List of Internet phenomena

This is a list of phenomena specific to the Internet, such as popular themes and catchphrases, viral videos, amateur celebrities and more. Such fads and sensations grow rapidly on the Internet because its instant communication facilitates word of mouth. The search and rating features of sites like YouTube and Google then amplify this interest.

Advertising

* Flea Market Montgomery — Rap ads by Sammy Stephens for this Montgomery, Alabama, shopping center proclaiming "It's just like a mini-mall" gained fame from appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and through the internet via YouTube, BoingBoing, and similar sites.
* Lowermybills.com — Banner ads from this mortgage company feature endless loops of cowboys, women, aliens, and office workers dancing.
* Three Wolf Moon — A t-shirt with many ironic reviews on Amazon.

Animals

* Badger Badger Badger — A hypnotic loop of animal calisthenics set to the chant of "badger, badger, badger".
* Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures - A popular meme in the People's Republic of China regarding a series of mythical creatures, with names which referred to various Chinese profanities. Seen as a form of protest against increased Internet censorship in China introduced in early 2009.
* David Motari — A Marine in Iraq who threw a puppy off a cliff. The video that was made quickly gained viral status.
* Dramatic Chipmunk — A prairie dog turning its head suddenly toward the camera, with a zoom-in on its face while a suspense music is playing. From 2007 to 2008 the clip was featured regularly on the CNN newsmagazine Anderson Cooper 360 to introduce its "Dramatic Animal Video" segment.
* Hampster Dance — A page filled with hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It spawned a fictional band complete with its own CD album release.
* Keyboard Cat —Footage of "Fatso", a cat (now deceased) owned by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, "playing" an upbeat rhythm on a electronic keyboard. The clip was created ca. 1987 with Schmidt using a puppet-like outfit to make it look as if Fatso was playing. The clip has gained popularity by appending it to the end of blooper and other viral videos as if to "play" that person offstage after the mistake or guffaw; the first such video is credited to Brad O'Farrell.
* LOLcat — image macros featuring cats with humorous captions, typically in Internet slang or leet. Originated on 4chan.
* Rose the goat — married a Sudanese man after being caught in flagrante.
* Tyson — a skateboarding bulldog.

Animation

* "Caramelldansen" — A spoof from the Japanese visual novel opening Popotan that shows the two main characters doing a hip swing dance with their hands over their heads imitating rabbit ears, while the background song plays the sped up version of the song "Caramelldansen" sung by the Swedish music group Caramell. Also known as Caramelldansen Speedycake Remix or "Uma uma dance" (ウマウマダンス) in Japan, the song was parodied by artists and fans who then copy the animation and include characters from other anime performing the dance.
* Dancing baby — A 3D-rendered dancing baby first appeared in 1997 by the creators of 3D Studio MAX, and became something of a late-'90s cultural icon, featured many times in the TV show Ally McBeal.
* Joe Cartoon — Alias of online cartoonist Joe Shields, who maintains joecartoon.com. Best known for his interactive Flash animations Frog in a Blender and Gerbil in a Microwave, released in 1999.Two of the first Flash cartoons to receive fame on the internet.
* Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin) — Loop of Orihime Inoue from Bleach twirling a leek set to the music of Loituma.
* Peanut Butter Jelly Time — featured the Dancing Banana with the song by the Buckwheat Boyz.
* Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny — a battle royale between many notable real and fictitious characters.
* Happy Tree Friends — A series of flash cartoons featuring cute cartoon animals experiencing violent and gruesome accidents.
* Crime Time — A series of flash cartoons featuring a petty thief that perpetrates crimes from the sublime to the ridiculous.

E-mail

* Bill Gates Beta — an e-mail chain-letter that appeared in 1997 and was still circulating as recently as 2007. The message claims that AOL and Microsoft are conducting a beta test and for each person you forward the e-mail to, you will receive a payment from Gates of more than $200. Pseudo-realistic contact information for a lawyer appears in the message.
* Goodtimes virus — an infamous, fraudulent virus warning that first appeared in 1994. The e-mail claimed that an e-mail virus with the subject line "Good Times" was spreading, which would "send your CPU into an nth-complexity infinite binary loop", among other dire predictions.

Films

* The Blair Witch Project — The first film to use the Internet for astroturfing. Its makers spread rumors that the material they shot was authentic and that the three protagonists really disappeared in Burkittsville. Many websites began to feature "stolen" clips of the film, later discovered to be supplied by Artisan and the filmmakers, and planted reviews of the film, which disguised their origin with intentional spelling mistakes and poor design. Other filmmakers accused the producers of creating a fake fan buzz to generate a real one, stating "That was an organized effort. What happened is that they tricked the press."
* Brokeback Mountain — inspired many online parody trailers.
* Cloverfield — Paramount Pictures used a viral marketing campaign to promote this monster movie.
* Downfall — Clips from the 2004 film are subtitled in English with references to Hitler getting angry about Australian Rules Football, online gaming, the Super Bowl, the downfall of Morris Iemma and other events — this meme is current in late 2008
* Party Girl — First feature film shown in its entirety on the Internet (June 3, 1995).
* Snakes on a Plane — attracted attention a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released, due to the film's working title and seemingly absurd premise. Producers of the film responded to the Internet buzz by adding several scenes and dialogue imagined by the fans.

Games

* "All your base are belong to us" — Engrish from the opening cut scene of the European Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version of the 1989 arcade game Zero Wing, which has become a catchphrase, inspiring videos and other derivative works.
* Leeroy Jenkins — A World Of Warcraft player charges into a high-level dungeon with a distinctive cry of "Leeeeeeeerooooy... Jeeenkins!", ruining the meticulous attack plans of his group and getting them all killed.
* Line Rider — A Flash game where the player draws lines that act as ramps and hills for a small rider on a sled.
* I Love Bees — An alternate reality game that was spread virally after a 1 second mention inside a Halo 2 advertisement. Purported to be a website about Honey Bees that was infected and damaged by a strange Artificial Intelligence, done in a disjointed, chaotic style resembling a crashing computer. At its height, over 500,000 people were checking the website every time it updated.
* "So i herd u liek mudkipz" — A phrase that has become an Internet meme following its initial appearance on the imageboard 4chan. The meme has resulted in a large number of Mudkip tribute videos on YouTube.

Images

* Ate my balls - An early example of an Internet meme. Created to depict a particular celebrity or fictional character eating testicles.
* Bert is Evil — A satirical website stated that Bert of Sesame Street is the root of many evils. A juxtaposition of Bert and Osama Bin Laden subsequently appeared in a real poster in a Bangladesh protest.
* Goatse.cx — A shock image of a distended anus.
* Little Fatty — Starting in 2003, the face of a student from Shanghai was superimposed onto various other images.
* Lootie — An Associated Press photo taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, under the caption "A looter carries a bucket of beer out of a grocery store in New Orleans." The original photo shows a black man in waist-deep waters carrying a tub full of bottles of beer. This image and the man's face were incorporated into various parody and gag images.
* O RLY? — Originally a text phrase on Something Awful, and then an image macro done for 4chan. Based around a picture of a "surprised" owl.
* The Saugeen Stripper — A female student at the University of Western Ontario performed a striptease at a birthday party and dozens of digital images of the party ended up on the Internet.

Music

* "Canon Rock" — A rock arrangement of the Canon in D by JerryC which became famous when covered by funtwo and others.
* Hannes Coetzee — A slide guitarist who plays using a teaspoon held in his mouth.
* "Here It Goes Again" — Grammy-winning music video in which OK Go dance on treadmills.
* Hurra Torpedo — A Norwegian band whose coast-to-coast tour was a viral campaign to promote the Ford Fusion car.
* Lemon Demon — Famous for Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
* Literal music video —Covers of music videos where the original lyrics have been replaced with ones that literally describe the events that occur in the video, typically disconnected with the original lyrics of the song.
* Lucian Piane, aka RevoLucian — Created several popular celebrity techno remixes, including a spoof on actor Christian Bale titled "Bale Out"
* "Tunak Tunak Tun" — bhangra song by Daler Mehndi.
* "Never Gonna Give You Up" — See Rickrolling
* "Twelve Days of Christmas" — by a cappella group Straight No Chaser went viral in 2007 and led to the group being signed by Atlantic Records.

People

* Amber Lee Ettinger — also known as Obama Girl, is famous for her YouTube videos about Barack Obama called "I Got a Crush... on Obama".
* Angry German Kid — A German boy becomes furious while attempting to play Unreal Tournament. Also referred to as "Keyboard Crusher".
* Anonymous — (used as a mass noun) is a label and Internet meme adopted within Internet culture to represent the actions of many online community users acting anonymously usually toward a loosely agreed-upon goal. It is generally considered as a blanket term – not tied to any monolithic group – for the vox populi or members of the Internet culture.
* Boxxy — Videos by a hyperactive teenage girl caused much dissension which led to the a denial of service attack and breakdown of 4chan.
* Bus Uncle — A middle-aged man reacted furiously after the young man seated behind him on a Hong Kong bus tapped his shoulder and asked him to lower his voice while speaking on the phone. His outburst spawned catchphrases in Chinese communities around the world.
* Chris Crocker — Had a growing following for his YouTube and MySpace vlog postings until 2007 when Crocker gained international mainstream media attention after a video he made in support of Britney Spears became viral email and landed him on CNN, Howard Stern, ABC and numerous other shows.
* Chuck Norris Facts — archetypal joke, in which the five-times-world champion, eighth degree black belt is portrayed as the ultimate hard man with incredible attributes.
* Cory Kennedy — an intern, model and girlfriend of the fashion photographer Mark Hunter.
* Dancing Matt — Matt Harding dances around the world.
* Dog poop girl — a Korean refused to clean up after her dog and so was exposed and shamed on the Internet. Similar to Bus Uncle (see above)
* Germano Mosconi — an Italian journalist on some off-air bloopers, irately shouting swearwords and blasphemy due to problems during the recording of some news programs.
* Honglaowai — An American singing Chinese Communist songs.
* lonelygirl15 — A popular video blogger whose work turned out to be a professional hoax.
* Magibon — A young woman that attained celebrity status on YouTube by doing nothing but stare at the camera.
* Mahir Çağrı (i kiss you) — A Turk with an amusingly effusive website.
* Moymoy Palaboy — A Filipino comic and singing duo known for their uploaded lip synch videos in YouTube. In 2008, their videos and their YouTube profile garnered over 5 million hits and they have more than 7,400 subscribers from all over the world. Most Mexicans, Americans and Filipinos gave positive remarks for the duo's uploaded videos.
* Randy Constan — Dresses in Peter Pan costumes.
* Ron Paul — US Presidential candidate whose campaign made use of the Internet to attract donations and support. His YouTube channel, Facebook page, and so on, were the most heavily subscribed of any candidate.
* Shakeel Bhat — A Muslim activist whose face became a personification of angry Islamism in western media.
* Star Wars kid — A Québécois teenager became known as the "Star Wars Kid" after a video appeared on the Internet showing him swinging a golf ball retriever as if it were a lightsaber. Many parodies of the video were also made and circulated.
* Tourist Guy — A photograph of a tourist that appeared in many edited pictures after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
* Tila Tequila — A Vietnamese American female who became the most friended person on MySpace with over 3.5 million friends. Although she initially started her career as a model, she also grew to become a musician, actress, television personality, clothing designer, and author.
* Zidane headbutt — In the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals, French player Zinedine Zidane rammed his head into Italian Marco Materazzi's chest after a provocation. The image inspired various parodies, including images, videos and online games.
* Zhang Ya — A girl from Liaoning Province, People's Republic of China who was shamed and abused on the internet, as a response from angry Chinese netizens due to a video blog she posted of herself complaining about the publicity of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

Trading

* Freecycling The exchange of unwanted goods via the internet.
Videos
* Ask a Ninja — Popular podcast featuring a ninja who answers viewers' questions.
* Boom goes the dynamite — Brian Collins, a nervous sports anchor, fumbles highlights, concluding with this infamous catch phrase. Popularly used in an episode of Family Guy among numerous other popular references, and made popular by Will Smith when he flubbed a line on stage during the 81st Annual Academy Awards telecast. As of March 2009, Collins was a reporter for KXXV in Waco, Texas.
* Charlie bit me! — A young boy is bitten by Charlie.
* "Chocolate Rain" — By Tay Zonday, noted for his unusually deep voice and how he moves away from the microphone when he breaths to avoid feedback.
* Diet Coke and Mentos — Geysers of carbonated drink mixed with Mentos.
* Don't Tase Me, Bro! — An incident at a campus talk by Senator John Kerry.[
* Impossible Is Nothing — An ambitious video resume by Yale student Aleksey Vayner.
* "Ken Lee" — Badly garbled song by Bulgarian Music Idol hopeful Valentina Hasan.
* The Last Lecture — Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch, dying of pancreatic cancer, delivers an upbeat lecture on Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.
* Little Superstar — A video of Thavakalai, a short Indian actor, break-dancing to MC Miker G & DJ Sven's remix of the Madonna song "Holiday", in a clip from a 1990 Tamil film Adhisaya Piravi, featuring actor Rajnikanth.
* Music Is My Hot Hot Sex — Used in advertising then reached the top of YouTube's most watched list, due perhaps to a hack.
* Numa Numa — Gary Brolsma lip-syncs the Romanian song "Dragostea din tei" by O-Zone.

* Rickroll — A bait and switch link to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".
* Prison Thriller — A recreation of Michael Jackson's hit by prisoners in the Philippines.
* Very erotic very violent — An internet catchphrase in the People's Republic of China, after a report by Xinwen Lianbo, the most viewed of China's state-sponsored news programs, where a young girl was reportedly to have come across content on the internet which was "Very erotic, very violent". This incident sparked wide forms of parody on the internet, and also questioned the credibility of the state broadcaster's newscasts.
* 2 Girls 1 Cup — Reaction videos to two girls engaging in coprophilia.

Websites

These websites play a significant part in the creation of Internet phenomena or are a phenomenon in their own right.

* 2channel — A Japanese Internet forum (the largest in the world). The site has significant influence on Japanese culture and popular opinion.
* 4chan — The English equivalent to Futaba Channel, responsible for creating many popular Internet memes.
* Facebook — A social networking website.
* Fark — A community website created by Drew Curtis allowing users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites.
* Flying Spaghetti Monster — A religion that lampoons creationism.
* Google — Popular search engine which now hosts other innovative content such as Google Trends.
* Homestar Runner — A popular website with various cartoon characters and cartoons that became popular by word of mouth.
* JibJab — Hosts political flash animations and is best known for the song "This Land Is Your Land" which parodied the 2004 US presidential election.
* MySpace — One of the most popular worldwide social networking websites.
* Newgrounds — A freeware flash animation webpage in which people and users can upload their own work.
* Real Ultimate Power — Upon which a fictional young boy obsesses about ninjas.
* Second Life — An Internet-based virtual world video game.
* SomethingAwful — Forum responsible for many popular images, documented events, pranks and oft-repeated catchphrases.
* Twitter — A popular social networking site that allows users to post mini-blogs known as tweets.
* Weebl's Stuff — The website of the creator of the Badger Badger Badger video and many other flash animations.
* Wikipedia — An open content encyclopedia maintained by the people/users.
* Yahoo! — Popular portal which now offers a variety of content and features.
* YouTube — A popular website where people can view videos submitted by users.
* YTMND — A website which allows users to create their own mini-sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/