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An Internet phenomenon (sometimes called an Internet meme) occurs when something relatively 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 websites, which include, but are not limited to 4chan, Albino Blacksheep, B3ta, Digg, eBaumsworld.com, Fark, GameFAQs, Offtopic.com, Newgrounds, Slashdot, Something Awful, General ayhem (Genay), YouTube, 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 it.

People

Celebrities

• Chuck Norris — More famously known as Walker, Texas Ranger. At least one website 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.

• Howard Dean — 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and current chairman of the DNC. His famous 2004 "scream" has been widely parodied, sometimes referred to as the "Dean Scream." The USA Today described the scream as having gained "cult-like status" on the web .

• Tila Tequila — 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.

• Ted Stevens — The current senator of Alaska. In a speech on the topic of Internet neutrality, he uttered the now-famous words: "The internet is 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. A musical remix is also circulating the Internet.

• David Hasselhoff - The former Knightrider / Baywatch actor has been the "victim" of multiple me-mes. This include 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 1, a website using bible code claiming that he is the devil, and his greatest hits album being reviewed on Amazon where respondents sarcastically call it a work of genius and declare Hot Shot City to be "particularly good". On the back of this he has even appeared in t.v adverts in the United Kingdom where he declares himself "King of the Internet!" and references me-mes in his music videos.

Non-celebrities

• Aaron Proctor - A write-in candidate for California governor in 2006 who ran his campaign entirely from his MySpace account.
• 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 .
• 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.
• 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. Supposedly documented on various message boards in 2000 and 2001, many people claim his words are, in fact, accurate predictions.
• 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 Augustina — An Argentinian College student who made webcam videos of herself prominently featuring her butt. These videos originated on Supertangas.com and were later containing 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.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, was created within a month.
• Lucy Gao — A Citibank intern whose 21st birthday party made front-page news around the world in 2006 .
• Masaki Sumitani — Japanese wrestler and comedian better known as Razor Ramon HG (Hard Gay), whose video clips from the show Bakushō Mondai no Bakuten! became notorious on the Internet.
• 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 also appeared in a secret place in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.
• 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.
• 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.
• lonelygirl15 - A Youtube project featuring a fake girl orchestrated by wannabe Hollywood artists

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.
• El Mudo — A Mexican cult band that occasionally makes songs that appear to be gibberish, the most famous one being "Maccaron Chaccaron", which was intially a YTMND, and later spread thorugh the internet.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Lemon Demon — A one-man band by Neil Cicierega, music videos were animated, particularly by Andrew Kepple and Shawn Vulliez.
• Lodger — Finnish indie rock band famous for its Flash music videos, most notably "I Love Death", "God has Rejected the Western World" and "Doorsteps".
• Loituma — Finnish folk group that became famous on the web after their "Ievan Polkka" was used in a short flash loop.
• 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.

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.
• 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.
• 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: Revenge of the Sith. The final scene has Darth Vader bellowing a long, anguished "No!" that is translated literally as "Do not want".
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. Many spoofs followed, the most famous of which features a female in a male Naval aerobics class.
• Catherine Bosley — A video of the anchorwoman appearing nude during a wet T-shirt contest.
• Chin2 — Two Korean youths dancing in front of a mirror.
• Croyt - A videogamer whose angry rants during sessions of Halo 2 play was turned into two Internet videos, Croyt's Anger and Croyt's Rage, which have gone on to receive cult popularity.
• Cruisin USA -- A four-minute time lapsed video of a person's road trip from Portland, Maine to Los Angeles, California.
• The Dildo Song — One of the earliest and most popular viral videos in Internet history.
• 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.
• Evolution of Dance — A comedian performs a medley of various popular dances throughout the history of pop music, from Elvis Presley to 'N Sync.
• Exploding whale — An old news story, thought to be an urban legend, gets a second following with the postage of a news footage video.
• funtwo — Guitar whiz (Jeong-Hyun Lim) from South Korea. The New York Times wrote an article about him.
• Geriatric Gripes and Grumbles — A British 79 year old, known as geriatric1927 or Peter, explains how he became addicted to the popular website Youtube. It became so popular that many started producing their own versions, some of them Old Age Pensioners, others are teenagers.
• Hot Hot Hot — Appalachian State University promotional video that had an unintended response.
• 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.
• John Daker — A singer who makes up for his lack of ability and his unusual voice with bizarre facial expressions.
• Just Lose It - Remake Just Lose It - Remake
• 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.
• Keys Me — A video that features Alyssa Alano's performance of the Sixpence None the Richer song "Kiss Me" in an episode of the GMA-7 late night show Master Showman Presents. The video features subtitles of scrolling text simulating a karaoke session, with the singer's score at the end.
• 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 — A Tokusatsu children's comedy show from Japan.
• 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.
• 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.
• Mariko Takahashi's Fitness Video For Being Appraised as an "Ex-fat Girl" — A "fitness video" which shows people inexplicably dressed as poodles.
• Milk and Cereal — two college guys lip-synch to "Milk and Cereal" with milk and cereal props in their dorm room.
• More Cowbell — The popular line from a famous April 8, 2000 Saturday Night Live comedy sketch about the recording of the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult featuring guest host Christopher Walken and series-regular Will Ferrell.
• Moskau — An excerpt from a German music video with happy lyrics and crazy dancing.
• N64 Kid — A short clip that originated as a home video of a boy and his sister opening a Christmas present that happens to be a Nintendo 64. This present produces a surprisingly exuberant reaction from the two. This video sparked many YTMND sites as well as the success of the acctual N64 in question being sold by the N64 Kid in question on Ebay.
• Numa Numa Dance — An overly enthusiastic kid (Gary Brolsma) sings along to a Romanian-language dance song ("Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone). It was featured in the February 25, 2005 issue of the New York Times.
• Pickle Surprise — A humourous video directed by Tom Rubnitz, mainly centered around an extroverted 'Pickle Goblin' and directions for making a "Pickle Surprise" sandwich. Since uploading to Youtube, it has become a 4chan meme .
• Pure Pwnage — A series of episodes about the lives of "pro gamers" Jeremy and FPS Doug, along with their friends. The series alludes to gaming language, like leet speak and makes fun of newbies.
• The Pokémon Theme Video - A video of two teenage boys lip-synching to the theme to Pokémon. It was featured on tv in print numerous times. It became a phenomenon after being submitted to YouTube in the winter of 2005.
• Prophet Yahweh — This video of the prophet supposedly summoning UFOs was widely circulated on the Internet in June of 2005.
• Real Life Simpsons Intro — A video created for the British BSkyB network that very accurately depicts The Simpsons intro with real actors.
• Ridge Racer! — A line from the E3 Press Conference video with Kaz Hirai yelling "Ridge Racer!" Many people have parodied it along with the Giant Enemy Crab.
• "Shoes" — A music video created and performed by Liam Kyle Sullivan, mostly as an alter-ego valley girl persona called "Kelly." The video was spotlighted by comedienne Margaret Cho and later received massive play on YouTube. The success of the song encouraged Sullivan to release an entire CD "sung" by "Kelly" in the summer of 2006.
• Smash My iPod — They raised money in donations to buy an iPod (and later an Xbox360) to destroy them. SmashMyXbox even got them onto MTV.
• Soup of the Day — The story of one man dating three women at the same time told completely in viral shorts over 19 episodes. It is the first movie that is told using viral video as a story telling device.
• The Spirit of Truth — A one man show by an unnamed man who would profess that he came "in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit" originally aired on Los Angeles public-access television in 1997. He gained wide spread attention across the Internet in 2006 for his energy and frequent swearing while preaching the name of God. Only two "episodes" are available.
• Star Wars fan films — Fan films range from simple backyard antics to professional looking films such as Duality, some of them utilizing horrible special effects as a part of the joke.
• Stealth Disco — Videos of people rocking out behind unknowing victims.
• Tunak Tunak Tun — An Indian music video by Daler Mehndi.
• The Bus Uncle — A video clip incident of a middle-aged man scolding a teenager for nearly seven minutes on a bus in Hong Kong. The incident spread across Asia, and two clips of dialogue became extremely well-known, being used in multimedia and advertising.
• 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 of Winter) by electrical engineer Carson Williams, this video was recently adopted by Heineken for a TV advertisement.
• Yatta — A music video featuring the Japanese group Happa-tai. The members of the group wear nothing but a green fig leaf over the front of each of their briefs, and the video is filled with positive, care-free quotations, such as "Easy come, easy go go" and "Don't Worry, Be Happy!" The song was also made into an animutation "Irrational Exuberance".

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.
• 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.
• Charlie Brown Kwanzaa — A parody of A Charlie Brown Christmas that has the Peanuts gang speaking in Ebonics.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Demented Cartoon Movie — A very long, minimalist Flash animation full of silliness (about 30 minutes long).
• 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.
• 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
• 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.
• 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."
• 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 repeat "Miko Miko Nurse" many times.
• Neurotically Yours — A series featuring a Goth and her pet squirrel.
• Postman Pat's Banging Day Out — An overdubbed version of Postman Pat replete with foul language.
• Pomme and Kelly - Two Dutch girls covering famous songs and recording them for GoogleIdol (see http://pommekelly.wordpress.com/).
• 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.
• 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 — 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.
• Retarded Animal Babies — An obscene Flash series about the vice-filled lives of various pet animals.
• 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".
• Soy Sauce Warrior Kikkoman — Flash movie of a superhero that defends soy-sauce as the best sauce to put on everything. It contains the popular line "Destroy all foreign sauces." It also features a good deal of Engrish.
• 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.
• Stickdeath.com — A website featuring several animations done in Macromedia Flash of stick figures dying in various, often gruesome ways. This site featured updates and was more of a running series than a shortlived fad.
• 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.
• What Is Love — A scene taken from a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring characters from the movie A Night at the Roxbury headbanging in a car.
• Xiao Xiao — An internet flash cartoon series by Chinese animator Zhu Zhiqiang, featuring stick-figure men performing choreographed fight scenes.

Images

• Batgirl — A meme that began in January 2006 that quickly spread through sites such as LiveJournal and Deviant Art. Participants drew thousands of variations of the DC Comics character Batgirl in a variety of costumes/situations.
• 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.
• Bunchies- A GIF of a strange galloping creature.
• 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
• 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.
• 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?".
• Lootie — This man was photographed looting beer while walking through waist deep waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
• Mr. T Ate My Balls — a Yahoo! site with images of Mr. T, captioned with various absurd and questionable statements. Repeatedly done with other subjects, both fictional and non-fictional, it spawned an entire Yahoo! category under "Tasteless Humor → Ate My Balls".
• Mustard Man — Picture of a supposed fast food employee spilling mustard all over himself.
• 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" .
• Nevada-tan — An imageboard meme featuring CG artwork of a Japanese schoolgirl who murdered her classmate.
• O RLY? — Originally captioned to a snowy owl with an incredulous expression, the phrase "O RLY?" has been added many images.
• 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").
• OS-tan — Operating systems personified as cute mascots by various Japanese artists.
• 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.

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

Things

• eBaum's World Controversy -After an uncredited YTMND appeared in the infamous site eBaum's World, users from major forums (namely, YTMND, SomethingAwful, IGN, TribalWar, AlbinoBlackSheep, and many others) attacked the site en masse with DDoS and spam attacks, 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.
• Mercedes SLR Replica — A scratch-bulit replica of a Mercedes SLR (concept project, not the one produced), which was constructed in Poland. It was posted in 2003 on the VWvortex forum and gained great popularity among car fans, as the thread was viewed more than one million times through the years. The extremely high popularity was achieved because of many publications (with link to the thread) in car magazines and TV programmes around the world, as well as being posted on Slashdot.
• 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.
• 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.
• P-P-P-Powerbook — A disgruntled eBay user scams a scam artist into thinking he has bought a PowerBook and finds out it is fake.
• 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.

Websites

Advertising

• Anabukinchan — A Japanese construction company's advertisement about "growing".
• The Spongmonkeys — Bizarre creatures that sing, later used to advertise for Quiznos.
• The Subservient Chicken — A Burger King promotional website that features a "live" chicken that can obey thousands of typed commands.

See also

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

External links

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

• Culture-related lists
• Internet memes