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An Internet phenomenon 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. Some are short-lived fads, while others remain popular for many years. Sometimes Internet phenomena can gain popularity by being featured on certain popular community-based websites such as Slashdot, 4chan, b3ta, Fark, Something Awful, or YTMND. 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.

People

• The Bus Uncle — As the name suggests, the incident took place on a bus. A Hong Kong middle-aged man 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.
• Cory Kennedy — A video of this 16-year-old girl rocking out to a song on her iPod while eating Indian food becomes one of the hottest things on the Internet.
• Star Wars kid — A Québécois teenager becomes known as the "Star Wars Kid" after a video of him swinging a golf ball retriever leaks onto the Internet. Many parodies of the video are made and distributed through video sharing sites like YouTube and Kazaa.
• Brian Peppers — Popularized by YTMND. 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 .

Bands

• 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. As part of the ad campaign, a mockumentary movie called "The Crushing Blow" is being made. By the end of November 2005 a clip from The Crushing Blow was viewed more than 500,000 times in a couple of days from the web site iFilm.
• Lemon Demon — A one-man band by Neil Cicierega. Cicierega's Hyakugojyuuichi was a web animation hit. Neil is aso the creator of the popular two series hit The Potter Puppet Pals.
• JerryC — Taiwanese guitarist and composer who wrote "Canon Rock", a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D.

Videos

• 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.
• Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out — Uploaded to YouTube on January 18, 2007, this video of a Canadian bride so upset with her hairstyle on her wedding day that she starts cutting it off drew 2 million views and received wide news coverage as viewers, and even film director Norman Jewison, pondered whether it was real or staged. It has since emerged that the "bride" was a young Toronto actress, Jodi Behan, made to promote Unilever's Sunsilk Canada line of hair care products and has since been removed from the site.
• Brokeback Mountain parodies — The movie Brokeback Mountain inspired many online parody trailers.
• Jeong-Hyun Lim (aka funtwo) — Guitar player from South Korea. The New York Times wrote an article about him.
• Little Superstar — A video from the 1986 Tamil film Adhisaya Piravi, featuring a midget dancing scene.
• Numa Numa — Gary Brolsma sings along to a Romanian-language dance song ("Dragostea din tei" by O-Zone).

Animation-based

• 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, featuring a lot in the show Ally McBeal.
• Hampster Dance — A page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters dancing, linking to other animated pages. It spawned a fictional band complete with its own CD album release.
• Neurotically Yours — A series featuring a Goth and her pet squirrel.

Images

• Little Fatty — A Chinese high school student named Qian Zhijun had his face superimposed onto various other images and created an Internet fad.
• 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, or in reality how little, institutions of higher learning have over what goes on in their residences.

Films

• Snakes on a Plane — This 2006 film starring Samuel L. Jackson became an Internet phenomenon due to the film's 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. The Internet buzz surrounding the movie has been featured several times by Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC news show Countdown.

Web sites

Personal sites

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

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 kids a "Western Barbecue Burger".

References

1. "Grumpy man on a bus becomes star of the internet". Guardian Unlimited. 2006-05-26. Retrieved 2007-02-21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. Hubler, Shawn (February 25, 2007). "The secret life of Cory Kennedy". West magazine. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
3. "Star Wars Kid is top viral video". BBC News. 2006-11-27. Retrieved 2007-02-21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
4. eSORN Offender Details: Brian Peppers
5. Urban Legends Reference Pages: Brian Peppers
6. Salon.com, All hail Neil Cicierega, April 26, 2001
7. "Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa". The New York Times. 2005-02-26. Retrieved 2007-02-21. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. ^ Wood, Molly (2005-07-15). "Top 10 Web Fads". CNET. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
9. CNET News, Ill Will Press and Foamy - - is it Right for Your Children?, March 16, 2006
10. "The new cultural revolution: How Little Fatty made it big". Retrieved 2007-02-21.
11. "A fat chance of saving face". Retrieved 2007-02-21.
12. "Western Stripteaser On Internet". A-Channel News. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
13. "'Snakes on a Plane': Phenomenon on the Net". NPR. 2006-03-26. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
14. Maddox. "The Best Page In The Universe". Retrieved 2007-02-22.
15. Traister, Rebecca. "It's a man's world". Retrieved 2007-02-22.
16. DeGregory, Lane (August 7, 2001). "On the Never-Never Net". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2007-02-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• Memes on the Internet Article regarding the spread of Internet memes.

See also

• Beme, a Meme propagated by the Internet, social media or blogs.

• Internet memes