Wikipedia

List of Internet phenomena

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An Internet phenomenon occurs when something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, but usually for a short duration of time. It is nearly impossible to accurately measure the depth of a phenomenon's popularity, and different groups of the Internet may participate more than others. The Internet's lack of physical boundaries leads to a much faster and wider spread of information and ideas, especially when the subject is based around humor or curiosity. Some people point to this sort of Internet phenomena as good examples of memes, or neta. In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon—"the footage"—plays an important role.

Internet phenomena include:

Videos

Animation-based

Anime

Images

  • Bert is Evil - Photoshopped pictures placing the Muppet Bert with questionable people and situations
  • Bill Gates Photos From 1985 - A Monkey Methods Blog entry hosts photos of Bill Gates. Though the blog says otherwise, these photos are publicity shots from 1985. Hundreds of sites now host these photos, such as Neowin, Monkey Methods, and eBaum's World.
  • Boilerplate
  • Bonsai Kitten
  • Brian Peppers, an unusually ugly sex offender.
  • Ceciliantas - an EverQuest II player whose "cybering" was revealed by screenshots from an invisible player in the same room
  • Clock Spider - who "ate" a clock and fought Limecat
  • Dog poop girl - a woman's dog relieves itself on a subway car floor and she refuses to clean it up; the Internet hears about it and punishes her
  • Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten
  • Everywhere girl Reported often in the Inquirer about the stock photo usage gone wild. A specific university girl image appears in various institution and company adverts.
  • Fatmouse - a large mouse with large ambitions
  • HA! HA! guy - a customizable image of a laughing Quaker minister
  • Icy Hot Stuntaz
  • Keep Sharpies Away From Mexicans [15] - A photo of two girls, of Mexican descent, who have drawn exceptionally dark and asymmetrical eyebrows on their faces.
  • Limecat - a cat with a lime on its head (a.k.a. Meloncat)
  • Moshzilla - a girl moshing at a show
  • Mustard Man - picture of a supposed fast food employee dropping the mustard
  • 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. Spawned an entire Yahoo! category under Tasteless Humor → Ate My Balls.
  • 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
  • O RLY? - Various pictures (usually an owl) with "O RLY?" printed on the picture. Often used in conjunction with another picture and the letters "YA RLY"
  • Phooning - Introduced by John Darrow in 1999. A phoon is standing in a running position in an otherwise normal picture.
  • Tourist guy (http://www.touristofdeath.com) - the same person Photoshopped into photos of different events, mostly disasters
  • Tubcat - a very fat cat

Websites

Shock sites

Personal sites

Fan sites

Blogs

  • The Best Page in the Universe – 100,000,000+ visits to a website operated by a pirate. The individual articles from this site often spread memetically.
  • Currently Stationary - The original Engrish cult classic
  • The Dullest Blog in the World - A very dull blog about the mundane happenings of a very dull person. [29]
  • Rachelle Waterman - The blog of a teenage girl who wrote "just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered," and was arrested shortly thereafter. Over 5,000 comments in her LiveJournal blog, before it was deleted. Mirrors still exist.
  • Redneck Neighbor - one man's experiences with a bad neighbor [30]
  • Tucker Max - Millions of hits as well as a cult following to a "man's man," whose skill with alcohol, women, and witty insults is "supposedly" unmatched.
  • PostSecret - An ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on homemade postcards. [31]

Audio

Text-based

Advertising

See also

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