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List of Internet phenomena

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An Internet phenomenon (sometimes called an Internet meme) occurs when something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content made feasible by the Internet; however, the popularity of the phenomenon usually wanes as rapidly as it was acquired: the Internet's lack of physical boundaries leads to a much faster and wider spread 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. Most of the internet phenomena have begun from certain websites, which include EBaum's World, 4chan, Albino Blacksheep, Fark, GameFAQS, Offtopic.com, Newgrounds, Slashdot, Something Awful, Tribalwar and YTMND. Some people point to these sort of Internet phenomena as good examples of memes. In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon—"the footage"—plays an important role.

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.

Internet phenomena include:

People

Celebrities

  • Chuck Norris — Every major accomplishment of mankind is attributed to the actor, as well as fake "facts", which originated as an offshoot of the "Vin Diesel Facts" meme.
  • 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]
  • Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf — Iraqi Minister of Information, who became popular from making outlandish comments during the 2003 Iraq War.
  • Mr. T — The popular 80s actor has become the protagonist of a series of websites featuring him, via photo editing programs, battling other celebrities, fictional characters, politicians, and others.
  • Sean Connery — Actor who is most known for his role as James Bond in the James Bond series of movies. A website was created honoring a moment in the film Finding Forrester where he says "You're the man now dog". This quote was made into a website which eventually became YTMND.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Non-celebrities

  • Anton Maiden — Known for his MIDI and vocal renditions of Iron Maiden songs.
  • Brent Simon — Keyboard/Synth player best known for his videos The Bittorrent Song and Space Camp, he achieved popularity due to his unique melodies and lyrics. There is a documentary titled Brentumentary about a day in his life. On April 19th, 2006, nerdpunk.com was launched as Brent's official website. By popular demand, Brent is recording a CD and will be selling other merchandise off his official site.
  • David Firth — An unconventional animator, he is the man behind animations such as Salad Fingers and Burnt Face Man. His different, surrealistic style is often what draws people to his animation. [2]
  • David Wills — A professional wrestling fan from Atlanta, Georgia who proclaimed, "It's still real to me, dammit!" then proceeded to cry during a question-and-answer segment at a Spartanburg, South Carolina wrestling convention. The video clip was later featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live. [3] He has since became a regular guest on wrestling radio shows and podcasts and also writes on occasion for World Wrestling Insanity.com as guest columnist. Wills's personal website can be found here.
  • Doug Mirabelli - Backup catcher for the Boston Red Sox. "Dougie's Going Deep Tonight"
  • Ellen Feiss — A teenage girl featured in an Apple Computer advertisement, whose slurred speech and disoriented eyes provoked speculation that she was under the influence of illicit drugs.
  • Elena Filatova — Under the nickname KiddOfSpeed posted photographs of her alleged motorcycle trips in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
  • Henry Earl — A homeless African-American man from Kentucky, Earl became famous primarily because of his extensive police record, mostly for non-violent alcohol-related offenses, and the subsequent often humorous and widely varied mug shots. Henry has made numerous talk show appearances and has been featured in national and international media venues, including MSNBC, the UK Sunday Mail, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.
  • John Titor — A man claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036 who made many strange statements about future events.
  • Katilce Miranda — a Brazilian girl who received a kiss from Bono during a U2 show. People watching the show on TV quickly discovered her Orkut profile and in less then 48 hours she received more than 1,500,000 scraps on the relationship site.
  • Kimbo Slice — a 32 year-old Miami, FL based underground boxer and street fighter. He has appeared in three full-length bare-knuckle fights available through the internet and P2P file-sharing networks.
  • Brian J. Peppers — A registered sex offender with a facial malformity; his picture became widely circulated after its posting on eSORN and became the subject of a fad on YTMND. [4]
  • Lee Hotti — A young adult who was a frequent poster on Sherdog.com who received wide criticism on the forums while posting pictures of himself, family, and friends for all having long straight spiked hair, overly tanned skin, a flipped up shirt collar, and headband. Subsequent videos and pictures were created using the original pictures. The original and edited pictures spread across the Internet in a matter of weeks. A website, [5] was created within a month.
  • 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. The individual articles from this site often spread memetically.
  • Marguerite Perrin — A woman on the FOX program Trading Spouses whose obesity, maniacal rants about gargoyles and psychics, and proclamations of religious superiority quickly made her an overnight punch line.
  • Old Grandma Hardcore — A grandmother noted for her interest in video games and her excessive preoccupation with them, even at the age of 70.
  • Star Wars Kid — A Quebecois teen named Ghyslain Raza filmed himself acting like the Star Wars character Darth Maul. The video was subsequently placed on the Internet by classmates. It became widely parodied on the Internet and on TV shows such as Arrested Development and American Dad. He also appeared in a secret place in the Tony Hawk's Underground 2 video game.
  • Tron Guy — A slightly overweight computer consultant who made a costume inspired by the programs in the movie TRON, Jay Maynard's website showing the costume's creation in detail quickly became a parody fixture. Maynard appeared on numerous episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2004. [6]
  • Tom — Creator of MySpace, who automatically adds himself as a friend to everyone who joins, he has become the subject of numerous parodies based on his well-known default photo. [7]
  • William Hung — A Civil Engineering student from Hong Kong and failed American Idol contestant who became famous for his poor singing and dancing abilities. His talent (or lack thereof) ironically led to a record deal and CD titled Inspiration, in which he butchers more songs by Ricky Martin, among others. Hung has done numerous performanes at football games as well as a guest appearance on Arrested Development.

Bands

  • Beatallica — A satire band that played music combined from songs written by the Beatles and Metallica. The band received most of its initial fame (and its name) from Milwaukee resident David Dixon who created a web page about them in 2001.
  • Dschinghis Khan — A late-70s to mid-80s group that was practically unknown in the US until the "Moskau" fad. Besides being a short video with crazy dancing and happy German music, the Dschinghis Khan clip is also included in some Flash files.
  • Electric Six — A disco-rock band that became infamous after a video for their song "Gay Bar" surfaced on the Internet featuring dubbed vocals with George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
  • Gröûp X — Makers of the songs "Bang Bang Bang", "SchfiftyFive", "Too Many Guys", and "Mario Twins," the latter of which is a parody of the Super Mario Bros. theme song. Many of their songs have been adapted into Flash videos.
  • 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 for a mock U.S. tour.
  • Lodger- Finnish indie rock band famous of it's Flash music videos, most notably I love death, God has rejected the western world and Doorsteps
  • Lemon Demon — A one-man band by Neil Cicierega, music videos were animated, particularly by Andrew Kepple and Shawn Vulliez. Famous moment at Vulliez's "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny"
  • O-Zone — Became famous in part due to the Numa Numa Dance meme.

Videos

  • Aicha — A Belgian teenager with acne going by the name of Gellieman lip-synchs a love song for his girlfriend. Numerous parodies have resulted as well as a false rumor of him committing suicide after the video.[8]
  • Angry German Kid (or numerous variations with the name German Kid) — German boy gets angry on his computer and smashes up his keyboard while spewing German expletives and maniacal laughter. Similar to Super Angry Gamer. [9]
  • Average Homeboy - A white middleclass rapper who's rapping about coming from a middleclass suburban life & not coming from a poor urban life, like the most other rappers do. [10]
  • 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 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". [11]
  • 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.
  • Brokeback Mountain parodies — The movie Brokeback Mountain inspired many parodies in 2005, Chocolate Cake City's Brokeback to the Future probably being the most famous of them all. Created by two Emerson College students, the mock trailer re-worked scenes from the Back to the Future trilogy to show a previously non-existent romance between Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett Brown, which led to many other movies and TV shows to be re-worked in the same way.
  • Bubb Rubb — A man who rose to fame thanks to a humorous local TV broadcast where he was interviewed on the topic of whistle tips.
  • "Call On Me" by Eric Prydz — A popular music video based on the song, featuring a male in a female aerobics class. [12] Many spoofs followed, the most famous of which features a female in a male Naval aerobics class. [13]
  • Chin2 — Two Korean youths dancing in front of a mirror.
  • 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.
  • Exploding whale — An old news story, thought to be myth, gets a second following with the postage of a news footage video. [14]
  • Fan films, especially for Star Wars. [15] — Fan films range from simple backyard antics to professional looking films such as "Duality"
  • Flexible Girl — A video of Irina Kazakova doing a contortion routine.[16]
  • 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. [17]
  • Hot Hot Hot — Appalachian State University promotional video that had an unintended response. [18] [19]
  • 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. [20]
  • John Daker — A singer who makes up for his lack of ability and his unusual voice with bizarre facial expressions.
  • K-Fee Coffee Commercials — The German coffee company released horror-themed commercials to simulate the effects of caffeine; the most (in)famous of the commercials was titled "Auto" and was linked, e-mailed, and mirrored extensively by horrified people wanting others to see what they had seen. All of their commercial ads can be accessed from their site.
  • Kill Christ — Parodying The Passion of the Christ, this is one of many mock trailers made from re-cut footage of existing films.
  • Kure Kure Takora — is a tokusatsu children's comedy show from Japan.
  • Lady Punch- A video of a woman punching another woman in the face after an arguement over "THC". Spwned many remixes.[21]
  • Lazy Sunday — A music video starring Saturday Night Live cast members Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg that aired on the December 17, 2005 episode of the show.
  • Leeroy Jenkins — A party of World of Warcraft players gets wiped out thanks to the actions of one of their group. [22]
  • 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. [23]
  • Milk and Cereal — two college guys lip-synch to "Milk and Cereal" with milk and cereal props in their dorm room.
  • Moskau - An excerpt from a German music video with happy lyrics and crazy dancing, thus the fame from YTMND.
  • Natalie Portman Rap - An angry gangsta rap video from Saturday Night Live which has become quite popular.
  • Nintendo 64 Kid — A boy who continuously screams after getting a Nintendo 64 on Christmas Day. The video is possibly from late 1996 or early 1997, where Nintendo 64 was released. He has a website at kuzmadv.com. [24]
  • Numa Numa Dance — An overly enthusiastic kid (Gary Brolsma) sings along to a Romanian-language dance song ("Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone). [25] It was featured in the February 25, 2005 issue of the New York Times.
  • Pokemon Kid — A video of an overweight prepubescent boy with a mullet singing along to the Pokémon theme song in a room full of Pokémon merchandise. [26]
  • Prophet Yahweh — This video [27] of the prophet supposedly summoning UFOs, was widely circulated on the Internet in June of 2005.
  • The Real Life Simpsons Intro - A video which very accurately depicts the Simpsons intro with real actors. [28]
  • 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. [29]
  • Stealth Disco — Videos of people rocking out behind unknowing victims.
  • Super Angry Gamer - A teenager playing the online video game Halo 2 (under the screenname "Croyt") kept losing, and thus had violent tantrums, shouting profanity at the TV screen, and even going as far as ravaging the X-Box and/or the TV set. Has become the genesis for the recent popular "angry gamer" video meme. [30] [31]
  • The Dark Channel [32] — A site that contains loops which infinitely repeat themselves over and over again.
  • Tourette's Guy [33] - A site that features videos of a man named Danny who, allegedly, suffers from tourette's syndrome and goes off on various swearing tangents.
  • Toyota Bugger! commercial — A commercial from New Zealand for Toyota's diesel-powered Hilux pickup truck touted its more powerful engine. The only dialogue was the word "Bugger", which the truck's owner repeated after having spectacular problems due to the unexpected power. [34]
  • Tunak Tunak Tun - An Indian music video by Daler Mehndi.
  • Video Game Pianist — Piano player who plays both old and new video games' themes. Formerly called "The Blindfolded Pianist."
  • Wizards of Winter — A display of Christmas lights synchronized to a song (The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter") by electrical engineer Carson Williams, this video was recently adopted by Miller Lite for a TV advertisement. [35]
  • 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".

Animation-based

  • All your base are belong to us — A Flash animation with a montage of images depicting the famous Zero Wing quote, "All your base are belong to us" in various images. This quote is more familiar with the video gaming world since Zero Wing is a game that received its infamy from its poorly translated dialogue. The phrase is an example of Engrish.
  • Animutations — Simple Flash animations usually containing foreign music and pop-culture references, such as "We Drink Ritalin". The fad first gained widespread popularity with "Hyakugojyuuichi".
  • Badger Badger Badger — An animation to a repetitive song about dancing badgers, a mushroom, and a snake produced several variations.
  • Bananaphone — Various animations with the song "Bananaphone" by Raffi Cavoukian have been created, the first and most widespread featuring Osaka with a "Gundam Bananaphone".
  • Bear is Driving — A scene from 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.
  • BT Pipeskater — A repetitive game, loosely based on BT Broadband, hosted on the BT website as an advertisement for their wholesale broadband product. The game has become phenomenally popular with schools in England in which Safety Filters block out most games sites. BT PipeSkater
  • 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 (about 30 minutes long). [36]
  • Troubled Windows — The opening theme to a hypothetical anime starring the OS-Tans
  • Drew Pickles — A series of Flash animations made by the "Barney Bunch" about the notorious Rugrats character.
  • The End of the World — A Flash animation using Group X-style voices.[37]
  • The Evil Strawberry - A Flash animation about a strawberry and a baby. [38]
  • Hampster Dance — A page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It now has its own CD.
  • Happy Tree Friends — A series featuring cute animals that meet violent ends.
  • Hatten är din (The hat is yours) — A Swedish animation featuring an assortment of bizarre imagery (centered around a floating hat) and Swedish phonetic "subtitles" to Middle Eastern music.
  • Homestar Runner — An online series that features cartoons of varying lengths, games, and the popular "Strong Bad Emails", in which viewers can email one of the main characters, to which he wittily responds. The site is updated on a weekly basis; thus, it is more of an Internet fixture rather than a short-lived phenomenon.
  • How to Kill a Mockingbird — AwesomeFunny.com is best known for this video, which is a parody of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird that quickly deviates into a fantasy about pirates, dinosaurs, robots, and ninja.
  • JibJab [39] — This website's Flash animation "This Land" became wildly popular for its satirizing of the 2004 Presidential Election.
  • The Juggernaut Bitch — An episode of the Marvel television series 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!"
  • Kenya — This Weebl cartoon extolls the virtues of a holiday in Kenya: "We've got the lions/tigers, Only in Kenya! Come to Kenya, we've got lions/tigers..."
  • Kitty cat dance — Flash-based video featuring a dancing cat saying "Cat, I'm a kitty-cat, and I dance, dance, dance, and I dance, dance, dance."
  • The Llama Song — A Flash animation to a song about llamas, accompanied with pictures to fit the 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.
  • Potter Puppet Pals — This spoof of the Harry Potter series created by Neil Cicierega uses animated puppets to tell comical stories. Its storyline, limited movements of the puppets and the character's mindlessness contribute to the humor. [40]
  • Prank flashes — Flash animations that tend to catch people off guard. They can be heart jumping "screamers" or just simply flashes such as "You Are An Idiot".
  • Red vs Blue — A popular and commercially successful machinima series using the Microsoft Halo and Halo 2 video game engines. A popular, fan-created outgrowth is Sponsors vs Freeloaders.
  • Rejected — A story of an animator and the effects of rejection, created by Don Hertzfeldt.
  • Retarded Animal Babies — An obscene Flash series about the vice-filled lives of various pet animals.
  • 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.
  • There she is!! — A Korean series about a girl rabbit that fell in love with a cat.
  • Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny — A fight to the death from various pop culture icons and other characters. Animated by AltF4 and audio by Lemon Demon
  • Weebl and Bob — A series about two egg shaped friends.
  • Weeeeee! (Gonads and Strife) Another wacky Flash song/animation.
  • Xiao Xiao — A series of stick-figure action animations. "Xiao Xiao #3" was particularly popular.

Images

Films

  • Snakes on a Plane — This 2006 film starring Samuel L. Jackson became an Internet meme due to its ridiculous title and premise a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released. Producers of the films responded to the wide Internet buzz by adding several scenes to the film which catered to the fans. [44]

Things

Websites

Advertising

See also

  • Fad
  • Shock Site - Often become internet memes due to the immense volume of unwitting visitors they recieve.
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