List of Internet phenomena

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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, Offtopic.com, Newgrounds, 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.

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

[edit] People

[edit] Celebrities

  • Chuck Norris — More famously known as Walker, Texas Ranger. 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.
  • David Hasselhoff – The former Knight Rider / Baywatch actor has been the subject of multiple memes. These have included photographic parodies of him in his underwear, his hugely popular video "Hooked on a Feeling" (one of the most viewed on YouTube), an Internet campaign to get him to number one, and a website using Bible code claiming that he is the devil. He has capitalised on this, even appearing in TV ads in the United Kingdom where he declares himself "King of the Internet!" and references memes in his music videos. The chorus of his cover version of Peter Maffay's song "Du" inspired a major fad on YTMND.[1]
  • Howard Dean — 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and current chairman of the DNC. His famous 2004 scream, sometimes referred to as the "Dean Scream", has been widely parodied and even mixed into songs. [1] The USA Today described the scream as having gained "cult-like status" on the Web [2].
  • Jack Bauer – The hero of the popular 24 show. After the success of this show a lot of Jack Bauer facts appeared on the Internet.
  • Kevin Federline – Britney Spears' ex-husband appeared on MTV Raw in order to promote his then-to-be single PopoZão. In the video, Federline seems to be extremely satisfied with his work, nodding to the music while making a series of arm gestures. The video later became a source for a number of spoofs. More info can be found found in the Wikipedia PopoZão article.
  • Stephanie (LazyTown) — A character on the children's show LazyTown made famous by the "Cake song" and "You are a Pirate" found circulating the Internet.
  • Mr. T — The A-Team actor was one of the earliest Internet phenomena, spawning two popular memes: Ate My Balls, a Web site with images of Mr. T, captioned with various absurd and questionable statements. Eventually the phenomena was done with other subjects, both fictional and non-fictional and it spawned an entire Yahoo! category under "Tasteless Humor → Ate My Balls." The other meme is Mr. T vs … a network of Web pages depicting Mr. T fighting other celebrities, political figures, fictional characters, and other famous people in multi-page online comic books. Many classic quotes were created from this phenomenon, such as "Mr. T is helluva tough!"
  • Ted Stevens — In 2006, the current senior United States senator from Alaska. In a speech on the topic of Internet neutrality, he uttered the now-famous words: "The Internet is not something that you just dump something on, it's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." The Daily Show picked up on this and did a segment about it on their show.
  • Tila Tequila — She was discovered by Playboy scouts, but became popular as being the most-viewed profile on MySpace.[3] Her song "Straight Up" is included in the MySpace compilation record.
  • Rory Fitzpatrick – In 2006, a campaign and site was launched by Buffalo native Steven Schmid in order to get Fitzpatrick, a journeyman NHL defenceman, who had bounced between the NHL and AHL and had been a fringe player on six different teams during his 11 year career, into the 2007 NHL All-Star Game. The site, voteforrory.com and campaign has gained steam from reports from such sources as SI.com and The Score, and Fitzpatrick, despite playing only 14 games for the Vancouver Canucks due to injury, was 5th in Western defenceman voting as of December 7th, ahead of established NHL stars such as Sergei Zubov, Scott Hannan, and Rob Blake.
  • Obina — The skillful striker of the Brazilian biggest football club, Flamengo. After scoring many goals on the 2006 season, most of them simply brilliant, lots of "Obina Facts" appeared on the Internet.

[edit] Non-celebrities

  • Amir Massoud Tofangsazan — A victim of "the eBay avenger," a disgruntled buyer who claims Tofangsazan sold him a faulty laptop. In retaliation, the buyer posted on a Web page personal details, embarrassing photographs and other information about Tofangsazan that was gleaned from the laptop's hard drive. The site reached over 1 million page hits in 8 days in the month of May 2006, and was featured in major media outlets, such as the Daily Mail, the BBC, the Evening Standard and ITV.
  • Anton Maiden — Known for his MIDI and vocal renditions of Iron Maiden songs.
  • Brian Peppers — An Ohio sex offender with a facial malformity, whose photo in the Ohio eSORN (Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification) database became widespread. Snopes has since confirmed the photograph to be real [4].
  • The Bus Uncle — As the name suggests, the incident took place on a bus. A Hong Kong middle-aged "uncle" reacted furiously after the young man seated behind him tapped his shoulder and asked him to lower his voice while speaking on the phone. His outburst spawned catchphrases in Hong Kong and Chinese communities around the world.
  • Crazy Dave — English teenager Dave Mills, who videoed himself racing his father in a tractor, became a cult hit after being shown on Sky Sports TV show Soccer AM.
  • Dave Wills (wrestling)- Also known as "The Crying Wrestling Fan", Wills is a well-known professional wrestling fan who is known for yelling "It's Still Real to me, Dammit!" at a Spartanburg, SC Wrestling Event in November 2005. The clip has been circulated on the internet and replayed on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Wills has appeared as a guest on many internet wrestling radio shows and podcasts and also terrestrial radio programs such as "Ron and Fez".
  • 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, she posted photographs of her alleged motorcycle trips in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
  • Enzodude — An American male who attained infamy at the VWVortex fora after a picture, showing him flexing his muscles in front of an Enzo Ferrari, became a popular subject for Photoshopped images.
  • Guy Goma — In 2006, a taxi driver waiting to collect a fare at BBC News 24 , Guy Goma, was ushered into a live television interview after mutual error resulted him being mistaken for the intended interviewee, Guy Kewney (an Internet expert). Goma, who only realised the mistake on air, played along with the interview and the subsequent video gained immediate notice in mainstream news as well as online.
  • 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.
  • Ill Mitch — Russian American Rapper.
  • John Titor — "The Man Whose Past was The Future" A man claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036 who made many strange statements about future events. Supposedly documented on various message boards in 2000 and 2001, many people claim his words are, in fact, accurate predictions, even though many of his predictions haven't happened at all.
  • 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; the total eventually exceeded 4 million just before the profile was deleted, a week after the show.
  • Keyra Agustina — An Argentinian College student who made Webcam videos of herself prominently featuring her buttocks. These videos originated on Supertangas.com and were later hosted on sites like YouTube and IFilm.
  • 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.
  • Lee Hotti — A young adult who was a frequent poster on Sherdog.net 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 Web site, [5] was created within a month.[6]
  • lonelygirl15 — A Youtube project orchestrated by Hollywood artists featuring an actress portraying a fictitious girl and her exploits.
  • Lucy Gao — A Citibank intern whose 21st birthday party made front-page news around the world in 2006 [7]. What made her party invitations unusual were her Draconian rules set for her guests outlining when exactly certain guests were to arrive and what exactly to wear.
  • Sanja Nikolic — A presenter for the Serbian television station Pink TV who fainted during a broadcast. A short clip of the incident became popular on Youtube and other video sharing sites, and apparently her local popularity has grown since it occurred.
  • Star Wars kid — A Quebecois teen named Ghyslain Raza taped 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, Adult Swim, The Venture Bros., The Colbert Report and American Dad. He was parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic in the music video for his 2006 single White & Nerdy. He also appeared in a secret place in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.
  • Tron Guy — An 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.
  • Ze Frank — A personal site with loads of flash, video, interactive games, etc. Ze Frank gained popularity after he videotaped himself dancing and sent it to his friends.
  • Vincent Ferrari — A New York blogger who became famous in 2006 for his dealings with AOL and its customer service. His airtime on CNBC has been available on many Internet sites.
  • Qian Zhijun, also known as Xiao Pang (Little Fatty), an overweight Chinese teenager

[edit] Bands

  • Basshunter — Swedish musician who is famous for doing nerdy songs. He has made songs such as "Boten Anna" (Anna the Bott) 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 Russian 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.
  • JerryC — Taiwanese guitarist and composer best known for his song Canon in Rock, a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D.
  • Kersal Massive – Three British chavs famous for a subpar, much-remixed rap video.
  • 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.
  • Mindless Self Indulgence – Makers of "JX-47", a hidden track to their song "ecnegludnI fleS sseldniM", which has been used in many flash and AMV parodies for its repetiton of the line "We're going on a field trip."
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Wesley Willis — schizophrenic rock musician whose obscuro steam-of-consciousness songs became popular through peer-to-peer file sharing.

[edit] Videos

[edit] 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.
  • 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, such as "We Drink Ritalin". 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.
  • 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.
  • 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. [15]
  • 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.
  • 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 7.25 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 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…"
  • 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."
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Weeeeee! (Gonads and Strife) — A Flash song/animation featuring a squirrel singing absurdist lyrics.
  • Xiao Xiao — An Internet flash cartoon series by Chinese animator Zhu Zhiqiang, featuring stick-figure men performing choreographed fight scenes.
  • Wookie Wookie — Music Video by Swedish musician Machoman, featuring scantily clad girls in trashcans. Remeniscient of Günther, another Swedish musician.

[edit] 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.
  • 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; the Internet community heard about the story and punished her.
  • Eul-Yong Ta — The picture of Lee Eul-Yong looking down at Li Yi with anger has sparked many parodies in South Korea
  • Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten – A kitten chased by two Domo-kun.
  • Fatmouse — Images of obese mice that became widely circulated, similar to Tubcat.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • Lulu and Junior — A pair of Tennessee Volunteers fans are caught distraught on national TV and photoshopped into various yokel stereotypes.
  • 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" [16].
  • 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").
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Tubcat — A very fat cat.
  • Little Fatty – A Chinese high school student named Qian Zhijun had his face super imposed nto various other images and created an internet fad.[2]

[edit] 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. [17] The Internet buzz surrounding the movie has been featured several times by Keith Olberman on his MSNBC news show Countdown.
  • 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.

[edit] 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.
  • Hipster PDA — A paper-based personal organizer.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead — A low-budget commercial for a topical headache cure in which 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. [18]
  • Snape kills Dumbledore — Days before the Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released, information that Severus Snape kills Albus Dumbledore was leaked onto the Internet, leading to many spoilers, including Usenet posts and videos, being revealed to unsuspecting fans.
  • Time Cube — Explores a theory about the cubic nature of time; some may find the writing to be somewhat unintelligible or similar to pseudoscience.

[edit] Websites

[edit] 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.
  • Notpron — An online riddle which requires the player to be very resourceful.
  • 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.

[edit] 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). [19] 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.

[edit] Political sites

[edit] Blogs

  • Blogebrity — A website purporting to be a tribute to bloggers was put up as a mockery of the blog phenomenon.
  • 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.

[edit] Audio

[edit] Text-based

  • A winner is you — Originating from the Pro Wrestling game for NES, this phrase is an example of Engrish.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Leet speak & AOL speak — These may also be considered forms of memetic Internet phenomenon.
  • 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.
  • 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.

[edit] Advertising

  • Anabukinchan — A Japanese construction company's advertisement about "growing".
  • The Spongmonkeys — Bizarre creatures that sing, later used to advertise for Quiznos.
  • HeadOn — An American advertisement for the headache relief product HeadOn, originally shown on television but gained worldwide fame on the internet, and spawned many parodies.
  • 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.

[edit] In Fiction

[edit] See also

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

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dew Army – YTMND Wiki
  2. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061115/lf_afp/chinainternetfatty_061115173625
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[edit] External links

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