Internet phenomenon - Definition and Overview

An Internet phenomenon is akin to a fad, in which 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. Most Internet phenomena can be often seen as good examples of memes, the self-propagating ideas.

In literature, William Gibsons Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of internet phenomenon -- "the footage" -- plays an important role.

Internet phenomena include:

• Absurdist Flash animations like "The Demented Cartoon Movie" [1] (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/demented.html) and "Madness"
• Animutations
• All your base are belong to us - a phrase from the English translation of the video game Zero Wing, adapted into a popular Flash animation.
• Badger Badger Badger
• Bananaphone
• Boilerplate
• Bonsai Kitten
• 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.
• Ceciliantas - an EverQuest II player whose "cybering" was revealed by screenshots from an invisible player in the same room.
• Chin2 (link (http://media.ebaumsworld.com/annoyingasians.mpg))
• Clock Spider
• Dancing baby - a 3D rendered dancing baby.
• Exploding whale
• The End of the World - a flash animation using Group X-style voices.
• Emotion Eric
• Goatse.cx - a shock site frequently linked from internet forums and IRC channels.
• Group X - makers of the songs Bang Bang Bang and SchfiftyFive, adapted into Flash.
• The Hamster Dance - a page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters, linking to other animated pages. It now has its own CD soundtrack.
• Hello My Future Girlfriend (link (http://www.pr0k.net/thechilde/))
• Homestar Runner
• Hopkin green frog
• JibJab (link (http://www.jibjab.com)) - a web site featuring many cartoons including those that satire the 2004 Presidential Election
• Kerpal
• Limecat
• Mahir Cagri - personal website of a Turkish man; has received mass adoration by fans, mainly for its overly enthusiastic text.
• 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.
• Neurocam - neurocam.com, art project / social experiment / life role play
• Nevada-tan - An imageboard meme featuring CG artwork of a Japanese school girl who murdered her classmate.
• Numanuma - fat kid singing along to a Romanian techno song.
• Oolong the Rabbit - a Japanese rabbit whose owner placed various objects on top of its head and then posted pictures.
• OS-tan (link (http://nijiura-os.hp.infoseek.co.jp/)) - Operating Systems personified as cutesy mascots by various Japanese artists
• Rachelle Waterman - "Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered." Over 5,000 comments in her LiveJournal blog
• Real Ultimate Power
• Red vs Blue - a popular machinima using the Microsoft Halo video game engine. A popular, fan-created outgrowth is Sponsors vs Freeloaders (http://www.redvsblue.net)
• Salad Fingers
• The Spongmonkeys
• The Star Wars kid - a video, digitally edited numerous times, of a Quebecer teenager from Trois-Rivieres named Ghyslain Raza, student at the Séminaire Saint-Joseph.
• Tai Mai Shu
• The individual articles from The Best Page in the Universe often spread memetically.
• Thundercats outtakes - outtakes of the animated 1980s television series Thundercats.
• Tourist guy (link (http://www.touristofdeath.com)) - the same person photoshopped into photos of different events, mostly disasters.
• Tubcat - a very fat cat
• Tubgirl - a shock site frequently linked from internet forums and IRC channels.
• The eBay auction of a 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich with a supposed semblance to the Virgin Mary
• Kurt Vonnegut's supposed 1997 "wear sunscreen" commencement address at MIT, widely circulated on the Internet. In fact, the commencement speaker at MIT in 1997 was Kofi Annan and the putative Vonnegut speech was an article published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997 by columnist Mary Schmich.
• Weeee! - a squirrel based Flash animation.
• Whazzup? (link (http://www.bud-true.com/pages/movies7.htm#)) - Budweiser commercial series that took a new life when it was parodied with the SuperFriends ([2] (http://whassup.com/spoofs/whassup.mpg))
• Weebl and Bob
• Yatta
• Zombo.com

Leet speak and AOL speak may also be considered forms of memetic Internet phenomenon.

Resources

• Ebaum's World (http://www.ebaumsworld.com)