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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 of information and ideas, especially when the subject is based around humor or curiosity. 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. Some people point to these sort of Internet phenomena as good examples of memes, or neta. In William Ford Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon—"the footage"—plays an important role.

Contents 1 People 2 Bands 3 Videos 4 Animation-based 5 Anime 6 Images 7 Films 8 Things 9 Websites 9.1 General 9.2 Shock sites 9.3 Personal sites 9.4 Political sites 9.5 Fan sites 9.6 Blogs 9.7 Scams 10 Audio 11 Text-based 12 Advertising 13 See also 14 External links

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions and additions are welcome.

Internet phenomena include:

People

• Mahir Çağrı — a resident of İzmir, Turkey, became an Internet celebrity in 1999. His picture-laden personal homepage, which exclaimed in broken English his love of the accordion and travel, was visited by millions and spawned numerous fansites and parodies.
• Chuck Norris — every major accomplishment of mankind is attributed to the actor, as well as funny "facts" such as 'The Great Wall of China was built to keep Chuck Norris out; it failed miserably.'
• The Hoff David Hasselhoff
• Howard Dean — 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and current chairman of the DNC. His famous 2004 "scream" after polling third in the Iowa caucuses has been widely parodied. [1]
• Henry Earl — Famous for his repeated incarcerations for public drunkenness and mug shot photos.
• 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
• Matt Harding — A man that quit his job to travel the world. Known for the video of him dancing oddly in various places around the globe.
• William Hung — A Chinese college student at UC Berkeley who auditioned for the 2004 series of American Idol. Though he had already been laughed at on TV, he rose to more fame through the Internet with his audition getting widespread exposure as well as remixed.
• Cindy Margolis — A woman who started a modelling career by posting pictures of herself on the Internet. She became the most downloaded woman and now has her own TV show.
• Andy Milonakis — A man in his late 20s with the appearance and voice of a 14 year old boy via a growth hormone defect, 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. He was rewarded with his own MTV show.
• Tila Nguyen — 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.
• Marguerite Perrin — A woman on the FOX program Trading Spouses whose obesity, maniacal rantings about gargoyles and psychics, and proclamations of religious superiority quickly made her an overnight punchline.
• Brian Peppers — A registered sex offender in Ohio whose face many find disturbing. [2]
• 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[3](Note: This animation is suitable for any age group).
• Jennifer Ringley — Created the website Jennicam, in which people could watch her via webcam and had her own internet program, "The Jenni Show".
• Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf — Iraqi Minister of Information, who became popular from making outlandish comments during the 2003 Iraq War
• Seanbaby — A sarcastic, sadistic, and foulmouthed guy who reviews video games and talks about Hostess snacks in comics, the Superfriends, and other oddities.
• The Star Wars Kid — a video digitally edited numerous times of a Québecois teenager (Ghyslain Raza) pretending to be Darth Maul
• Robert Tilton — An American televangelist whose preachings were dubbed with farts in a series called The Farting Preacher.
• Mr. T — The popular 80s actor has become the protagonist of a series of websites featuring, via photo editing programs, him battling other celebrities, fictional characters and politicians, among others.
• Vin Diesel — the actor was the subject of the original version of the humorous "Facts" phenomenon, where often ludicrous "facts" about Vin Diesel's supposed "abilities" are invented for humorous purposes.

Bands

• Dschinghis Khan — A late 70's-mid 80's group very little known 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.
• Group 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.
• Hollywood Undead — The first band to become known through strictly MySpace.
• Hurra Torpedo — a Norwegian band that broke up in the mid 1990s appeared on the internet in a video and later reformed for a mock US tour.
• Jimmy Savile Plays Iron Maiden [4] British personality Jimmy Savile plays a tune by Iron Maiden on his grand piano.
• Semi-Automatic Turban — A parody band spearheaded through Something Awful which consisted of "music" tracks of distorted microphone recordings of wailings and gibberish. Evidently this was to prove that mp3.com would host anything.

Videos

• Aicha — teenager lip synchs a love song for his girlfriend. [5]
• Bad Day — a man takes out his rage on his computer.
• 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.
• 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. [6] The most famous spoof features a female in a male Naval aerobics class. [7]
• Chin2 — supposedly Korean kids dancing in front of a mirror
• Chinese Backstreet Boys — two Chinese college students lip-sync to Backstreet Boys songs in their dorm room. They currently signed with Cingular for a cell phone commercial.
• The backstroke of the west [8] — A very poor Chinese translation of a pirated copy of Star Wars: Episode III. the final scene has Darth Vader bellowing a long, anguished "No!" that is translated literally as "Do not want!"
• Elektronik Supersonik — An allegedly Eastern European pop song and music video, featured on the Molvania website. Intended as a parody of Eastern European pop culture.
• Exploding whale — an old news story, thought to be myth, gets a second following with the postage of a news footage video. [9]
• Fan films, especially for Star Wars. [10] — Fanfilms range from simple backyard antics to professional looking films such as "Duality" [11]
• G.I. Joe PSAs - Public service announcements that appeared at the end of the G.I. Joe animated series re-edited by Fenslerfilm to be completely silly and random. [12]
• 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. [13]
• John Daker — a singer who makes up for his lack of ability and his unusual voice with bizarre facial expressions.
• 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. [14]
• Milk and Cereal — two college guys lip sync to "Milk and Cereal" with milk and cereal props in their kitchen.
• Numa Numa Dance — an overly enthusiastic kid (Gary Brolsma) singing along to a Romanian-language dance song ("Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone) [15]
• Prophet Yahweh — video[16] of the prophet supposedly summoning UFOs, was widely circulated on the internet in June of 2005.
• 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 [17]
• 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, recently adopted by Miller Lite for a TV advertisement. [18]
• Stealth Disco — Videos of people rocking out behind unknowing victims.
• Video Game Pianist — Piano player who plays both old and new video games' themes. Formerly called "The Blindfolded Pianist"

Animation-based

• Leeroy Jenkins — A party of World of Warcraft players gets wiped out thanks to the actions of one of their group. [19]
• Animutations — simple animations usually containing foreign music and pop-culture references. The fad first gained widespread popularity with "Hyakugojyuuichi".
• Badger Badger Badger — a repetitive animation about dancing badgers, a mushroom, and a snake; several variations were produced.
• BT Pipeskater — A repetitive game, loosely based on BT Broadband, hosted on the BT website as an advertisement for their wholesale broadband product. Has become phenomenally popular with schools in England in which Safety Filters block out most games sites BT PipeSkater
• Bananaphone — various animations with the song "Banana Phone" by Raffi Cavoukian, where the first and most widespread features Osaka with a "Gundam Bananaphone"
• Dancing baby — a 3D-rendered dancing baby. First appeared in 1997 and became something of a late '90s cultural icon.
• Dancing Banana — an animated icon that became famous after being adapted in an animation with the song "Peanut Butter Jelly Time".
• The Demented Cartoon Movie — A very long minimalist Flash animation full of silliness. "Zeeky boogy doog!"[20]
• The End of the World — a Flash animation using Group X-style voices.[21]
• Hampster Dance(sic) — a page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It now has its own CD.
• Hatten är din - a Swedish animation featuring an assortment of bizarre imagery (centered around a floating hat) and Swedish phonetic "subtitles" to Middle Eastern music
• Happy Tree Friends — a series featuring cute animals that meet violent ends
• 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.
• 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 [22] — This Web site's Flash animation "This Land" became wildly popular for its satirizing of the 2004 Presidential Election
• Kenya — A Weebl cartoon extolling the virtues of a holiday to Kenya- "Where can you see lions/tigers? Only in Kenya! Come to Kenya, we've got lions/tigers..."
• The Llama Song — Flash song/animation about llamas, accompanied with pictures to fit the lyrics - "Here's a llama, there's a llama, and another little llama. Fuzzy llama, funny llama, llama, llama, duck." It is often re-written 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
• Peanut Butter Jelly Time
• 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 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 — a story of an animator and the effects of rejection, created by Don Hertzfeld
• Retarded Animal Babies — an obscene Flash series about the vice-filled lives of various pet animals
• Salad Fingers — a series featuring an odd character in a strange and creepy world
• Star Wars Gangsta Rap — Star Wars characters rapping through A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, one of the first popular Flash movies.
• The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny — A flash by Neil Cicierega and Shawn Vulliez
• There she is!! — a Korean series about a girl rabbit that fell in love with a cat
• We Drink Ritalin — an animutation
• Weebl and Bob — a series about two egg shaped friends
• Weeeeee! (Gonads and Strife) another wacky Flash song/animation
• 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 [23] — operating systems personified as cute mascots by various Japanese artists

Images

• Bert is Evil — Photoshopped pictures placing the Muppet Bert with questionable people and situations
• Boilerplate
• Bonsai Kitten
• Clock Spider — who "ate" a clock and fought Limecat
• Dog poop girl — a woman's dog relieves itself on a subway car floor and she refuses to clean it up; the Internet hears about it and punishes 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
• Icy Hot Stuntaz
• Image macros — Pictures with superimposed text used in discussions. Common accompanying texts include "Owned", "STFU", and "O RLY?".
• Limecat — a cat with a lime on its head (a.k.a. Meloncat)
• 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.
• Lootie A man pictured looting beer walking through waist deep waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
• Mustard Man — picture of a supposed fast food employee dropping the mustard
• 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
• Rock, Paper, Saddam (http://www.rockpapersaddam.com/) — A series of images from a 2004 appearance of Saddam Hussein before the Iraq Special Tribunal, captioned as if he were playing an increasingly ridiculous game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with the judge.
• Tourist guy (http://www.touristofdeath.com) — the same person Photoshopped into photos of different events, mostly disasters
• Tubcat — a very fat cat
• YGGR — acronym for "You Gonna Get Raped", popularly used to greet newcomers on internet forums

Films

• Snakes on a Plane — A 2006 film staring Samuel L. Jackson that became an internet meme due to it's ridiculous title and premise a year before its planned released and before any promotional material was released.

Things

• Hipster PDA — a paper-based personal organizer

Websites

[edit] General 4chan [24] — image boards, discussion boards, oekaki, meme. B3TA [25] — with an extremely popular humorous link based newsletter and plenty of photoshopped user submitted images. Unusual eBay auctions, 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 . Albino Black Sheep— a flash animation web site that also offers software downloads . Million Dollar Homepage — a 21-year-old sells 1 million pixels for $1 each Neurocam — [26], art project / social experiment / life role play /mysterious unknown Ninja Burger — ninja who deliver fast food Save Toby — a rabbit was found and scheduled to be eaten unless money was donated Webcomics — various comics and their characters have gained large followings. They come in multiple formats ranging from hand drawn illustrations to sprite comics YTMND — a simple humorous website with just one image and a repeated audio sample becomes a template for thousands of similar sites and many sub-memes. Zombo.com [27] — parodies the dot-com boom [edit] Shock sites Goatse.cx, Lemonparty & Tubgirl (now offline), are shock sites frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels [edit] Personal sites Asian Prince — an Asian "rock star" who set up a website on Geocities to look for a girlfriend The Best Page in the Universe — 100,000,000+ visits to a website operated by a man claiming to be a "pirate". The individual articles from this site often spread memetically. Hello My Future Girlfriend [28] Mahir Çağrı — personal website of a Turkish man; has received mass adoration by fans, mainly for its overly enthusiastic text. I LIEK MILK!!!!!!!! — the personal website of a man named "Hitoshi" from from Tokyo, Japan, who likes milk, among other things. Created sometime before April 2001. Became an internet phenomenon, most likely due to Hitoshi's use of Engrish [29] InternetFad.com Website of Eric, featuring random internet fad information, news, and graphic design trends.

[edit] 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. [edit] Fan sites Real Ultimate Power — devoted to ninjas [edit] Blogs Blogebrity Furong JieJie — A freespirit Chinese blogger Mu Zimei — A Chinese woman that wrote about her sexual encounters. She is credited to start 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. [30] Rachelle Waterman — The blog of a teenage girl who wrote "just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered," and was arrested shortly thereafter. Over 5,000 comments in her LiveJournal blog, before it was deleted. Mirrors still exist. Tard 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 are unmatched. [edit] Scams Poetry.com — Beguiled by promises of an easy way to publish poetry on-line and, later, with letters announcing that their poem is in the semi-finals of a poetry writing contest, poets from all parts of the world were scammed into giving money to The International Library of Poetry so that they can get a book with their poem on it, and more money to attend "poetry reading" conventions.

[edit] Audio Crazy Frog ringtone/"The Annoying Thing" video — originated as a sound file spread on the Internet and used in insanity tests Jared: Butcher of Song Kerpal — "You kicked my dog!" prank call The Internet is for Porn — part of the soundtrack of the Broadway musical Avenue Q. MC Hawking — a text-to-speech rapper based on Stephen Hawking's synthesized voice Schnappi das kleine Krokodil — a song about a crocodile sung by a very young German girl, where its huge commercial success would not have been possible without P2P networks. Tai Mai Shu — an Asian freestyle rapper ThunderCats outtakes WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY — An eerie sound taken from a game based on the anime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and put into a strange Flash animation. Yatta — a song by the fig leaf-wearing group Happa-tai that was also made into the animutation "Irrational Exuberance."

[edit] Text-based A winner is you — a phrase that originated from the Pro Wrestling game for NES. An example of engrish. 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. An example of engrish. Bash.org — A collection of online IRC chat logs at bash.org. 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. Fitzmas — a phrase coined in anticipation of the repercussions of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame affair. Leet speak & AOL speak — may also be considered forms of memetic Internet phenomenon. LUEshi— an ASCII art originating on the GameFAQs message board, LUE. O RLY? — a sarcastic "oh really?" typically presented as an image macro of an owl with the words "O RLY?" superimposed. Snowclone — Exchanging words of famous phrases. See list of snowclones for examples. There Is No Cabal — A phrase used on Usenet. Timecube — The profound yet incoherent rantings of a schizophrenic philosopher. Trolling — Inflammatory messages in order to provoke others. Slashdot is particularly known for this.

Advertising

• Anabukinchan — a Japanese construction company's advert about "growing"
• The Spongmonkeys — bizarre creatures that sing, later used to advertise for Quiznos
• The Subservient Chicken — a Burger King promotional website that features a "live" chicken that can obey thousands of typed commands
• Whazzup? [31] — Budweiser commercial series that took a new life when it was parodied with the SuperFriends [32] and Elián Wazzup [33] (which was also inspired by the Elián González debacle).

See also

• Fad

External links

• Memes On The Internet Article regarding the spread of Internet memes.