hilarious. [14]
• (Do Not) Misspell Google - An unwitting user misspells Google.com and ends up on a site that fills his computer with spyware and worms. Although it's a fictional video, it plays upon real fears, as one mispelt version of Google reportedly triggered malware on machines (read article here)
• Michael Jordan's Phobia Clinic — An infomercial parody wherein Dr. Michael Jordan and his patients endorse a fictional phobia clinic.
• 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.
• Muslim Rave Party Sensation — An Imam goes bonkers as his followers bang their heads and try to restrain him. It is synched to the song Balla Da Li by Boom Box.[15]
• N64 Kid — A short clip that originated as a home video of a boy and his sister opening a Christmas present that happens to be a Nintendo 64. This present produces a surprisingly exuberant reaction from the two. This video sparked many YTMND sites and was even featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
• 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.
• Oh, You Mad 'Cause I'm Stylin' On You - A memorable line from footage of a rap battle that turns violent at the end, when one competitor hits the other with a right cross. [16]
• Pure Pwnage — A series of episodes about the lives of "pro gamers" Jeremy and FPS Doug, along with their friends. The series alludes to gaming language, like leet speak and makes fun of newbies.
• The Pokémon Theme Video — A video of two teenage boys lip-syncing to the theme to Pokémon. It was featured on TV and in print numerous times. It became a phenomenon after being submitted to YouTube in the winter of 2005.
• Poo Documentary — A video of a group of teenagers investigating the fecal matter on display at their local park [17]
• 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.
• Ridge Racer! — A line from the E3 Press Conference video with Kaz Hirai yelling "Riidge Racer!" Many people have parodied it along with the Giant Enemy Crab.
• Roof Slam - Two Jackass Wannabes slam each other off of a roof onto a table, causing the two to cry and scream. All the cameraman can offer is "Are you ok?" The clip has been shown on G4's attack of the show and Bumfights 3.[18]
• Smash Our Stuff — They raised money in donations to buy an iPod (and later an Xbox360, a Playstation 3, and a Nintendo Wii) on launch day to destroy them. SmashMyXbox even got them onto MTV.
• Soup of the Day — The story of one man dating three women at the same time told completely in viral shorts over 19 episodes.
• 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.
• Star Wars fan films — Fan films range from simple backyard antics to professional looking films such as Duality, some of them utilizing horrible special effects as a part of the joke.
• Star Wreck — A series of Finnish Star Trek parodies. The latest episode Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was downloaded over 4 million times and recently acquired a DVD distribution deal with Universal Pictures.
• Stealth Disco — Videos of people rocking out behind unknowing victims.
• Tony vs. Paul — A stop motion video starring two friends turned into enemies and engaged in an unrealistic battle in a suburban landscape. It has been praised for the quality of its animation. [19]
• Tunak Tunak Tun — An Indian music video by Daler Mehndi.
• Un-Pimp My Ride - A series of Volkswagen commercials, starring Swedish actor Peter Stormare, that spoof the TV show Pimp my Ride, usually by destroying cars.
• 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.
• Video Game Pianist — Piano player who plays both old and new video games' themes. Formerly called "The Blindfolded Pianist."
• Will It Blend? — Tom Dickson shows off the Blendtec blender range by blending various unusual items.
• Wizards in 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 later adopted by Miller Lite for a TV advertisement.
• Yatta — A music video featuring the Japanese group Happa-tai. The members of the group wear nothing but a green fig leaf over the front of each of their briefs, and the video is filled with positive, care-free quotations, such as "Easy come, easy go go" and "Don't Worry, Be Happy!" The song was also made into an animutation "Irrational Exuberance".
• Zuiikin' English — A Japanese TV show that combined English lessons and gymnastic exercises.
• Real Ultimate Power

Animation-based

• All your base are belong to us — An animated gif image 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. (It should be noted that many video games of that era often suffered from such poor localization).
• Angry Alien — The 30 Second Bunny Theatre shorts where feature films are acted out by cartoon bunnies. Some have been shown on Starz!
• Animutations — Simple Flash animations usually containing foreign music and pop-culture references. The fad first gained widespread popularity with "Hyakugojyuuichi". It was popularized by Neil Cicierega.
• 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 Clerks: The Animated Series 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.
• 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. [20]
• 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.
• Dancing Bush — An interactive game first appeared in 2001 which was freely syndicated across thousands of websites. [21]
• 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 7.15 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.
• The End of the World – A popular comedic Flash animation describing the possible outcomes of a nuclear war.
• 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. Some have been shown on G4TV, New Zealand's C4TV and SBS
• 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 created by The Brothers Chaps (Mike and Matt Chapman), with voices by creators and Missy Palmer, 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.
• Internet Pranks — Flash animations, videos or other things that tend to catch people off guard. They can be heart jumping "screamers" or just simply flashes such as "you are an idiot". Also see "shock sites".
• 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 X-Men: The Last Stand.
• Kenya — This Weebl cartoon extolls the virtues of a vacation in Kenya: "Where can you see lions/tigers, Only in Kenya! Come to Kenya, we've got lions/tigers…"
• Line Rider – A flash game in which the player draws one or more lines with the mouse on which a small character with a sled can ride.
• 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.
• Loituma Girl — A 26-second segment from a cheerful Finnish song in combination with a four-frame anime clip on endless repeat.
• Miko Miko Nurse — Various flash animations based in an opening song of a Japanese hentai game. The particularity of this song is its last part that repeats "Miko Miko Nurse" many times.
• Neurotically Yours — A series featuring a Goth and her pet squirrel.
• Red vs. Blue — A popular and commercially successful machinima series using the Microsoft Halo and Halo 2 video game engines.
• Rejected — Satirical animation by Don Hertzfeldt; supposedly a series of TV spots the animator was commissioned for (by non-existent companies), all of which are of a nonsensical and/or gruesome nature and were thus "rejected" outright.
• 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".
• 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. A later version featured graphics that were more refined, in addition to lipsynch that was more accurate.
• Sickanimation — Gross and offensive cartoons that are still hysterical either way.
• 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. It has been featured on UK MTV stations.
• Xiao Xiao — An Internet flash cartoon series by Chinese animator Zhu Zhiqiang, featuring stick-figure men performing choreographed fight scenes.
• Ghost ride the whip - Ghost riding the whip is a popular rap culture phenomenom where a person or multiple persons play the song ghost ride it by Mistah F.A.B and walk or dance around their vehicle while it is still in motion

Images

• 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.
• Beer Looter Dude - An image of a looter stealing a bucketful of Heineken beer that was Photoshopped into various pictures of memorable historical events, political meetings, and movie scenes.
• Boilerplate — A 19th Century robot hero.
• Bonsai Kitten — A series of hoax images showing how cats can be "grown" in amusing ways if crammed into small jars.
• Dog poop girl — A woman's dog relieves itself on a subway car floor and she refuses to clean it up.
• Eul-Yong Ta — The picture of Lee Eul-Yong looking down at Li Yi with anger has sparked many parodies in South Korea
• Fatmouse — Images of obese mice that became widely circulated, similar to Tubcat.
• God kills a kitten — Please, think of the kittens.
• HA! HA! guy — A customizable image of a laughing Quaker minister gained popularity on Fark.
• Helicopter Shark – A great white shark attacks a rescue worker on a ladder hanging from a helicopter. Debunked as a composition of two photos by SF Bay Adventures
• Hopkin Green Frog - A series of Photoshopped images based on a real home-made flier for a lost frog.
• 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?".
• Limecat — Fluffy kitten wearing a stern expression and a helmet cut from some sort of lime-like fruit.
• Little Fatty – A Chinese high school student named Qian Zhijun had his face super imposed onto various other images and created an internet fad.
• Lulu and Junior — A pair of Tennessee Volunteers fans are caught distraught on national TV and photoshopped into various yokel stereotypes.
• LUEshi - An image of Mario riding Yoshi created with ASCII art. The image is synonymous with LUE and LUElinks, and is widely accepted as the mascot of both communities.
• Moshzilla - A photo of a woman moshing[22] in a circle pit spread quickly around the Internet. Many people point out the easy to spot horrified expression of a man in the background.
• 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 "reflectoporn" [23].
• 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").
• O RLY? - A snowy owl with an inquisitive expression captioned 'O RLY?'. Stems from the imageboard 4chan.
• Preved bear — A bear from the modified John Lurie watercolor Bear Surprise is placed into pictures, photographs and videos. The phenomenon has currently made its way outside the Internet.
• Rodney Hide On a Skateboard. — Obese New Zealand Member of Parliament Riding A skateboard accompanied by the phrase "My Policies 'll be Rad Yo!".
• That guy — Various pictures featuring people in the background not meant to be in the shot, or intentioinally goofing off, became popular at collegehumor.com.
• Tourist guy — The same person Photoshopped into photos of different events, (mostly disasters). Originally a hoax based on the 9/11 attacks.
• Badboy2 -A legendary internet poster who gained fame by posting a picture of himself on Bodybuilding.com that was endlessly Photoshopped and later spread to other forum groups.

Films

• Hackers – This 1995 film starring Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie has developed a cult following from its video release despite (or, in some cases, because of) egregious inaccuracies in its portrayal of hacking and hacker culture. Metaphorical and graphical sequences are used as a substitute for the real actions involved in hacking and systems administration.
• 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. [24] The Internet buzz surrounding the movie has been featured several times by Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC news show Countdown.

Tv Shows

• Nobody's Watching - This was failed TV pilot from the creators of TV series Scrubs and Family Guy, Bill Lawrence and Neil Goldman. It was turned down by the The WB Television Network and was then anonymously uploaded to YouTube in 2006. It became very popular and soon NBC got in touch with the people who made it and was then greenlit as a full TV series. It is currently awaiting to be filmed, but several webisodes have been filmed and uploaded on myspace and Youtube.

Concepts

• eBaum's World Controversy — After an uncredited YTMND appeared on the site eBaum's World, users from major forums (including YTMND, SomethingAwful, 4chan, IGN, LUElinks, GameFAQs, TribalWar, Newgrounds and AlbinoBlackSheep) attacked the site en masse with DDoS and spam, resulting in a massive flame war.
• eBay Haunted Painting — A painting for sale on eBay which was believed to be haunted.
• Giant Enemy Crab — 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.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — Days before the Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released, plot information was leaked onto the Internet, leading to many spoilers, including Usenet posts and videos, being revealed to unsuspecting fans.
• Hipster PDA — A paper-based personal organizer.
• The Penny Per Person Experiment — A web site that sells links for a penny per person. The links are categorized by "counties" and the price varies depending on the population. The amazing aspect of this site is that there are 296,410,404 people, thus, creating the potential to earn $2.96 million.
• Time Cube — Explores a theory about the cubic nature of time; some may find the writing to be somewhat unintelligible or similar to pseudoscience.
• Troy’s Mixtape of Love – A 14-and-a-half minute audio stream of a teenager named Troy Gregory professing his love for Melissa Keyser. While mostly a stream-of-consciousness serenade, the audio clip contains a brief recitation of popular romance songs. Mixtape of Love was inspired by Troy Gregory's mixtape. An archive of conversations, recordings and parodies is contained on the site.
• 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 and Attack of the Show.

Websites

General

• Fat Chicks in Party Hats — A website that features photographs of overweight women (and men) culled from the internet. The site's humor came from the derogatory comments in broken English accompanying the photos.
• Million Dollar Homepage — Alex Tew sells one million pixels for $1 each. This spawned the craze for pixel advertising.
• Neurocam International — This mysterious art project/social experiment/life role play website was initially advertised with no information other than its slogan, "get out of your mind".
• Ninja Burger — A humorous cartoon about a ninja who delivers fast food. Later published as a book, Ninja Burger: Honorable Employee Handbook.
• One Red Paperclip — Website for Kyle MacDonald, who began with a single red paperclip and traded for bigger or better items 14 times until he reached his goal of a house in one year.
• Real Ultimate Power — A website devoted to ninjas. It spawned the "Pirates versus Ninjas" debate.
• Save Toby — A rabbit was found and scheduled to be eaten unless money was donated. Several copycat pages followed.
• Shock sites — As the name suggests, these websites are constructed primarily to shock the visitor. Sites such as Goatse.cx, Lemonparty and Tubgirl (now offline), are shock sites frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels, while Rotten.com contains various images and news.
• Zombo.com — Parodies the dot-com boom.
• Alex Chiu — A website which claims to sell immortality rings.

Personal sites

• Asian Prince — An Asian "rock star" who set up a website on Geocities to look for a girlfriend.
• Emotion Eric — A person makes various emotional expressions by request.
• Hello My Future Girlfriend — A website with a message from a person looking for a girlfriend.
• Mahir Çağrı (i kiss you) — A resident of İzmir, Turkey, Çağrı became an Internet celebrity in 1999, when his picture-laden homepage, which exclaimed in broken English his love of the accordion and travel, was visited by millions and spawned numerous fansites and parodies, one featured on Fox's MADtv (season 4, episode 20). Mahir was ranked #2 in CNET's Top 10 Web fads (July 15, 2005). [25] He was flown to the U.S. and fêted at a dot-com party later that year, at the Hamm's Building, in San Francisco.
• JenniCam — Jennifer Ringley created the website "Jennicam", in which people could watch her via webcam. She also had her own Internet program, "The Jenni Show".
• Project Denny's — A travelogue started by Jason Alan Pfaff, in which he attempts to visit every Denny's in North America, and to prove that every Denny's manager bears resemblance to "Weird Al" Yankovic.
• Maddox — Claiming to be a "pirate", Maddox is the online pseudonym of George Ouzounian, author of the popular website, The Best Page in the Universe, with over 100,000,000 visits. Maddox has also authored the New York Times Best seller The Alphabet of Manliness. The individual articles from this site often spread memetically.
• Matt Harding — An American computer programmer living in Australia, Harding quit his job and started a website, documenting himself dancing a jig in front of various world landmarks. He was featured on a variety of television programs, including MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Ellen Degeneres Show.
• Randy Constan — He posted pictures of himself on his website wearing self-made Peter Pan costumes.

Political sites

• Black World Wide Web protest — Thousands of webpages turned black for 48 hours to protest the Communications Decency Act.
• Blue Ribbon Campaign — Many webpages have linked to a blue ribbon image from EFF to raise awareness to laws that may affect online freedom of speech.
• First United Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — Parody religion set up to satirize intelligent design.
• General Zod For President 2008 — Official site for the campaign of General Zod.
• Sorry Everybody — A site made up of images of Americans holding signs telling the world they're sorry that Bush won the recent election.
• We're Not Afraid — Started just after the July 7, 2005 London bombings, this site contains thousands of pictures of people around the world holding signs showing they're not afraid of terrorism.
• War Is Not The Answer - Started by CCDCCENA to catalog all things that are not the answer.

Blogs

• Blogebrity — A website purporting to be a tribute to bloggers was put up as a mockery of the blog phenomenon.
• Generation Exploitation - A site which delivered the most elaborate history of "Spire Christian Archie Comics" to date, as well as breaking 'historical' stories like "The Christian Action Films of Erik Estrada," has an extremely large readership on WFMU's Beware the Blog website.
• Hitch50.com – Two Canadians hitch-hiking across the United States to see all 50 state capitals in 50 days.
• Furong JieJie — A freespirit Chinese blogger.
• Mu Zimei — A Chinese woman that wrote about her sexual encounters. She is credited as starting a new sexual revolution in an otherwise suppressed China.
• PostSecret — An ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on homemade postcards. The project has recently received attention in popular culture by the rock group The All American Rejects who based their music video for "Dirty Little Secrets" on the PostSecret project.
• Tucker Max — This blog, focusing on a man's skills with alcohol, women, and insults, has an enormous cult following.

Audio

• Arnold Schwarzenegger prank calls — A popular trend using audio clips of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the movie Kindergarten Cop to prank unsuspecting victims began, which led to many other celebrities' voices to be used in the same way.
• Crazy Frog ringtone/"The Annoying Thing" video
• Desu – in the anime series Rozen Maiden, a character named Suiseiseki has a tendency to end nearly every sentence with this word. On 4chan and various other places, users will write their own sentence or phrase ending with "desu", mix "desu" in the middle of a phrase, or just "desu" by itself, usually accompanied by a picture of Suiseiseki. Desu is actually a Japanese copula, but Suiseiseki tends to use it even when it's not needed, and she elongates the U, whereas otherwise, the U is almost silent.
• Do a Barrel Roll – a popular quote said by Peppy Hare from the video game Star Fox. His quote has been popular on various internet communities. Due to the nature of his voice, sometimes, additional quotes will be used.
• I Want My Western Barbecue Burger! — An irate woman places a 911 call demanding the police enter a Laguna Niguel, California-area Burger King and force the employees to make her and her kids a "Western Barbecue Burger". [26] [27]
• Internet is for Porn Avenue Q song which extolls the virtues of the internet (and porn).
• Jared: Butcher of Song – Software that combined Jared Smith's singing with an animated smilie face.
• Kerpal — You Kicked My Dog prank call.
• MC Hawking — A text-to-speech rapper based on Stephen Hawking's synthesized voice.
• Michael Cole — The WWE Commentator launches a verbal attack on a caller during his short-lived Sirius radio show.
• OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAND!!! - A line from the original English Dragon Ball Z dub, the phrase first made its rounds on 4chan and then was popularized by a YouTube video.
• REJECTED! — A line said in the YouTube parody Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series by the character Kemo whenever he shows signs of negativity or denial. He is also called "Nameless Henchman" in the parody. Another popular quote he says is "Attention duelists! My hair is <verb>!" due to his big hair. Other notable quotes from the series include "Screw the rules, I have <object>", as said by Seto Kaiba, "Super Special Awesome <object/verb>", as said by Yugi Mutou, and "...in America!", as said by Bandit Keith.
• Schnappi das kleine Krokodil — A song about a crocodile sung by a very young German girl, whose huge commercial success would not have been possible without P2P networks.
• Shadow the Hedgehog quotes — Several one-liners from the video game have become popular memes, most notably the phrase "Find the computer room!" and "Where's that damn fourth Chaos Emerald?" spoken by Vector the Crocodile and Shadow the Hedgehog, respectively.
• WRONG! – Lex Luthor's famous line from the Superman Returns movie and trailers.[28]
• WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY — An eerie sound taken from a game based on the anime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and put into a strange Flash animation.

Text-based

• Chuck Norris Facts — At least one Web site was started with the goal of posting "Chuck Norris Facts". The fad mostly consisted of short factualized statements and anecdotes making Chuck Norris seem "larger than life" or to have super human abilities. This site came about after the success of the supposedly funnier Vin Diesel Fact Generator, yet seemed to gain more popularity. Since then, many other actors or characters have had fact generators created about them. Since then there have been 'facts' spawned for Kyle Katarn (Star Wars), Jack Bauer (24), and even Don Cherry.
• Densha Otoko — Online postings about a man who meets someone by saving her on a train, which was later adapted into a comic book and TV-movie.
• First post — Participants strive to be the first person to add a comment (post) to a new article or discussion thread.
• For the win — An internet catchphrase coined from TV game shows, often seen on blogs.
• Leet speak & AOL speak — These may also be considered forms of memetic Internet phenomenon.
• In Before The Lock – Forum users, recognizing the appearance of a thread which is in violation of the forum policies, will sometimes post "IBTL" in it as a sign its locking is imminent.
• A winner is you — Originating from the Pro Wrestling game for NES, this phrase is an example of Engrish.
• Smurf Communism — A set of theories drawing similarities between Communism and the fictional society of the Smurf characters was spread across the Internet as far back as 1992.
• There Is No Cabal — A phrase used on Usenet.
• This is Bunny — A simple ASCII art bunny is often posted on web forums, accompanied by the text: "This is bunny. Copy and Paste bunny into your signature/webpage and help him on his way to world domination." This has spawned many other ASCII art animal signatures. [29]
• Hot Skitty on Wailord Action — This phrase originated from the GameFAQs message board for the games Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. There, a user named EndGame poked fun at the fact that a small Pokémon such as Skitty is breeding compatible with Wailord, which is currently the largest Pokémon.
• The Evil overlord list [30], where you can find advice on what to do if you ever become an evil overlord. This site was very popular and includes pages based on what users have sent in.

Advertising

• Anabukinchan — A Japanese construction company's advertisement about "growing".
• The Spongmonkeys — Bizarre creatures that sing, later used to advertise for Quiznos.
• HeadOn — A low-budget American advertisement for the topical headache relief product HeadOn, originally shown on television but gained worldwide fame on the internet, and spawned many parodies. In the commercial the phrase "Head-On: Apply directly to the forehead" is repeated over and over. The so-called "cure" is a homeopathic remedy; the reason the commercial never mentions that it's a headache cure is to avoid having to prove that it actually works. [31]
• The Subservient Chicken — A Burger King promotional website that features a "live" chicken that can obey thousands of typed commands.
• The Cog — A very impressive Honda commercial.
• K-Fee - A brand of German coffee whose TV advertisements are parodies of screamers. The most infamous commercial started off with a car driving down a road in the countryside. The car suddenly disappears behind a tree, and before the ad ends, a zombie jumps out of nowhere and screams. The ad ends with the words "So wach warst du noch nie." ("You've never been so awake" in German.)

In Fiction

• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex contains a story arc centering around a mysterious hacker known as The Laughing Man. The Laughing Man becomes an internet phenomenon and cultural icon and one episode centers around a chat session discussion the "Laughing Man Incident." The term Stand Alone Complex itself refers to a form of meme-like behaviour that is described as "copies without an original", that is, many people independently acting in a similar and distinct manner without an apparent common source of stimulus.
• The Gospel According to Larry is a book about a high school senior whos anti-consumerism website becomes an internet phenomenon, and ironically turns him into a consumerism idol.

See also

• Fad
• Shock site – Often become Internet memes due to the immense volume of unwitting visitors they receive.

External links

• Memes on the Internet Article regarding the spread of Internet memes.