List of Internet phenomena

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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

• Lowermybills.com - Banner ads from this mortgage company feature endless loops of cowboys, sexy women, and office workers dancing.
• Orbitz.com - Miniature golf game that became one of the few popular pop-up ads.

Animation

• Badger Badger Badger — A hypnotic loop of animal calisthenics set to the chant of "badger, badger, badger".

• 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, featured many times in the TV show Ally McBeal.

• 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.

• Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin) Hypnotic loop of Orihime Inoue 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 characters from fact and fiction, it is an animation set to one of Lemon Demon's songs.

Audio

• I Want My Western Barbecue Burger! — An irate woman places a 9-1-1 call demanding the police enter a Laguna Niguel, California-area Burger King and force the employees to make her and her children a "Western Barbecue Burger", which the Burger King employees didn't make it correctly.

Musicians

• Daler Mehndi - Indian Punjabi singer who became popular on CollegeHumor and similar internet sites when his video for Tunak Tunak Tun appeared there in 2000.

• Gröûp X — Faux Arabian rock band, who first became popular when their song, 'Mario Twins' was made into a Flash video. Many other songs followed suit, but none of the videos were actually made by Group X.

• Hannes Coetzee - A slide guitarist who plays using a teaspoon held in his mouth.

• Hurra Torpedo — A Norwegian band that became part of a viral ad campaign by going on a coast to coast tour in the US that was paid for by Ford in order to promote the Ford Fusion car.

• JerryC — Taiwanese guitarist and composer who wrote "Canon Rock", a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D.

• Jeong-Hyun Lim (a.k.a. funtwo) — Guitar player from South Korea, who first played JerryC's Canon Rock and posted it on YouTube.

• Lemon Demon — A one-man band by Neil Cicierega, most famous for Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Cicierega's "Hyakugojyuuichi" animutation was a web animation hit. Neil is also the creator of the popular two series hit Potter Puppet Pals.

• OK Go — An American rock band whose video for the single "Here It Goes Again" featured the band members performing an elaborate dance on treadmills. The video was taken in one shot. It has been viewed over 27 million times on YouTube. This internet success led them to be featured on The Colbert Report and the video won the 2006 Grammy for Best Short-Form Music Video.

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. Realistic contact information for a lawyer appears in the message.

• Cookie recipe — an e-mail chain-letter from the mid to late 1990s in which a person tells a story about being ripped off for over $200 for a cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus. The e-mail claims the person is attempting to exact revenge by passing the recipe out for free.

• 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 hard drive into an nth degree infinite 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.

• Snakes on a Plane — attracted attention, due to the film's title and premise, a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released. Producers of the film responded to the Internet buzz by adding several scenes anticipated by the fans.

• 300 — inspired digitally-altered photos which superimposed the face of Leonidas over the face of another person, usually accompanied by quote of "This is Sparta!" or "Tonight, we dine in hell!".

Games

• All Your Base Are Belong To Us — Engrish from the opening cut scene of the 1989 video 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.

Images

• 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.

• Tubgirl — A shock image of a young woman on her back, in a bathtub. Her rump is positioned so that her liquid defecate is shooting into the air and landing on her face.

• Little Fatty — Starting in 2003, the face of a student from Shanghai was superimposed onto various other images.

• lolcats — image macros featuring cats with humorous captions, typically in Internet slang or leet. Originated on 4chan.

• 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, using Photoshop.

• O RLY? — An owl originally posted on Something Awful and then on 4chan.

• The Saugeen Stripper — An 18-year-old female resident of Saugeen-Maitland Hall 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. The incident briefly attracted widespread media attention and was the subject of articles by a number of Canadian and American media outlets. The controversy sparked a discussion about just how much control that institutions of higher learning have over what goes on in their residences.

People

• Angry German Kid — A German boy gets angry with his videogame.

• 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 small following over the last year for his YouTube v-log postings, Chris' gained 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.>

• Christopher Walken for President A faux campaign to elect the actor as US President. This may have been related to Walken's portrayal of a Secretary of Treasury with presidential ambitions in Wedding Crashers and his role in Man of the Year as the man who pushes Robin Williams' comedian character to run for President.

• Chuck Norris Facts — Archetypal joke, parodying the action-film actor as the ultimate hard man with incredible attributes. Later spawned Vin Diesel and Mr. T facts.

• lonelygirl15 — A popular video blogger whose work turned out to be a professional hoax.>

• 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).

• Randy Constan — He posted pictures of himself on his website wearing self-made Peter Pan costumes.

• Ron Paul - US Presidential candidate whose campaign made use of the internet to attract donations and support. His YouTube channel is heavily subscribed and the Ron Paul Girl videos are a significant feature in this.

• 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.

Videos

• Ask a Ninja — Popular podcast featuring a ninja who answers viewers questions.>

• Boom goes the dynamite — Brian Collins, a nervous and extremely awkward sports anchor attempts to call highlights for his college's news show, fumbling through most of the segment until finally uttering this now-famous catch phrase.>

• Chocolate Rain — Original composition from singer/songwriter Tay Zonday, noted for his unusually deep voice.>

• Coke and Mentos — Geysers of carbonated drink mixed with Mentos.>

• "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" — phrase made famous from the video of the University of Florida Taser incident involving student Andrew Meyer at a campus talk by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

• "Dramatic Hamster" (also "Dramatic Chipmunk", or "Drama Hog") — A brief GIF turned into a video from the website 4chan.org of a standing prairie dog turning its head suddenly toward the camera, with a quick zoom-in on its face. The clip was excerpted from an 2001 appearance by J-pop group MiniMoni on the Japanese TV show Hello! Morning.> Various spoofs have been made of the prairie dog in different situations.

• Evolution of Dance — A six minute video showing Judson Laipply performing various popular dances to music ranging from the early 1950s to present day. The video currently has over 70 million views on Youtube, ranking it as the most viewed video of all time on Youtube.

• Impossible Is Nothing — An ambitious video resume by Yale student Aleksey Vayner.

• The Juggernaut Bitch!! - A video about the Juggernaut using various X-Men episodes. The sound for each episode is dubbed with Ebonics and vernacular slang.

• Kersal Massive — A rap group made up of three pre-teen children whose demo was released as a video and widely remixed and parodied.

• The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch, a dying professors's "Last Lecture", an upbeat, humourous presentation on the subject of Childhood Dreams.

• Numa Numa — Gary Brolsma sings along to the Romanian language dance song "Dragostea din tei" by O-Zone.>

• Skateboarding dog — Tyson the bulldog is a star on Youtube and now Oprah.

• Thriller performed by prison inmates in the Philippines — Features a recreation of Michael Jackson's hit music video, performed by prison inmates.

• 2 Girls 1 Cup - Two girls participating in coprophilia utilising a shared cup. This has spawned many reaction videos and some consider these reactions to be the phenomenon.

Web sites

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 mock religion created to lampoon creationism.

• Google — Popular search engine which now hosts other innovative content such as Google Trends.

• Jib jab — Hosts political flash animations including their hit version of This Land Is Your Land as sung by Bush and Kerry.

• MySpace — One of the most popular worldwide social networking websites.

• Real Ultimate Power — Upon which a fictional young boy obsesses about ninjas.

• SomethingAwful — Forum responsible for many popular images, documented events, pranks and oft-repeated catchphrases.

• Uncyclopedia - A parody of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

• Wikipedia — An online encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone.

• 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.

See also

• Blog
• Forum
• List of YouTube celebrities
• Meme
• Notable Usenet personalities
• Phishing
• Spam
• Urban Legends
• Virus hoaxes
• Web 2.0

External links

• Memes on the Internet Article regarding the spread of Internet memes.
• ultimatememedatabase Website about internet memes.
• Snopes page on Urban legends