Jump to content

List of Internet phenomena

Page semi-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Internet phenomena)

Internet phenomena are social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet, such as Internet memes, which include popular catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more widespread because the instant communication facilitates word of mouth transmission.

This list focuses on the internet phenomena that is accessible regardless of local internet regulations.

Advertising and products

  • Amazon Coat – an unnamed coat sold on the online store Amazon.com by the Chinese clothing brand Orolay, previously known for its home furnishings. It became a viral phenomenon from the period between December 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic.[1]
  • Beanie Babies – Cited as being the world's first Internet sensation in 1995.[2]
  • Cerveza Cristal – A Chilean beer company that produced a series of advertisements during a Star Wars original trilogy broadcast in 2003. The commercials, titled The Force is with Cristal Beer, would air seamlessly with the scenes in the trilogy, such as a pair of hands like Obi Wan's opening a chest, revealing the beer. The advertisements were critically acclaimed in the country and became internationally viral on Twitter in March 2024.[3]
  • Cooks Source infringement controversy – This publication drew backlash after it committed copyright infringement by using an online article without permission for commercial purposes. This backlash further increased due to Cooks Source's response which showed a misunderstanding of copyright and an increasing agitation to the original writer of the article.[4]
  • Elf Yourself (2006) and Scrooge Yourself (2007) – Interactive websites created by Jason Zada and Evolution Bureau for OfficeMax's holiday season advertising campaign. Elf Yourself allows visitors to upload images of themselves or their friends, see them as dancing elves,[5][6] and includes options to save or share the video.[7] According to ClickZ, visiting the Elf Yourself site "has become an annual tradition that people look forward to".[8] While not selling any one specific product, the two were created to raise consumer awareness of the sponsoring firm.[9]
  • Flex Tape – An infomercial of the product Flex Tape. It became a meme after YouTuber JonTron made a video reviewing the infomercial.[10]
  • FreeCreditReport.com – A series of TV commercials that were posted on the Internet; many spoofs of the commercials were made and posted on YouTube.[11]
  • HeadOn – A June 2006 advertisement for a homeopathic product claimed to relieve headaches. Ads featured the tagline, "HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead", stated three times in succession, accompanied by a video of a model using the product without ever directly stating the product's purpose. The ads were successively parodied on sites such as YouTube and rapper Lil Jon even made fun of it.[12]
  • Little Darth Vader – An advertisement by Volkswagen featuring young Max Page dressed in a Darth Vader costume running around his house trying to use "the Force". It was released on the Internet a few days prior to Super Bowl XLV in 2011, and quickly became popular.[13] As of 2013 it was the most shared ad of all time.[14]
  • LowerMyBills.comBanner ads from this mortgage company feature endless loops of cowboys, women, aliens, and office workers dancing.[15][16]
  • The Man Your Man Could Smell Like – A television commercial starring Isaiah Mustafa reciting a quick, deadpan monologue while shirtless about how "anything is possible" if men use Old Spice. It eventually led to a popular viral marketing campaign which had Mustafa responding to various Internet comments in short YouTube videos on Old Spice's YouTube channel.[17]
  • "Mac Tonight/Moon Man" – A McDonald's commercial made to promote dinner sales. Starting in 2007, the character in the commercial, "Mac Tonight" was used in videos where he is depicted promoting violence against minorities and promoting the KKK with racist parodies of rap songs. The best-known parody, "Notorious KKK" (a parody of Hypnotize by The Notorious B.I.G.), has accumulated over 119,000 views on YTMND.[18]
Nicole Kidman starred in a 2021 AMC Theatres commercial that went viral thanks to its grand style and the melodrama of Kidman's monologue.
The Shake Weight
  • Shake WeightInfomercial clips of the modified dumbbell went viral as a result of the product's sexually suggestive nature.[28]
  • Vans (2016) – Featured in the "Damn Daniel" viral internet meme.
  • What Would You Do for a Klondike Bar? – A slogan at the end of commercials advertising the ice cream sandwich Klondike bar. People on YouTube and Facebook began posting videos depicting people in dangerous and absurdist situations attempting to reach a Klondike Bar in response to the slogan.[29]
  • Whopper Whopper – A song by American restaurant fast-food chain Burger King which serves as a jingle for the restaurant's signature burger, the Whopper[30]
  • Will It Blend? – The blender product Blendtec, claimed by its creator Tom Dickson to be the most powerful blender, is featured in a series of YouTube videos, "Will It Blend?" where numerous food and non-food items are used within the blender.[31]
  • Xtranormal – A website allowing users to create videos by scripting the dialog and choosing from a menu of camera angles and predesigned CGI characters and scenes. Though originally designed to be used to ease storyboard development for filmmakers, the site quickly became popular after videos made with the tool, including "iPhone 4 vs HTC Evo", became viral.[32][33]

Animation and comics

  • Fundamental Paper Education - the Music Animation created by Youtuber "Kaaatie" that became popular on the Internet in 2024.
  • Animutations – Early Adobe Flash-based animations, pioneered by Neil Cicierega in 2001, typically featuring foreign language songs (primarily Japanese, such as "Yatta"), set to random pop-culture images. The form is said to have launched the use of Flash for inexpensive animations that are now more common on the Internet.[34][35][36]
  • Arthur – A 1996 PBS educational series that became popular on the Internet in July 2016 through humorous stills, including a still of the title character's clenched fist.[37][38]
  • Ate my balls – One of the earliest examples of an internet meme, which involved web pages depicting a particular celebrity, fictional character, or other subject's relish for eating testicles.[39]
  • Axe Cop – Initially a web comic series with stories created by five-year-old Malachai Nicolle and drawn into comic form by his 29-year-old brother Ethan, the series gained viral popularity on the Internet due to the vividness and non-sequitur nature of Malachai's imagination, and has led to physical publication and a series of animated shorts in the 2012–2013 season for the Fox Television Network.[40][41][42]
  • Badger Badger Badger – A hypnotic loop of animal calisthenics set to the chant of "badger, badger, badger", created by Jonti "Weebl" Picking.[43]
  • Big Chungus – A still frame of the 1941 Merrie Melodies short Wabbit Twouble when Bugs Bunny mocks a fat Elmer Fudd. The meme originated from fictitious cover art for a video game titled Big Chungus (with "chungus" being a neologism associated with video game commentator James Stephanie Sterling), which featured a still from the scene, and was popularized by a Facebook post by a GameStop manager who alleged that a colleague's mother had inquired about purchasing the "game" as a gift.[44][45] Warner Bros. later incorporated Big Chungus into its own video game Looney Tunes World of Mayhem.[46]
  • Bongo Cat – Originated on Twitter on 7 May 2018, when a simple animated cat GIF, was edited for it to play the song "Athletic" from the Super Mario World soundtrack. This cat has since been edited to play various songs on bongos, and later other instruments.[47][48]
  • "Caramelldansen" – A spoof from the Japanese visual novel opening Popotan that shows the two main characters doing a hip swing dance with their hands over their heads, imitating rabbit ears, while the background song plays the sped-up version of the song "Caramelldansen", sung by the Swedish music group Caramell. Also known as Caramelldansen Speedycake Remix or Uma uma dance in Japan, the song was parodied by artists and fans who then copy the animation and include characters from other anime performing the dance.[49][50][51]
  • Charlie the Unicorn – A five-part series of videos involving the titular unicorn who is repeatedly hoodwinked by two other blue and pink unicorns, Lolz and Roffle, who take him on elaborate adventures to steal his belongings or cause him physical harm.[52]
  • Dancing baby – A 3D-rendered dancing baby that first appeared in 1996 by the creators of Character Studio for 3D Studio MAX, and became something of a late 1990s cultural icon, in part due to its exposure on worldwide commercials, editorials about Character Studio, and the popular television series Ally McBeal.[53]
  • The End of the World – A Flash-animated video by Jason Windsor in 2003 that depicts a situation when the entire world is nuked by rivalling countries.[54][55][56]
  • Happy Tree Friends – A series of Flash cartoons featuring cartoon animals experiencing violent and gruesome accidents.[57]
  • Homestar Runner – A Flash animated Internet cartoon by Mike Chapman, Craig Zobel, and Matt Chapman, created in 1996 and popularized in 2000. The cartoon contains many references to popular culture from the 1980s and 1990s, including video games, television, and popular music.[58]
  • Joe Cartoon – Creator of interactive Flash animations Frog in a Blender[59] and Gerbil in a Microwave,[60][61] which were two of the first Flash cartoons to receive fame on the Internet.[62]
  • Kung Fu Bear – an Internet meme involving an Asian black bear who skillfully twirls, throws and catches a long staff.[63]
  • Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin) – A looped Flash animation of an anime girl Orihime Inoue from the Bleach series twirling a leek, set to a scat singing section of the traditional Finnish folk song "Ievan Polkka", sung by the Finnish quartet Loituma on their 1995 debut album Things of Beauty.[64] The band's popularity rose tremendously[65] after the animation was posted in Russian LiveJournal in 2006. The song clip soon enjoyed overwhelming popularity as a ringtone.[66]
  • "Loss" – A webcomic strip published on 2 June 2008, by Tim Buckley for his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. Set during a storyline in which the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child, the strip – presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue – shows Ethan entering a hospital, where he sees Lilah weeping in a hospital bed; she has suffered a miscarriage. It has received negative reception from critics and webcomic creators and been adapted and parodied many times.[67][68][69][70]
  • Motu Patlu – An Indian cartoon aired on Nickelodeon (India), made widely popular by a Nick India ad celebrating Teacher's Day in India, which has been reposted under the title "D se Dab".[71]
  • Nyan Cat – A YouTube video of an animated flying cat, set to an Utau song.[72]
A group of Polandball characters
  • Polandball (more commonly known as Countryballs) – A user-generated Internet meme which originated on the /int/ board of German imageboard Krautchan.net in the latter half of 2009. The meme is manifested in a large number of online comics, where countries are presented as spherical personas that interact in often broken English, poking fun at national stereotypes and international relations, as well as historical conflicts.[73]
  • Pusheen – An animated grey tabby cat, originally drawn as a character in the webcomic "Everyday Cute" by artists Clare Belton and Andrew Duff.[74] Belton has since released a Pusheen book.[75]
  • Rage comics – A large set of pre-drawn images including crudely drawn stick figures, clip art, and other artwork, typically assembled through website generators, to allow anyone to assemble a comic and post to various websites and boards. The New York Times reports that thousands of these are created daily.[76] Typically these are drawn in response to a real-life event that has angered the comic's creator, hence the term "rage comics", but comics assembled for any other purpose are also made. Certain images from rage comics are known by specific titles, such as "trollface" (a widely grinning man), "forever alone" (a man crying to himself), or "rage guy" (a man shouting "FUUUUU...").[citation needed]
  • Salad Fingers – A Flash animation series surrounding a green man with severely elongated fingers in a desolate world populated mostly by deformed, functionally mute people.[77]
  • Shut the fuck up, TERF – A crudely photoshopped image featuring Zombie Land Saga character Lily Hoshikawa, a trans girl, holding a gun with the caption "Shut the fuck up, TERF".[78][79] The image was criticized as constituting a threat of violence, and presented in UK Parliament in May 2019 during a convening of the Human Rights Committee while questioning a Twitter employee on the subject of abuse.[78][79] In a tweet in January 2023, J. K. Rowling likened the meme to early twentieth century anti-suffragist artwork.[80]
  • Simpsonwave – A genre of videos where clips of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons are filtered with tinted, VHS-like effects and played over psychedelic vaporwave or chillwave tracks.[81]
  • Skibidi Toilet – A series of viral YouTube animations made by animator Alexey Gerasimov using Source Filmmaker which depicts a war between skibidi toilets (disembodied heads inside moving toilets which can be killed by being flushed down) and a faction of people with cameras, TVs and loudspeakers for heads.
  • The Spirit of Christmas – Consists of two different animated short films made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which are precursors to the animated series South Park. To differentiate between the two homonymous shorts, the first short is often referred to as Jesus vs. Frosty (1992), and the second short as Jesus vs. Santa (1995). Fox executive Brian Graden sent copies of Jesus vs. Santa to several of his friends, and from there it was copied and distributed, including on the internet, where it became one of the first viral videos.[82] They were created by animating construction paper cut-outs with stop motion, and features prototypes of the main characters of South Park.[83]
  • Steamed Hams – Remixes of a segment of The Simpsons episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" involving Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers, in which Skinner has invited Chalmers over to dinner, inadvertently sets his ham on fire, and covers it up by serving fast food hamburgers as "steamed hams".[84]
  • "This is fine" – A two-panel comic drawn in 2013 by KC Green as part of the Gunshow webcomic, showing an anthropomorphic dog sitting in a room on fire, and saying "This is fine". The comic emerged as a meme in 2016, used in situations, as described by The New York Times, "halfway between a shrug and complete denial of reality". Numerous derivatives of the "This is fine" comic have been made.[85]
  • "Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh" – A photoshopped image of Winnie the Pooh sitting in an armchair from the featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, which became popular on Reddit in 2019. The meme, which is also known as "A fellow man of culture", features Winnie the Pooh wearing a tuxedo and smiling.[86][87][88]
  • The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny – A lethal battle royale between many notable real and fictitious characters from popular culture. Set to a song of the same name, written and performed by Neil Cicierega under his musician alias, "Lemon Demon."[89]
  • Ultra Instinct Shaggy – A character interpretation that the Scooby-Doo character Shaggy is immensely more powerful than he presents himself. The meme is usually presented as still frames of a behind-the-scenes interview of the 2002 live-action movie with subtitles implying that Shaggy is restraining his power to prevent catastrophe.[90][91][92] Subsequently, Warner Bros. canonized the meme as part of a credits gag in the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms,[93] as well as including Shaggy as a fighter in the MultiVersus crossover fighting game.[94]
  • Weebl and Bob – A series of Flash cartoons created by Jonti Picking featuring two egg-shaped characters that like pie and speak in a stylistic manner.
xkcd's "Wikipedian Protester" comic
  • xkcd – A webcomic created by Randall Munroe, popularized on the Internet due to a high level of math-, science- and geek-related humor,[95] with certain jokes being reflected in real-life, such as using Wikipedia's "[citation needed]" tag on real world signs[96] or the addition of an audio preview for YouTube comments.[97]

Challenges

Challenges generally feature Internet users recording themselves performing certain actions, and then distributing the resulting video through social media sites, often inspiring or daring other users to repeat the challenge.

Dance

Two screenshots from before and after the drop in a Harlem Shake video
  • Coffin Dance/Dancing Pallbearers – A group of Ghanaian pallbearers that respectfully dance during funeral processions were covered by the BBC in 2017 and gained some initial Internet popularity.[98] In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a popular TikTok video mashed the BBC footage with the EDM song "Astronomia" from Russian artist Tony Igy, creating a meme that appeared to spread as a morbidly humorous reminder about the dangers of COVID-19.[99][100]
  • Dab – A dance move where a person drops their head into a bent, slanted arm, with the other arm out straight and parallel.
  • "Dancing Banana" – A banana dancing to the song "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" by the Buckwheat Boyz.[101][102]
  • 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.[103]
  • Harlem Shake – A video based on Harlem shake dance, originally created by YouTube personality Filthy Frank, and using an electronica version of the song by Baauer. In such videos, one person is dancing or acting strange among a room full of others going about routine business. After the drop in the song and a video cut, everyone starts dancing or acting strangely. The attempts to recreate the dance led to a viral spread on YouTube.[104][105]
  • "Hit the Quan" – A viral dance challenge to the song "Hit the Quan" by American rapper iLoveMemphis. Rich Homie Quan originally performed this dance in his music video for his song "Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)". iLoveMemphis produced the "Hit The Quan" based around Rich Homie Quan's dance. iLoveMemphis' song launched the "Hit the Quan" viral dance challenge because of its convenient lyrics to dance to.[106] "Hit the Quan" reached 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart because of the popularity of the dance.[106] The dance challenge was very popular on social media platforms, especially Vine. Many celebrities participated in the popular dance challenge.[107]
  • "Indian Thriller" – A viral scene from the Indian film Donga with added subtitles phonetically approximating the original lyrics as English sentences.[108]
  • JK Wedding Entrance Dance – The wedding procession for Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz of St. Paul, Minnesota, choreographed to the song "Forever" by Chris Brown. Popularized on YouTube with 1.75 million views in less than five days in 2009.[109] The video was later imitated in an episode of The Office on NBC.[110]
  • "Kiki Challenge" or "#DoThe Shiggy" – A viral dance challenge to the song "In My Feelings" by Drake. This challenge was started by a comedian named Shiggy on the night that Drake released the album Scorpion. Shiggy posted a video of himself on his Instagram account dancing along to part of the lyrics in what looks like in the middle of a neighborhood street.[111] Shiggy commented #DoTheShiggy.[111] Drake claims the success of the song was due to Shiggy's popular dance to his song.[111] The dance challenge is often filmed with a twist of the original. The most popular twist of the dance is filmed from the passenger side of a moving vehicle through the open driver door where the would be driver is dancing moves along with the slowly moving car. This challenge received a lot of controversy due to the fact nobody was in control of the car. Performers have received fines and sometimes suffered injury.[112] This viral dance challenge was performed by a number of professional athletes and celebrities.[111] The dance challenge was performed by people in the U.S. and spread to the rest of the world.[113]
  • Little Superstar – A video of Thavakalai, a short Indian actor, break-dancing to MC Miker G & DJ Sven's remix of the Madonna song "Holiday". The clip comes from a 1990 Tamil film Adhisaya Piravi, featuring actor Rajnikanth.[114][115]
  • Running Man Challenge – A dance move where participants in a way resembling running to the 1996 R&B song "My Boo" by Ghost Town DJ's^ . First posted to Vine by two teenagers from New Jersey, the dance went viral in 2016 after two University of Maryland basketball players posted their rendition.[116][117] The dance gets its name because it is an adaptation of the original running man dance move.
  • T-pose – A surrealist "dance move" that became popular in April 2018 modelled after the default pose (also known as a bind pose) that many 3D models in games, animations, and more take in their raw file form.[118]
  • Techno Viking – A muscular Nordic raver dancing in a technoparade in Berlin.[119]
  • "Thriller" by the CPDRC Dancing Inmates – A recreation of Michael Jackson's hit performed by prisoners at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in the Philippines.[120] In January 2010, it was among the ten most popular videos on YouTube with over 20 million hits.[121]
  • Triangle Dance Challenge – Three individuals place hands on each other's shoulders and jump to a different point on an invisible triangle. This gained popularity in 2019.[122][123]

Email

  • Bill Gates Email Beta Test – An email chain-letter that first appeared in 1997 and still circulates. The message claims that America Online and Microsoft are conducting a beta test and for each person one forward the email to, they will receive a payment from Bill Gates of more than $200. Realistic contact information for a lawyer appears in the message.[124][125]
  • Craig Shergold – A British former cancer patient who is most famous for receiving an estimated 350 million greeting cards, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1991 and 1992. Variations of the plea for greeting cards sent out on his behalf in 1989 are still being distributed through the Internet, making the plea one of the most persistent urban legends.[126][clarification needed]
  • Goodtimes virus – An infamous, fraudulent virus warning that first appeared in 1994. The email claimed that an email virus with the subject line "Good Times" was spreading, which would "send your CPU into a nth-complexity infinite binary loop", among other dire predictions.[127][128]
  • Lighthouse and naval vessel urban legend – Purportedly an actual transcript of an increasingly heated radio conversation between a U.S. Navy ship and a Canadian who insists the naval vessel change a collision course, ending in the punchline. This urban legend first appeared on the Internet in its commonly quoted format in 1995, although versions of the story predate it by several decades.[129] It continues to circulate; the Military Officers Association of America reported in 2011 that it is forwarded to them an average of three times a day.[130] The Navy has a page specifically devoted to pointing out that many of the ships named weren't even in service at the time.[131]
  • MAKE.MONEY.FAST – One of the first spam messages that was spread primarily through Usenet, or even earlier BBS systems, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The original email is attributed to an individual who used the name "Dave Rhodes", who may or may not have existed.[132] The message is a classic pyramid scheme – one receives an email with a list of names and is asked to send $5 by postal mail to the person whose name is at the top of the list, add their own name to the bottom, and forward the updated list to a number of other people.[133]
  • Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe – An email chain-letter dating back to the early 1990s, but originating as Xeroxlore, in which a person tells a story about being ripped off for over $200 for a cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus. The email claims the person is attempting to exact revenge by passing the recipe out for free.[134][135]
  • Nigerian Scam/419 scam – A mail scam attempt popularized by the ability to send millions of emails. The scam claims the sender is a high-ranking official of Nigeria with knowledge of a large sum of money or equivalent goods that they cannot claim but must divest themselves of; to do so, they claim to require a smaller sum of money up front to access the sum to send to the receiver. The nature of the scam has mutated to be from any number of countries, high-ranking persons, barristers, or relationships to said people.[136]

Film and television

A man in a Halloween costume as the Barbenheimer phenomenon that resulted from the films Barbie and Oppenheimer sharing the same July 21, 2023, release date.
  • The Babadook (2014) – An Australian-Canadian psychological horror film that started trending on Twitter in June 2017 when the title character became an unofficial mascot for the LGBT community.[137] Prior to that, rumors of the Babadook's sexuality began in October 2016, when some Netflix users reported seeing the film categorized as an LGBT movie on Netflix.[138][139][140]
  • Barbenheimer (2023) – A portmanteau of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Barbenheimer began circulating ahead of the theatrical release of both films on 21 July 2023, with social media users creating and sharing memes noting the juxtaposition between the films.[141][142]
  • Bee Movie (2007) – Sped-up or slowed-down clips of the film have become popular on YouTube.[143][144] One upload by "Avoid at All Costs" exceeded 12 million views as of December 2016.[145] Many of the edited videos in this trend were taken down for spam due to the volume of videos posted by some channels.[146] From September 2013 onwards, a few Internet users posted the entirety of the Bee Movie script on sites like Tumblr and Facebook.[147]
  • The Blair Witch Project (1999) – The film's producers used Internet marketing to create the impression that the documentary-style horror film featured real, as opposed to fictional events.[148]
  • Bye, Felicia – A line from the 1995 film Friday originally uttered by Ice Cube's character to dismiss Angela Means' character, Felisha. The line became viral beginning in the 2010s.[149]
  • Cloverfield (2008) – Paramount Pictures used a viral marketing campaign to promote this monster movie.[150]
  • Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022) – An anthology thriller true crime series by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan for Netflix. after its release, it became viral over Twitter and TikTok.[151]
  • Dear Evan Hansen (2021) – A film adaptation of the stage musical of the same name that featured then 27-year-old Ben Platt reprising his role as 17-year-old high schooler Evan Hansen, a casting decision that sparked widespread backlash from critics and the public, all of whom attributed it to nepotism. Two scenes from the film instantly became internet memes the moment it was made available digitally as a result of the controversy: a close-up of Evan crying during the climax of "Words Fail," his expression wrenched and tortured, and the moment Evan runs off from Zoe Murphy (Kaitlyn Dever) in the hallways during their first meeting at school. Jameson Rich of The New York Times observed "The image of a crying Platt is already a much-iterated joke, and its thrust is, overwhelmingly, derisive. But being the target of the internet's scorn is not de facto a bad thing. When a meme circulates far enough, the underlying movie can gain what feels like cultural currency. The very fact that the images are not part of any intentional advertising actually lends them a note of authenticity. They are, in a perverse way, resonating on their own merit. Is there a better form of contemporary publicity?"[152]
  • Downfall (2004) – A film depicting Adolf Hitler (portrayed in this film by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz) during his final days of his life. Multiple scenes in which Hitler rants in German have been parodied innumerable times on the Internet, including when Hitler finds out that Felix Steiner has failed to carry out his orders and when Hitler finds out SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein has gone AWOL. This scene often has its English subtitles replaced by mock subtitles to give the appearance that Hitler is ranting about modern, often trivial topics, and sometimes even breaks the fourth wall by referencing the Internet meme itself. While the clips are frequently removed for copyright violations, the film's director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, has stated that he enjoys them, and claimed to have seen about 145 of them.[153][154]
  • Figwit (abbreviated from "Frodo is great...who is that?") – A background elf character with only seconds of screen time and one line of dialog from The Lord of the Rings film trilogy played by Flight of the Conchords member Bret McKenzie, which became a fascination with a large number of fans. This ultimately led to McKenzie being brought back to play an elf in The Hobbit.[155][156][157]
  • Goncharov – A nonexistent film invented by users on Tumblr.[158] It is purported to be "the greatest mafia movie ever made," released in 1973.[159][160] In 2020, a user posted a picture of a tag found on a pair of boots which featured details on the nonexistent film Goncharov in place of a brand label, which suggested it was "A film by Matteo JWHJ0715" and "presented" by Martin Scorsese. Users have inconsistently described the film as being directed by either Matteo JWHJ0715 or Scorsese. This label was speculated by several users to be a misprint of Gomorrah.[161] Goncharov picked up traction again in late November 2022 when a user created a poster for the film that featured a lineup of actors and character names, ultimately sparking an elaborate fiction of the film's existence.[162] Discussion of the film involved detailed critical analysis of the plot, themes, symbolism, and characters, as well as creation of gifs, fan art, and theme music, all presented as if the film were real.[163] The meme's popularity caused it to become a trending topic on the Tumblr platform.[159][160][161] A similar meme that emerged on TikTok nine months later—about a fictional 1980s horror film, Zepotha—drew comparisons to Goncharov.[164][165][166]
  • LazyTown (2004) – A children's television program originating from Iceland, which became very popular after one of the primary actors, Stefán Karl Stefánsson, was diagnosed with cancer and set up a GoFundMe page for support. The song "We Are Number One" became a meme in October 2016, and many videos were created. It became one of the fastest growing memes in history, with 250 videos uploaded in 5 days.[167]
  • Les Misérables (2012) – Tom Hooper's film adaptation of the globally popular stage musical of the same name based on Victor Hugo's 1862 novel of the same name. In April 2022, a clip of the film's version of the "Do You Hear the People Sing?" musical sequence circulated on Twitter in protest of the lockdown during the 2022 Shanghai COVID-19 outbreak. The clip was ultimately blocked by the Chinese government to stop further protest.[168]
  • The Lord of the Rings trilogy – Released between 2001 and 2003, just as meme culture was taking off, several moments from the films became part of the online culture, with, most notably, Sean Bean's character of Boromir stating "One does not simply walk into Mordor" as one of the most commonly referenced.[169][170]
  • Marble Hornets – A documentary-style horror, suspense short film series based on alternate reality experiences of the Slenderman tale. Marble Hornets was instrumental in codifying parts of the Slender Man mythos, but is not part of the inter-continuity crossover that includes many of the blogs and vlogs that followed it, although MH does feature in other canons as either a chronicle of real events or a fictional series.[171][172]
  • Marriage Story (2019) – Noah Baumbach's critically acclaimed drama about a warring couple going through a coast-to-coast divorce spawned multiple memes despite its serious tone. According to Wired, a meme of Adam Driver punching a wall during Charlie and Nicole's argument scene has contributed to "re-contextualizing Charlie and Nicole's fight into something light and silly".[173] Driver punching a wall has been repurposed to represent general arguments over trivial matters in which a participant becomes angry and overreacts.[174][175]
  • Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) – The theatrical trailer released in mid-May 2009 became a viral hit, scoring over one million hits on MTV.com and another 300,000 hits on YouTube upon launch, prompting brisk pre-orders of the DVD.[176]
  • Minions The mischievous yellow creatures from the Despicable Me franchise have, since their introduction in 2010, become ubiquitous in certain layers of meme culture.[177] The memes created with images of Minions have frequently been derided as bland or unintentionally absurd.[178][179] In 2022, a phenomenon known as "Gentleminions" arose, in which young men and teen boys would arrive to Minions: The Rise of Gru in formal attire.[180][181]
The adult brony fandom of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic grew from its 4chan roots.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is MagicHasbro's 2010 animated series to revive its toy line was discovered by members of 4chan and subsequently spawned a large adult, mostly male fanbase calling themselves "bronies" and creating numerous Internet memes and mashups based on elements from the show.[182][183]
  • Re-cut trailer – User-made trailers for established films, using scenes, voice-overs, and music, to alter the appearance of the film's true genre or meaning or to create a new, apparently seamless, film. Examples include casting the thriller-drama The Shining into a romantic comedy, or using footage from the respective films to create Robocop vs. Terminator.[184][185][186]
  • The Nutshack (2007) – a Filipino-American adult animated television series that has been widely mocked for its obnoxious characters, bad writing and animation, and especially for the theme song.[187]
Tommy Wiseau of The Room (2003)
  • Pingu – An animated Swiss children's television series. The show's animation style has spawned many memes.[citation needed] In particular, a meme in which Mozart's Requiem accompanies a viral video of Pingu the penguin saying "Noot Noot"[188] gained popularity, using the choir symphony to depict feelings of terror and dread.[189]
  • The Room (2003) – Written, produced, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau, the low- budget independent film is considered one of the worst films ever made. However, through social media and interest from comedians, gained a large number of ironic fans and turned into a cult classic. It is a popular source for memes based on some of the poorly delivered lines in the movie, such as "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" (a shoehorned reference to an iconic James Dean line in Rebel Without a Cause) and "Oh hi, Mark."[190][191]
  • Saltburn (2023) – A black comedy psychological thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell. After its theatrical release, it became a streaming hit on Amazon Prime Video and went viral on TikTok.[192][193][194]
  • Sharknado (2013) – A made-for-television film produced by The Asylum and aired on the SyFy network as a mockbuster of other disaster films, centered on the appearance of a tornado filled with sharks in downtown Los Angeles. Though similar to other films from the Asylum, elements of the film, such as low-budget effects and choice of actors, led to the film becoming a social media hit and leading to at least four additional sequels.[195]
  • Shrek – A DreamWorks franchise that has an internet fandom likes the series.[196] The viral video "Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life" was based on a homoerotic story on 4chan depicting the titular ogre engaging in anal sex with a young boy.[197][198]
  • Snakes on a Plane (2006) – Attracted attention a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released, due to the film's working title, its seemingly absurd premise, and the piquing of actor Samuel L. Jackson's interest to work on the film. Producers of the film responded to the Internet buzz by adding several scenes and dialogue imagined by the fans.[199]
  • SpongeBob SquarePants – A Nickelodeon animated television series that has spawned various Internet memes. These memes include "Surprised Patrick",[200] "Mr. Krabs Blur",[201] "Caveman SpongeBob",[202][203] "Handsome Squidward",[200] and "Mocking SpongeBob".[204][205] In 2019, Nickelodeon officially released merchandise based on the memes.[206][207]
  • Star War: The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West – Around the time of release, a bootleg recording circulated on the internet via peer-to-peer sharing websites. It quickly became notorious for its notable use of Engrish, like the translation of Darth Vader's line "No!" rendered as "Do not want". About a decade after the release of the bootleg, a fandub matching its subtitles was posted on YouTube.[208][209]
  • Steamed Hams – A clip from the season seven episode of The Simpsons, 22 Short Films About Springfield, gained popularity with many remixes and edits to the Skinner and The Superintendent segment.[210]
  • Take This Lollipop (2011) – An interactive horror short film and Facebook app, written and directed by Jason Zada to personalize and underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself on the Internet. Information gathered from a viewer's Facebook profile by the film's app, used once and then deleted, makes the film different for each viewer.[211][212][213]
  • The Three Bears (1939) – An animated short film made by Terrytoons based on the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears. One of the scenes from the short depicting Papa Bear saying "Somebody toucha my spaghet!" in a stereotypically thick Italian accent became an internet meme in December 2017.[214]
  • Treasure Island (1988) – A Russian animated film developed and distributed by Kievnauchfilm based on the novel of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson. A loop of a scene from the film showing three characters in a walk cycle with Dr. Livesey showing a highly pronounced swagger, often overlaid with the phonk song, "Why Not" by Ghostface Playa, became an internet meme in August 2022.
  • A Very Brady Sequel (1996) – A moment where Marcia Brady says "Sure, Jan" became a popular internet meme during the mid-2010s, usually as a response gif.[215] The original writers and actors responded to the meme during a 2021 interview with Vice.[216]
  • West Side Story (2021) – A clip of the opening long take shot of "The Dance at the Gym" sequence from Steven Spielberg's 2021 film version of the musical was uploaded to Twitter on 25 February 2022, and went viral over the weekend, reaching 3 million views and over 32,000 likes. It led to many users sharing images and clips of their favorite scenes and shots from the film during that time, while praising Spielberg's direction and Janusz Kamiński's cinematography.[217][218] This was further amplified by a Twitter thread by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro analyzing the camerawork and blocking on this particular shot.[219]

Gaming

Bowsette is a fan-made, gender-swapped version of the Mario franchise character Bowser.
  • "All your base are belong to us" – Badly translated English from the opening cutscene of the European Mega Drive version of the 1989 arcade game Zero Wing. It has become a catchphrase, inspiring videos and other derivative works.[220][221]
  • Angry Birds – A mobile game series made by Rovio Entertainment in December 2009 for the iOS and Nokia app stores, with a Google Play version releasing in October 2010.[222] Since its release, the game has amassed a large following on both the internet and in media for its visuals and simple-to-understand game mechanics of launching a bird from a slingshot.[223] The game has also seen many forms of merchandising, with 30% of Rovio Entertainment's revenue coming from merchandise sales in 2011.[224] One of the largest earlier endeavors was the brand's first licensed theme park in Tampere, Finland that was set to open on 1 May 2012.[225] In the early 2010s, the game and the game's characters were added to various image macros, which mentioned the irony of the story and difficult nature of obtaining a high score in the game.[226] The mobile game has seen a resurgence in the 2020s for being featured in various shitposts, including "realistic angry birds" and "i'm the biggest bird".[227][228]
  • Among Us – A game made by game studio Innersloth released on Steam in 2018. The game reached internet fame in 2020 due to Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing the game frequently. Still images from the game, phrases from the game like "Emergency Meeting" and "Dead body reported" as well as typical gameplay events have influenced internet memes. Other terms like "Sus", "Sussy", "Sussy Baka", "Amogus", and "When the imposter is sus" also became notable memes on social media platforms, later taking on a more ironic usage.[229][230]
  • Arrow in the knee – City guards in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would utter the line: "I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee". The latter part of this phrase quickly took off as a catchphrase and a snowclone in the form of "I used to X, but then I took an arrow in the knee" with numerous image macros and video parodies created.[231][232][233]
  • Bowsette – A fan-made depiction of the Super Mario character Bowser using Toadette's Super Crown power-up from the Nintendo Switch title New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe to transform into a lookalike of Princess Peach. The character became popular following a four-panel webcomic posted by a user on Twitter and DeviantArt in September 2018.[234]
  • But can it run Crysis? – A question often asked by PC gaming and hardware enthusiasts. When released in 2007, Crysis was extremely taxing on computer hardware, with even the most advanced consumer graphics cards of the time unable to provide satisfactory frame rates when the game was played on its maximum graphical settings.[235] As a result, this question is asked as a way of judging a certain computer's capability at gaming.
  • Can it run Doom? – A common joke question with any hardware that has a CPU, due to the vast amount of ports the game has received. Examples of unconventional hardware that Doom has been ported to include a Canon Proxima printer, the VIC-20, the Touch Bar on the 2016 MacBook Pro, a smart fridge, an ATM, a billboard truck, and within the game itself.[236][237][238]
  • Doomguy and Isabelle – The pairing of Isabelle from the Animal Crossing video game series and Doomguy from the Doom franchise due to the shared release date of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal.[239]
  • Elden Ring – A 2022 video game that spawned multiple memes, such as:
    • Let me solo her – The colloquial name for an Elden Ring player who specializes in fighting Malenia, one of the game's most difficult bosses, and whose character wears no armor but a jar as a helmet.[240] "Let me solo her" became widely acclaimed within the game's online community after volunteering to deal with Malenia on behalf of other players through the game's player summoning feature, and successfully defeating her at least four thousand times without assistance.[241] Videos of the player's performances became popular and widely shared on multiple social news websites.[240] The player's exploits was acknowledged by the game's publisher,[242] and became the subject of fan labor.[243][244] Let me solo her was awarded PC Gamer's Player of the Year award for 2022.[245]
    • "Maidenless" – a term used by multiple non-player characters to describe the player character. In its original context, it implies that the player character lacks a type of important ally, a "maiden", but it has been appropriated by the player community as a joke or insult, who uses it to imply that its recipient lacks a romantic partner.[246][247]
  • Flappy Bird – A free-to-play casual mobile game released on the iOS App Store on 24 May 2013, and on Google Play on 30 January 2014, by indie mobile app developer Dong Nguyen. The game began rapidly rising in popularity in late-December 2013 to January 2014 with up to 50 million downloads by 5 February. On 9 February, Nguyen removed the game from the mobile app stores citing negative effects of the game's success on his health and its addictiveness to players. Following the game's removal from the app stores, numerous clones and derivatives of the game were released with varying similarities to the original game.[248][249]
  • I Love Bees – An alternate reality game that was spread virally after a one-second mention inside a Halo 2 advertisement. Purported to be a website about honey bees that was infected and damaged by a strange artificial intelligence, done in a disjointed, chaotic style resembling a crashing computer. At its height, over 500,000 people were checking the website every time it updated.[250]
  • Lamar Roasts Franklin – A cutscene in the 2013 action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto V where Lamar Davis, portrayed by comedian Slink Johnson, berates Franklin Clinton, portrayed by actor and former rapper Shawn Fonteno, for Franklin's haircut and his relationship with his girlfriend, ending in Lamar uttering the word "nigga" in a condescending, sing-song voice and giving Franklin the middle finger, much to the latter's chagrin. The cutscene experienced a resurgence in popularity in late 2020 when parodies of the scene were uploaded on YouTube and other video hosting sites. It usually involves Lamar's character model being replaced with various popular culture icons such as Darth Vader, Vegeta, and Snow White among others, with Lamar's dialogue dubbed to account for the characters used. In 2021, Fonteno and Johnson reprised their roles as Franklin and Lamar respectively in a live-action re-enactment of the cutscene.[251][252] Later that year, Fonteno and Johnson once again reprised their roles in The Contract DLC for Grand Theft Auto Online, complete with a homage to the original roast cutscene.[253]
  • 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.[254]
  • Let's Play – Videos created by video game players that add their commentary and typically humorous reactions atop them playing through a video game. These videos have created a number of Internet celebrities who have made significant money through ad revenue sharing, such as PewDiePie who earned over $12 million from his videos in 2015.[255][256]
  • Line Rider – A Flash game where the player draws lines that act as ramps and hills for a small rider on a sled.[257]
  • Mafia City – A mobile game that has become infamous for its odd advertising involving a person drastically increasing their stats for doing various mob-related activities, and for the phrase "That's how mafia works".[258]
"The cake is a lie", based on the false promise of a Black Forest cake as a reward, is popularized from the video game series Portal.
QWOP's title refers to the four keyboard keys used to move the muscles of the sprinter avatar.
An example of a solution from the viral game "Wordle", developed by Josh Wardle
  • Roblox – a sandbox game that has spawned several memes, such as its "oof" sound.
  • QWOP – A browser-based game requiring the player to control a sprint runner by using the Q, W, O, and P keys to control the runner's legs. The game is notoriously difficult to control, typically leaving the runner character flailing about. The concept developed into memes based on the game, as well as describing real-life mishaps as attributable to QWOP.[263]
  • Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – A trivia/parlor game based around linking an actor to Kevin Bacon through a chain of co-starring actors in films, television, and other productions, with the hypothesis that no actor was more than six connections away from Bacon. It is similar to the theory of six degrees of separation or the Erdős number in mathematics. The game was created in 1994, just at the start of the wider spread of Internet use, populated further with the creation of movie database sites like IMDb, and since has become a board game and contributed towards the field of network science.[264][265][266]
  • Sonic the Hedgehog – A video game series created by Sega that has spawned multiple memes, such as:
    • Sonic Real-Time Fandubs – The YouTube channel SnapCube has produced a series of improvisational comedy gag dubs of several Sonic titles, including Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Shadow the Hedgehog, in which their cutscenes are dubbed with new, inaccurate dialogue on purpose. They have themselves earned their own fandom and derivative works based on jokes from the series.[267][268]
    • Sanic – A purposely misdrawn Sonic that has been referenced by Sega themselves, and used in merchandise;[269]
    • and "Ugandan Knuckles" – A meme that gained high popularity thanks to the social game VRChat, where players with a crude Knuckles model asked other players if they "knew da wae" ("know the way"), who their "queen" was, clicking their tongue, and spitting repeatedly.[270][271]
  • Surprised Pikachu – An image of the Pokémon Pikachu with a blank look and an open mouth. It is used as a reaction image to show either shock or lack thereof.[272][273]
  • Twitch Plays Pokémon – An "experiment" and channel created by an anonymous user on Twitch in February 2014. Logged-in viewers to the channel can enter commands in chat corresponding to the physical inputs used in the JRPG video game Pokémon Red. These are collected and parsed by a chat software robot that uses the commands to control the main character in the game, which is then live-streamed from the channel. The stream attracted more than 80,000 simultaneous players with over 10 million views with a week of going live, creating a chaotic series of movements and actions within the game, a number of original memes, and derivative fan art. The combination has been called an entertainment hybrid of "a video game, live video and a participatory experience," which has inspired similar versions for other games.[274][275]

  • U R MR GAY – A message allegedly hidden in the Super Mario Galaxy box art, which appears when each letter not decorated with a star is removed from the art. It was first noticed by a NeoGAF poster in September 2007. Video game journalists have debated as to whether the message was placed on purpose or was simply a humorous coincidence.[276][277]
  • Untitled Goose Game – A 2019 video game developed by Australian game studio House House, in which the player controls a goose causing mischief in an English village. An early teaser for the game in 2017 led to strong interest in the title, and on release, the game quickly became an Internet meme.[278][279]
  • Wordle – A word-guessing game similar to Jotto and Mastermind, where the player has only six tries to guess a five-letter word each day, the game indicating whether letters are in the word and/or in the correct position. The game grew popular over a few weeks after the ability to share results with others via social media was added near the end of 2021.[280][281] The game's popularity led to The New York Times Company acquiring the game from its creator Josh Wardle at the end of January 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.[282]

Images

Babylonokia
A Lolcat
U.S. President Barack Obama jokingly mimics the "McKayla is not impressed" expression in the Oval Office, November 2012.
Tron Guy
  • Baby mugging and Baby suiting – MommyShorts blogger Ilana Wiles began posting pictures of babies in mugs, and later adult business suits, both of which led to numerous others doing the same.[283][284][285]
  • Babylonokia – A clay tablet, shaped like a mobile phone designed by Karl Weingärtner. Fringe scientists and alternative archaeology proponents subsequently misrepresented a photograph of the artwork as showing an 800-year-old archaeological find; that story was popularised in a video on the YouTube channel Paranormal Crucible and led to the object being reported by some press sources as a mystery.[286]
  • 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.[287][288]
  • Blinking white guy – An animated GIF of former Giant Bomb video producer Drew Scanlon blinking in surprise, originating from a 2013 video on the website, became an internet meme in 2017.[289] Multiple outlets have noted the versatility of the GIF's use as a reaction.[290][291]
  • Blue waffle – An Internet hoax originating in 2010 purporting an unknown sexually transmitted disease affecting only women, causing severe infection and blue discoloration to the vagina. The disease has been confirmed as false.[292] Kathy McBride, a New Jersey councilwoman in the city of Trenton, cited it in a 2013 city council meeting, not realizing that it was a hoax.[293][294]
  • #BreakTheInternet – The November 2014 issue of Paper included a cover image of Kim Kardashian in a partially nude pose, exposing her buttocks, taken by photographer Jean-Paul Goude. It was captioned "#breaktheinternet", as the magazine desired to set a record in social media response from it. Several other photos from the shoot were also released, including one that mimicked one that Goude took for his book Jungle Fever involving a "campaign incident". Paper's campaign set a record for hits for their site, and the photographs became part of Internet memes.[295][296]
  • Brian Peppers – In 2005, a photo surfaced of a man named Brian Peppers, noted for his appearance, which suggests Apert syndrome or Crouzon syndrome. Found on the Ohio sex offender registry website, the photo gained traction after being shared on website YTMND. Peppers died in 2012 at the age of 43.[297]
  • Crasher Squirrel – A photograph by Melissa Brandts of a squirrel which popped up into a timer-delayed shot of Brandts and her husband while vacationing in Banff National Park, Canada, just as the camera went off. The image of the squirrel has since been added into numerous images on the Internet.[298][299][300]
  • CSI: Miami Puts on Sunglasses – The cold opening for nearly all CSI: Miami episodes ended with star David Caruso as Horatio Caine, in the initial stages of an investigation, putting on his sunglasses and making a quip or pun related to the crime, before the show hard cut to the opening credits, played against the scream of "Yeah!" in The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".[301] Image macros of Caruso putting on sunglasses, or similar images for other fictional characters, and the introductory scenes of the CSI: Miami opening became frequent, typically used as response to other puns made on user forums or with the puns and the following "YEAH!" incorporated into the image macro.[302][303]
  • Cursed images – Images (usually photographs) that are perceived as odd or disturbing due to their content, poor quality or both.[304]
  • Dat Boi – An animated GIF of a unicycling frog associated with the text "here come dat boi!" that began on Tumblr in 2015 before gaining popularity on Twitter in 2016.[305][306][307][308]
  • DashCon Ball Pit – A convention held in July 2014 by users of Tumblr that "imploded" due to a number of financial difficulties and low turnout. During the convention, a portable ball pit was brought into a large empty room. When some premium panels were cancelled, the attendees were offered an extra hour in the ball pit as compensation. The implosion and absurdity of aspects like the ball pit quickly spread through social media.[309]
  • DALL-E – A web-based program introduced in 2022 that uses artificial intelligence to construct an array of images from a text prompt. The resulting images, often shared across social media, can range from humorous, to uncanny, to near-perfect results.[310]
  • Distracted boyfriend – A stock photograph taken in 2015 which went viral as an Internet meme in August 2017.[311]
  • Dog shaming – Originating on Tumblr, these images feature images of dogs photographed with signs explaining what antics they recently got up to.[312]
  • Doge – Images of dogs, typically of the Shiba Inus, overlaid with simple but poor grammatical expressions, typically in the Comic Sans MS font, gaining popularity in late 2013.[313] The meme saw an ironic resurgence towards the end of the decade,[314] and was recognised by multiple media outlets as one of the most influential memes of the 2010s.[315][316] The meme has also spawned Dogecoin, a form of cryptocurrency.[317]
  • Don't talk to me or my son ever again – Images of a subject, be they product or individual, pictured with a smaller version of themself, captioned with the text "don't talk to me or my son ever again". Popular in 2016.[318]
  • The Dress – An image of a dress posted to Tumblr that, due to how the photograph was taken, created an optical illusion where the dress would either appear white and gold, or blue and black. Within 48 hours, the post gained over 400,000 notes and was later featured on many different websites.[319][320]
  • Ecce Homo / Ecce Mono / Potato Jesus – An attempt in August 2012 by a local woman to restore Elías García Martínez's aging fresco of Jesus in Borja, Spain led to a botched, amateurish, monkey-looking image, leading to several memes.[321][322]
  • Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten – An image featuring a kitten being chased by two Domos, and has the tagline "Please, think of the kittens".[323]
  • First World problems – A stock image of a woman crying with superimposed text mocking people with trivial complaints compared to that of issues in the Third World.[324]
    Big Floppa

  • Floppa – a collection of images either portraying caracals or a specific caracal by the name of Goshe, Shlepa or more commonly Big Floppa. The collection of images do not portray to a specific theme per se, but always hold Floppa as a centerpoint or personification of something.[325][326]
  • Goatse.cx – A shock image of a distended anus.[327]
  • Grogu – The popularity of the TV series The Mandalorian led to many memes of the "Baby Yoda" character.[328][329]
  • Grumpy Cat – A cat named Tardar Sauce that appears to have a permanent scowl on her face due to feline dwarfism, according to its owner. Pictures of the cat circulated the Internet, leading it to win the 2013 Webby for Meme of the Year, and her popularity has led her to star in a feature film.[330] Tardar Sauce died on 14 May 2019.[331]
  • Hide the Pain Harold – A Hungarian electrical engineer named András Arató became a meme after posing for stock photos on the websites iWiW and Dreamstime. He initially wasn't very happy with his popularity, but has grown to accept it. He realized he did similar things when he was younger such as drawing on Hungarian poet John Arany's portraits, making him look like a pirate. The meme depicts photos of Arató smiling, while viewers believe the smile masks serious sorrow and pain, hence the name "Hide the Pain Harold".[332]
  • Homophobic dog – A series of images of a white dachshund accompanied by homophobic captions, such as "not too fond of gay people" and "let's hope it's just a phase". According to the dog's owners, a gay couple, most of those memes were made and shared by members of the LGBTQ community to mock homophobic people.[333][334] A fake Washington Post headline describing the dog as "the new face of online homophobia"[335][336] was criticized by Christina Pushaw, press secretary of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, unaware that it was not a real article.[337][338]
  • Hurricane Shark or Street Shark, a recurring hoax circulated after a variety of natural disasters,[339] appearing to show a shark swimming in a flooded urban area, usually after a hurricane. Several images have been used, most often one of a freeway that first appeared during Hurricane Irene in 2011. However, a 2022 video of a shark or other large fish swimming in Hurricane Ian's floodwaters in Fort Myers, Florida, proved to be real, itself becoming part of the phenomenon and leading to phrases like "Hurricane Shark is real".[340][341]
  • Instagram egg – A photograph of an egg on Instagram, which formerly received the most number of likes on both the platform[342][343] and the highest in any social media.[A]
  • Islamic Rage Boy – A series of photos of Shakeel Bhat, a Muslim activist whose face became a personification of angry Islamism in the western media. The first photo dates back to his appearance in 2007 at a rally in Srinigar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir. Several other photos in other media outlets followed, and by November 2007, there were over one million hits for "Islamic Rage Boy" on Google and his face appeared on boxer shorts and bumper stickers.[345]
  • Keep Calm and Carry On – A phrasal template or snowclone that was originally a motivational poster produced by the UK government in 1939 intended to raise public morale. It was rediscovered in 2000, became increasingly used during the 2009 global recession, and has spawned various parodies and imitations.[346][347]
  • Listenbourg – An image of a photoshopped map of Europe with a red arrow pointing to the outline of a fictional country adjacent to Portugal and Spain.[348][349]
  • Little Fatty – Starting in 2003, the face of Qian Zhijun, a student from Shanghai, was superimposed onto various other images.[350][351]
  • Lolcat – A collection of humorous image macros featuring cats with misspelled phrases, such as "I Can Has Cheezburger?".[352] The earliest versions of LOLcats appeared on 4chan, usually on Saturdays, which were designated "Caturday", as a day to post photos of cats.[353]
  • Manul – A Russian meme that was introduced in 2008. It is typically an image macro with a picture of an unfriendly and stern-looking Pallas's cat (also known as a manul) accompanied by a caption in which the cat invites you to pet it.[359]
  • McKayla is not impressed – A Tumblr blog that went viral after taking an image of McKayla Maroney, the American gymnast who won the silver medal in the vault at the 2012 Summer Olympics, on the medal podium with a disappointed look on her face, and photoshopping it into various "impressive" places and situations, e.g. on top of the Great Wall of China and standing next to Usain Bolt.[360][361][362]
  • Nimoy Sunset Pie – A Tumblr blog that posted mashups combining American actor Leonard Nimoy, sunsets, and pie.[363][364][365][366][367][368]
  • O RLY? – Originally a text phrase on Something Awful, and then an image macro done for 4chan. Based around a picture of a snowy owl.[369]
  • Oolong – Photos featured on a popular Japanese website of a rabbit that is famous for its ability to balance a variety of objects on its head.[370]
  • Pepe the Frog – A cartoon frog character from a 2005 web cartoon became widely used on 4chan in 2008, often with the phrase "feels good man".[371][372][373][374][375] In 2015, the New Zealand government accepted proposals for a new national flag and a flag with Pepe, known as "Te Pepe", was submitted.[376][377][378]
  • Seriously McDonalds – A photograph apparently showing racist policies introduced by McDonald's. The photograph, which is a hoax, went viral, especially on Twitter, in June 2011.[379]
  • Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man – An image of the episode "Double Identity" of the 1967 TV series Spider-Man where the character Spider-Man and a criminal with the same costume point at each other.[380] It is often used online when a person coincidentally acts or looks like another person.[381] The meme was referenced in the post-credit scene of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a real-life version with three Spider-Man actors – Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire – was tweeted by Marvel to announce the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.[381][380]
  • Stonks – An image featuring Meme Man in a suit against an image of the stock market, used to highlight or satirize absurd topics related to finance or the economy.[382]
  • Success Kid – An image of a baby who is clenching his fist while featuring a determined look on his face.[383]
  • Trash Doves – A sticker set of a purple bird for iOS, Facebook messenger, Facebook comments, and other messaging apps created by Syd Weiler. The animated headbanging pigeon from the sticker set started to go viral in Thailand[384] and it became globally viral on social media.[385][386][387][388][389][390]
  • Tron GuyJay Maynard, a computer consultant, designed a Tron costume, complete with skin-tight spandex and light-up plastic armor, in 2003 for Penguicon 1.0 in Detroit, Michigan. The Internet phenomenon began when an article was posted to Slashdot, followed by Fark, including images of this costume.[391]
  • Vancouver Riot Kiss – An image supposedly of a young couple lying on the ground kissing each other behind a group of rioters during the riots following the Vancouver Canucks' Stanley Cup loss to the Boston Bruins on 15 June 2011. The couple, later identified as Australian, Scott Jones, and local resident, Alexandra Thomas, were not actually kissing but Jones was consoling Thomas after being knocked down by a police charge.[392]
  • Wojak – also known "Feels Guy", a bald male character with a sad expression on his face, often used as a reaction image to represent feelings such as melancholy, regret or loneliness. It has been used to convey different feelings by means of memetic transformation and modification into many various unique forms, all with different meanings. Some represent specific ideas or roles in certain situations, such as the NPC meme, which mocks supposed groupthink and a lack of individuality among a group of people. It has also spawned many derived characters, all based on the original but used to represent different emotions.[393][394]
  • An example of the "What the fuck did I just read?" meme.
    Woman yelling at a cat – A screenshot of the members of the television show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards showing Armstrong shouting and pointing with the finger, followed by a photo of a confused cat (identified as Smudge) sitting behind a table with food. The meme emerged in mid-2019, when Twitter users joined the photos and included texts that looked like a mockery of the cat to the angry woman.[395][396]
  • Worst person you know – a satirical article by ClickHole with a picture of Josep Maria García.[397]
  • Wood Sitting on a Bed – An image of a nude man sitting on a bed that gained notoriety at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.[398]
  • "You are not immune to propaganda." – A glitch art representation of Garfield, with the caption "You are not immune to propaganda" surrounding it.[399]
  • What the fuck did I just read? – two side-by-side portraits of English lexicographer Samuel Johnson which indicate bewilderment.[400]

Music

  • The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet – A song recorded on an audio cassette off German radio in the early 1980s, the artist and song title of which remain unknown, despite efforts by devoted internet sleuths who have spent years trying to identify the band.[401]

People

  • Meme Man – Fictional character often featured in surreal memes, depicted as a 3D render of a smooth, bald, and often disembodied and blue-eyed male head.[402]
  • Salt Bae – Turkish chef and restaurateur Nusret Gökçe earned fame in 2017 for his camera-friendly approach to preparing and seasoning meat, including a video in 2017 which he sprinkles salt, sparkling in the sunlight, onto a steak.[403][404] Gökçe's approach has been compared to dinner theater, in that his actual finished product is secondary to the performance.[405]
  • Hide the Pain Harold – Hungarian model András István Arató became the subject of a meme in 2011, due to his seemingly fake smile as the model in stock images.[406][407]

Politics

Amber Lee Ettinger, a.k.a. "Obama Girl"

Videos

Other phenomena

  • "And I oop" – A video of drag queen Jasmine Masters stopping a story to say the phrase "and I oop" after accidentally hitting himself in the testes.[450]
  • April the Giraffe – A reticulated giraffe who had two of her live births streamed on the Internet to much fanfare.[451]
  • "Banana for scale" – An internet meme that became popular for humorously measuring lengths of various objects. In this internet phenomenon, other objects juxtaposed with a banana are accompanied with the text "banana for scale".[452]
  • Ben Drowned – A self-published three-part multimedia ARG web serial and web series inspired by creepypasta and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, created by Alexander D. Hall.[453]
  • Binod – An internet fad which became popular in India in 2020.[454] It originated from a comment by a user with the screen name 'Binod', who had added only the word 'Binod' as a comment. This was followed by a video by Slayy Point, mocking "Binod" and YouTube comment sections in general. People started spamming the word 'Binod' across social media, primarily in YouTube comments and stream chats.[455] A number of organisations also posted memes, including Netflix India,[456] Twitter and Tinder.[456] Paytm temporarily changed its Twitter name to 'Binod'.[454]
  • Brad's Wife – On 27 February 2017, Brad Byrd of Harrison County, Indiana posted on Cracker Barrel's Facebook page, asking them why they fired his wife, Nanette, after 11 years of service. The intense and serious nature of the post drew viral attention, and internet users began semi-sarcastically demanding answers, using hashtags such as #BradsWife and #JusticeForBradsWife. This meme was notable for being popular with baby boomers as well as younger internet users. After the post was about a week old, several corporations jumped on the viral bandwagon and began to publicly send job offers to Nanette Byrd.[457][458][459]
  • Cats on the Internet – Images of cats are very popular on the Internet, and have seen extensive use in internet memes, as well as some cats becoming Internet celebrities.[460][461][462]
  • Chuck Norris factsSatirical factoids about martial artist and actor Chuck Norris that became popular culture after spreading through the Internet.[463]
  • CreepypastaUrban legends or scary stories circulating on the Internet, many times revolving around specific videos, pictures, or video games.[464] The term "creepypasta" is a mutation of the term "copypasta": a short, readily available piece of text that is easily copied and pasted into a text field. "Copypasta" is derived from "copy/paste", and in its original sense commonly referred to presumably initially sincere text (e.g. a blog or forum post) perceived by the copy/paster as undesirable or otherwise preposterous, which was then copied and pasted to other sites as a form of trolling. In the pre-Internet era, such material regularly circulated as faxlore.
  • Dicks out for Harambe – A slogan that was popularized months after the death of Harambe, a gorilla in a Cincinnati zoo, which could be interpreted as telling individuals to expose their penises in public in honor of the gorilla (although the word "dicks" here is slang for guns). The line was notably uttered by actor Danny Trejo.[465][466]
  • DignifAI – A 4chan-linked campaign to use AI tools to make women in photos look more modestly dressed. The trend is the opposite of deepfake pornography in that it is used to add clothes rather than remove them, and it has been used as a form of slut-shaming.[467][468]
  • Dumb Ways to Die – A 2012 Metro Trains Melbourne safety campaign that became popular on the Internet in November 2012.[469]
  • Elsagate – controversy surrounding children's YouTube videos in the late 2010s and 2020s.[470]
  • Florida Man – Crimes involving bizarre behavior, perpetrated by men from the state of Florida.[471][472][473]
  • Freecycling – The exchange of unwanted goods via the Internet.[474]
  • Gabe the Dog – Gabe was a miniature American Eskimo dog owned by YouTube user gravycp. In January 2013, gravycp uploaded a short video of Gabe barking. The footage itself never went viral though it was used in dozens of song remixes, some of which accrued up to half a million views.[475]
  • Get stick bugged lol – a video clip of a stick insect swaying as bait-and-switch meme similar to Rickrolling, in which an irrelevant video would unexpectedly transition to the clip when the stickbug revealed with the caption "Get stick bugged LOL".[476]
  • Get Out of My Car – an animated video created by Psychicpebbles, which uses the real audio of a man yelling at a woman to get out of his car.[477]
  • Have You Seen This Man? – A viral website that emerged on the Internet in the late 2000s, claiming to gather data about a mysterious figure only known as This Man that appears in dreams of people who never saw him before.[478]
  • Horse ebooks / Pronunciation Book – A five-year-long viral marketing alternate reality game for a larger art project developed by Synydyne. "Horse_ebooks" was a Twitter account that seemed to promote e-books, while "Pronunciation Book" was a YouTube channel that provided ways to pronounce English words. Both accounts engaged in non-sequiturs, making some believe that the accounts were run by automated services. Pronunciation Book shifted to pronouncing numerals in a countdown fashion in mid-2013, concluding in late September 2013 revealing the connection to Horse_ebook and identity of Synydyne behind the accounts, and the introduction of their next art project.[479][480]
  • Hou De Kharcha, a meme in Marathi[481]
  • Unregistered HyperCam 2 – The watermark which displayed in the upper-left corner of footage recorded with free versions of the HyperCam 2 screen capture software developed by Hyperionics, Inc. The software was widely used to screen record for YouTube videos during late 2000s to early 2010s, and was frequently used in the production of tutorial videos and Club Penguin gameplay. Videos with the watermark were often accompanied by "Trance" or "Dreamscape" by 009 Sound System.
  • I am lonely will anyone speak to me – A thread created on MovieCodec.com's forums, which has been described as the "Web's Top Hangout for Lonely Folk" by Wired magazine.[482]
  • Johnny Johnny Yes Papa – a children's nursery rhyme series.[483]
  • Ligma joke – a meme to set up a crude joke.[484][485]
  • Most Awesomest Thing Ever – a defunct website that randomly paired two objects, celebrities and activities, and asked viewers to decide their favourite. The ultimate goal of the project was to see what viewers considered the most "awesomest".[486] At the website's closure in 2022, teleportation was ranked number 1.[487]
The paperclip that Kyle MacDonald converted into a house, after 14 trade-ups
  • Netflix and chill – An English language slang term using an invitation to watch Netflix together as a euphemism for sex, either between partners or casually as a booty call. The phrase has been popularized through the Internet.[488][489]
  • Omission of New Zealand from maps – New Zealand is often excluded from world maps, which has caught the attention of New Zealander users on the Internet.[490]
  • One red paperclip – The story of a Canadian blogger who bartered his way from a red paperclip to a house in a year's time.[491]
  • Planking – Also known as the Lying Down Game. An activity consisting of lying in a face down position, with palms touching the body's sides and toes touching the ground, sometimes in bizarre locations. Some compete to find the most unusual and original location in which to play.[492]
  • Reality shifting – A mental phenomenon similar to lucid dreaming or maladaptive daydreaming that appeared on TikTok, in which practitioners believe they travel to alternate realities, usually fictional (for example the Wizarding World of the Harry Potter franchise).[493]
  • Rickrolling – an internet prank in which a video unexpectedly plays the music video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley instead of what was advertised.[494]
  • Savage Babies – also known as the Most Savage Babies in Human History, a meme popular in 2016 that uses clips from the Indian children's YouTube channel VideoGyan 3D Rhymes, namely their series of nursery rhymes "Zool Babies". The videos are heavily distorted and given edgy, ironic titles that exaggerate the meaning of the video, such as "Five Little Babies Dressed as Pilots" becoming "Savage Babies Cause 9/11".[495]
  • SCP Foundation – A creative writing website that contains thousands of fictitious containment procedures for paranormal objects captured by the in-universe SCP Foundation, a secret organization tasked with securing and documenting objects that violate natural law and/or pose a threat to humanity's perception of normalcy and further existence.[496][497] The website has inspired numerous spin-off works, including a stage play and video games such as SCP – Containment Breach.[497][498]
  • Siren Head – A fictional cryptid which has an air raid siren as a head, created by horror artist Trevor Henderson. It has accumulated a fan following which has spawned numerous pieces of fan works and fan-made video games. Many video edits have depicted Siren Head playing various songs over a populated area.[499] Siren Head has been erroneously recognized as an SCP, most notably when the character was briefly submitted to the SCP Foundation Wiki as SCP-6789; the entry was removed after Henderson and site users expressed intention to keep Siren Head independent of the SCP Foundation Wiki.[500][501] Another entry, SCP-5987, was inspired by the character name and the controversy from the deleted entry.[502]
  • Smash or Pass – A game in which players decide whether they would hypothetically "smash" (have sex with) someone or "pass" (choose not to).[503]
  • Spiders Georg – A meme which imagines that the (untrue) statistic that the "average person eats 3 spiders a year" is the result of a statistical error caused by the incorporation of "Spiders Georg", a fictional character who resides in a cave and eats over ten thousand spiders every day, into the study from which this conclusion was drawn. The meme originated with a Tumblr post by user Max Lavergne, and has inspired many derivative works about the character.[504] Variations of the meme have imagined other characters named "Georg" to explain other real or imagined statistics and beliefs.[505]
  • Steak and Blowjob Day – A meme suggesting that a complementary holiday to Valentine's Day, primarily for men, takes place on 14 March each year.[506]
  • Storm Area 51 – A joke event created on Facebook to "storm" the highly classified Area 51 military base, with over 1,700,000 people claiming to be attending and another 1,300,000 claiming they were "interested" in going.[507] 1,500 people arrived in the vicinity of Area 51 the day of the event, 20 September 2019, only one of whom actually breached the boundary and was quickly escorted off the premises.[508][509]
  • Slender Man or Slenderman – A creepypasta meme and urban-legend fakelore tale created on 8 June 2009, by user Victor Surge on Something Awful as part of a contest to edit photographs to contain "supernatural" entities and then pass them off as legitimate on paranormal forums. The Slender Man gained prominence as a frightening malevolent entity: a tall thin man wearing a suit and lacking a face with "his" head only being blank, white, and featureless. After the initial creation, numerous stories and videos were created by fans of the character.[171][172] Slender Man was later adapted into a video game in 2012 and became more widely known. There is also a film released in 2018 to negative reviews.
  • Surreal memes – A type of meme that are artistically bizarre in appearance and whose humor derives from their absurd style. Certain qualities and characters, such as Meme Man, Mr. Orange, and a minimalist style, are frequent markers of the meme.[510]
  • The Million Dollar Homepage – A website conceived in 2005 by Alex Tew, a student from Wiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid. The image-based links on it were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks.[511]
  • Three Wolf Moon – A t-shirt with many ironic reviews on Amazon.[512]
  • Throwback Thursday – The trend of posting older, nostalgic photos on Thursdays under the hashtag #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT.[513]
  • The Undertaker vs. Mankind – A copypasta where at the end of a comment of an irrelevant topic, the event is referenced.[514]
  • Vibe Check – Generally ascribed as a spiritual evaluation of a person's mental and emotional state.[515][516]
  • Vuvuzelas – The near-constant playing of the buzz-sounding vuvuzela instrument during games of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa led to numerous vuvuzela-based memes, including YouTube temporarily adding a vuvuzela effect that could be added to any video during the World Cup.[517][518]
  • Willy's Chocolate Experience – An unlicenced event based on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory franchise held in Glasgow, Scotland. Due to the misleading AI-generated advertisements and its sparsely decorated warehouse location, images of the event went viral. Notable viral images include a dispirited woman dressed as an Oompa-Loompa and an original character called "The Unknown".[519]
  • Yanny or Laurel – An audio illusion where individuals hear either the word "Yanny" or "Laurel".[520]
  • YouTube poopVideo mashups in which users deconstruct and piece together video for psychedelic or absurdist effect.[521]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ A source from 14 January 2019,[344] says that with over 25 million likes, the only online post with more likes than the egg is the "Despacito" YouTube music video with 31 million likes; however, the egg as of March 2019 has 54.5 million likes, making it the most-liked online post of all time

References

  1. ^ Jennings, Rebecca (25 February 2019). "How a coat on Amazon took over a neighborhood — and then the internet". Vox. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  2. ^ Bissonnette, Zac (March 2015). "The $12-per-hour Sociology Major Who Made Ty Warner a Billionaire". The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. Penguin Books. pp. 107–121. ISBN 978-1591846024.
  3. ^ Darney, Caroline (5 March 2024). "The hilarious Cerveza Cristal meme that's taken over Twitter, explained". For The Win. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
  4. ^ Kravets, David (5 November 2010). "Cooks Source Copyright Infringement Becomes an Internet Meme". Wired. Archived from the original on 6 November 2010. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  5. ^ Roberts, Caroline (24 December 2006). "Go Elf Yourself!". Bostonist. Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  6. ^ Aditham, Kiran (26 August 2008). "Jason Zada Leaves EVB". Creativity Magazine. Archived from the original on 17 October 2013. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  7. ^ Othmer, James P. (2009). Adland. Vol. 48, Developments in biological standardization. Random House Digital, Inc. pp. 243–250. ISBN 978-0385524964. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  8. ^ Quenqua, Douglas (19 November 2009). "OfficeMax Adds Social Element to Elf Yourself 2009". ClickZ. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
  9. ^ Aarons, Chris; Nelson, Geoff; White, Nick (2011). Social Media Judo. Dog Ear Publishing. pp. 146–156. ISBN 978-1608448852.
  10. ^ Matos, Clinton (17 May 2018). "Phil Swift returns to butcher another boat in the name of Flex Tape". Htxt. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
  11. ^ Popkin, Helen A. S. (7 August 2008). "Sing it, FreeCreditReport.com guy!". NBC News. Archived from the original on 31 December 2014. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  12. ^ Howard, Theresa (31 July 2006). "Headache commercial hits parody circuit, well, HeadOn". USA Today. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
  13. ^ Belsie, Laurent (7 February 2011). "Darth Vader Super Bowl commercial: What happens to child stars in ads?". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
  14. ^ "Super Bowl XLVII: An Event of Epic Proportions". National Football League. 25 January 2013. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
  15. ^ Stone, Brad (18 January 2007). "Don't Like the Dancing Cowboys? Results Say You Do". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  16. ^ Gomes, Lee (9 May 2007). "As Web Ads Grow, Sites Get Trickier About Targeting You". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  17. ^ Saint, Nick (16 July 2010). "How "Old Spice Guy" Took The Internet By Storm". Business Insider. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  18. ^ Sheffield, Matthew (25 October 2016). "Meet Moon Man: The alt-right's racist rap sensation, borrowed from 1980s McDonald's ads". Salon.
  19. ^ Kring-Schreifels, Jake (23 March 2022). "How the Magic of Nicole Kidman's Beloved AMC Commercial Was Made". GQ.
  20. ^ Harvey, Shannon (3 January 2012). "Ad men thrive on Chuck take". The West Australian. Archived from the original on 7 July 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
  21. ^ Johnson, Bailey (20 September 2011). "No, Chuck Testa, thank you". CBS. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
  22. ^ Koman, Tess (9 June 2015). "Would You Send Your Enemies a Potato With a Mean Message?". Cosmopolitan. Hearst. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
  23. ^ Robertson, Lindsey (18 August 2015). "Who knew mailing personalized potatoes could rake in so much cash?". Mashable. Mashable.com. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
  24. ^ Whitten, Sarah (19 August 2015). "This guy makes $10,000 a month shipping potatoes". CNBC. CNBC LLC. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
  25. ^ Plemmons, Mark. "Jeff Gordon Pepsi Max test drive video shot in Concord goes viral". Independent Tribune. Retrieved 7 September 2013.
  26. ^ Pennell, Jay (27 February 2014). "Test drive 2: Jeff Gordon takes reporter for wild ride". Foxsports.com. Archived from the original on 27 February 2014. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  27. ^ Suprak, Nikola (21 December 2014). "EB Games' Rivals Commercial is a Thing of Terrible Beauty". Hardcore Gamer. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  28. ^ Roberts, Tom (7 August 2009). "Viral Video Chart: Mattress dominoes and the weirdest divorce hearing ever". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  29. ^ "What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar?". Warc. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  30. ^ Hobbs, Jack (26 January 2023). "New York Post". Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  31. ^ Miller, Claire Cain (26 September 2010). "To Fix Bad Breath, a Gadget Seen on YouTube". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
  32. ^ O'Brien, Luke (12 January 2011). "Inside Xtranormal's Budding Do-It-Yourself Movie Empire". Fast Company. Retrieved 11 October 2012.
  33. ^ Gamerman, Ellen (11 February 2011). "Animation Nation". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 11 October 2012.
  34. ^ Reppel, Shauna (26 August 2006). "Copy, paste, animate Pop culture crudely skewered in animutation". Toronto Star. p. H3.
  35. ^ Mieszkowski, Katharine; Standen, Amy (26 April 2001). "All hail Neil Cicierega". Salon. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  36. ^ Hepola, Sarah (25 January 2002). "Mutant Genius". Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  37. ^ Carissimo, Justin (29 July 2016). "Arthur memes have officially taken over the Internet". Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  38. ^ Finley, Taryn (29 July 2016). "These Funny As Hell Arthur Memes Will Have You Doubled Over Laughing". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  39. ^ Barry, Dave (1997). Dave Barry in Cyberspace. Fawcett Columbine. p. 155. ISBN 9780449912300.
  40. ^ Garling, Caleb (7 February 2011). "Axe Cop Fan Video Brings Outlandish Webcomic to Life". Wired. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  41. ^ Doctorow, Cory (17 January 2012). "Axe Cop: insane comic collaboration between 5-year-old and his 29-year-old brother". Boing Boing. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  42. ^ Goldberg, Lesley (24 April 2012). "Fox Adapting Web Comic 'Axe Cop' for Saturday Animation Block". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  43. ^ Silverman, Dwight (14 February 2004). "Youth culture finding unity with online animations". Chron. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  44. ^ Staley, Willy (14 January 2019). "All the President's Memes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  45. ^ "Big Chungus Is The Last Great Meme Of 2018". The Daily Dot. 28 December 2018. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  46. ^ Deschamps, Marc (31 March 2021). "Big Chungus Comes to Looney Tunes World of Mayhem". comicbook. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  47. ^ Feldman, Brian. "The Bongo Cat Meme Is Our Light in the Darkness". Select All. Retrieved 27 September 2018.
  48. ^ "Bongo Cat is now so much more than a cat playing the bongos – Independent.ie". Independent.ie. Retrieved 27 September 2018.
  49. ^ 【トレビアン動画】アキバでも垂れ流し!! 中毒動画『ウッーウッーウマウマ(゚∀゚)』 (in Japanese). livedoor news. 11 February 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2009.
  50. ^ 腰クネクネ謎のダンス 「ウマウマ」大流行の兆し (in Japanese). livedoor news. 8 March 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2009.
  51. ^ "「ウッーウッーウマウマ(゚∀゚)」がCD化 販売中止のトランスアルバムが新装復活" (in Japanese). ITmedia. 25 February 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2009.
  52. ^ "Cultural touchstones courtesy of YouTube". The Virginian-Pilot. 21 April 2009. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2008.
  53. ^ McNamara, Paul (16 June 1997). "Baby talk: This twisting tot is all the rage on the 'Net". Network World. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  54. ^ Kleeman, Sophie (17 November 2015). "12 Years Later, Here's What Happened to the Viral Mastermind Behind 'The End of the World'". Retrieved 24 June 2017.
  55. ^ Covucci, David (20 January 2017). "Hokay, so: What does the creator of 'The End of the World' think about Trump?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 June 2017.
  56. ^ Hern, Alex (30 January 2015). "Flash is dead, and YouTube dealt the killing blow". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 June 2017.
  57. ^ G4 official website, the HTF TV series main channel [1] Archived 11 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  58. ^ Dean, Kari Lynn (23 June 2003). "HomestarRunner Hits a Homer". Wired Magazine. Archived from the original on 13 February 2010. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  59. ^ Allen, Jamie (15 May 2000). "Shorts move from film-class project to big time on Web". CNN. Archived from the original on 17 June 2013.
  60. ^ Gunn, Angela (24 August 1999). "Gerbil in a Microwave". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on 24 December 2014. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
  61. ^ The Frog in a Blender Archived 29 April 2010 at the Wayback Machine and Gerbil In A Microwave Archived 18 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Flash animations on joecartoon.com are both credited: " 1999 The Joe Cartoon co."
  62. ^ Morrison, Bruce (21 November 2003). "Internet cartoons represent the best non-porn content on web". TheTigerNews.com. Archived from the original on 5 February 2009. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
  63. ^ "Video – Breaking News Videos from". CNN.com. Archived from the original on 4 June 2010. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
  64. ^ Werman, Marco (18 August 2006). "Global Hit". The World. Public Radio International. Archived from the original (radio) on 1 October 2006. Retrieved 18 August 2006.
  65. ^ "Web Search interest: Loituma, folk music – Worldwide, 2004 – present". Google Trends. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  66. ^ "Як цуп цоп". lurkmore.to. Archived from the original on 18 April 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  67. ^ Feldman, Brian (6 November 2015). "Talking to the Man Behind 'Loss,' the Internet's Longest-Running Miscarriage 'Joke'". New York. Archived from the original on 20 August 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  68. ^ Miller, Ross (2 September 2008). "PAX 2008: The Penny Arcade Interview". Joystiq. Archived from the original on 2 September 2008.
  69. ^ Grayson, Nathan (9 April 2021). "In 2007, Video Game Memes Took A Dark Turn". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 16 May 2021. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
  70. ^ Muncy, Julie (2 June 2018). "One of the 'Net's Longest-Running Webcomics Has Done Something Weird to Its Most Memed Strip". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  71. ^ Feldman, Brian (13 November 2017). "I Have Not Known Inner Peace Since Discovering 'D se Dab'". Intelligencer. Retrieved 10 July 2021.
  72. ^ Wei, William (3 May 2011). "TOP VIRAL VIDEOS OF APRIL: What's A "Nyan Cat"?". The San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on 9 May 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
  73. ^ Oleksiak, Wojciech. "Polandball – A Case Study". Culture.pl. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
  74. ^ Mosendz, Polly (14 March 2016). "How an Internet Cat Craze Became a Toy Empire". Bloomberg Business News. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  75. ^ Belton, Claire (29 October 2013). I am Pusheen the Cat. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1476747019.
  76. ^ Boutin, Paul (9 May 2012). "Put Your Rage into a Cartoon and Exit Laughing". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
  77. ^ Gaudino, Elena (18 January 2010). "Salad Fingers Stream of Consciousness Entertains Viewers". The Daily Campus. Archived from the original on 12 March 2011. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
  78. ^ a b "Zombie Land Saga's Lily Becomes Example in U.K Parliament Talks on Twitter Abuse". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on 27 November 2019. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  79. ^ a b "The Writing on the Wall: Marginalised Communities and Graffiti as Resistance | Cynfas". Museum Wales. Archived from the original on 19 May 2022. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  80. ^ "J.K. Rowling Compares Zombie Land Saga TERF Meme to Anti-Suffragist Art". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on 1 February 2023. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  81. ^ Rodriguez, Krystal (2 June 2016). "Is Simpsonwave a Real Thing?". Thump. Vice Media. Retrieved 4 June 2016.
  82. ^ Gregoris, Michael (9 November 2007). "The evolution of South Park". gazette.uwo.ca. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2009.
  83. ^ Ressner, Jeffrey & Collins, James (23 March 1998). "Gross And Grosser". Time. Archived from the original on 2 January 2010. Retrieved 28 April 2009.
  84. ^ Parker, Ryan (14 April 2021). "'Steamed Hams' at 25: 'Simpsons' Cast and Crew Attempt to Decipher Classic Moment's Extraordinary Cult Following". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
  85. ^ Rogers, Katie (6 August 2016). "Why 'This Is Fine' Is the Meme This Year Deserves". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
  86. ^ "Tuxedo Pooh Bear Is The Latest Meme For You To Chortle Heartily At". Pedestrian TV. 5 April 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  87. ^ "Class things up with this 'fancy' Winnie the Pooh meme". The Daily Dot. 2 April 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  88. ^ "'Fancy Winnie The Pooh' Memes Are Here To Brighten Your Day". NDTV.com. 3 April 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  89. ^ Rempel, Shauna (26 August 2006). "Copy, paste, animate". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 15 June 2013. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
  90. ^ Radulovic, Petrana (28 January 2019). "Powerful Shaggy: an investigation". Polygon. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  91. ^ Anderson, Sage (29 January 2019). "Shaggy from 'Scooby Doo' has extreme powers in this new meme". Mashable. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  92. ^ Asarch, Steven (29 January 2019). "Could Shaggy from Scooby Doo end up in 'Mortal Kombat'?". Newsweek. Retrieved 3 February 2019.
  93. ^ McWhertor, Michael (31 August 2021). "New Mortal Kombat movie canonizes Ultra Instinct Shaggy". Polygon. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  94. ^ Fanelli, Jason (18 November 2021). "Warner Bros. Games Reveals MultiVersus, Makes Ultra Instinct Shaggy Real". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 19 November 2021. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
  95. ^ Cohen, Noah (19 April 2009). "When Pixels Find New Life on Real Paper". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 June 2012.
  96. ^ Glenn, Joshua (6 January 2008). "Questioning authority, one sticker at a time". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012.
  97. ^ Tossell, Ivar (23 October 2008). "Nerd humour hits it big". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 22 June 2012.
  98. ^ "Ghana's dancing pallbearers bring funeral joy". BBC. 26 July 2017. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  99. ^ Amter, Charlie (30 April 2020). "Tracing the 'Coffin Dance' Meme Music's Path From Russia to Ghana to the World". Variety. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  100. ^ Paquette, Danielle (25 April 2020). "The sudden rise of the coronavirus grim reaper: Ghana's dancing pallbearers". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  101. ^ Ermann, Jeff (11 May 2006). "New Chorus Lines". The Washington Post. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
  102. ^ Deutsch, Lindsay (2 April 2014). "National PB&J Day: Dance, sing with banana meme". USA TODAY. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  103. ^ Wood, Molly (15 July 2005). "Top 10 Web Fads". CNET. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
  104. ^ Goodman, Will (12 February 2013). ""The Harlem Shake" phenomenon keeps going strong (with grandmas and military)". CBS News. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  105. ^ Rodriguez, Salvador (3 February 2013). "Forget Nemo: The Harlem Shake storms the Internet". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  106. ^ a b "iHeart Memphis: I Spent $35 Making Hit Song 'Hit the Quan'". Billboard. 21 September 2015. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
  107. ^ "Dwayne Johnson Crushes the 'Hit the Quan' Challenge". Muscle & Fitness. 9 October 2015. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
  108. ^ "Buffalax Mines Twisted Translations for YouTube Yuks". Wired. 6 November 2007. Archived from the original on 4 December 2013. Retrieved 26 March 2008.
  109. ^ Kaufman, Sarah (25 July 2009). "Going to the Chapel & We're Gonna Get Jiggy". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  110. ^ Pitney, Nico (9 October 2009). "The Office Wedding! (VIDEO) Jim & Pam's 'JK' Chris Brown Spoof". Huffington Post. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  111. ^ a b c d "Shiggy on Starting a Viral Dance Challenge For Drake, and His Favorite Celebrity Versions". Billboard. 19 July 2018. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
  112. ^ Hassan, Jennifer. "Arrests, fines and injuries: The 'In My Feelings' challenge has gone global, with dangerous results". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
  113. ^ Phillips, Lior (10 August 2018). "Everybody get up! The dance crazes changing the world". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
  114. ^ Olbermann, Keith (2 October 2006). "'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Sept. 29". NBC News. Retrieved 12 May 2008.
  115. ^ Carlson, Tucker (29 September 2006). "'Tucker' for Sept. 28". NBC News. Retrieved 12 May 2008.
  116. ^ Steinberg, Dan (28 April 2016). "How a forgotten '90s dance hit made these Terps Internet famous". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
  117. ^ Ducey, Kevin (26 April 2016). "The Running Man Challenge died too soon". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
  118. ^ "How the 'T-pose' became a meme". The Daily Dot. 15 May 2018.
  119. ^ "Weezer's "Pork & Beans" Director on the Band's Viral Hit". Rolling Stone. 16 June 2008.
  120. ^ "Cebu inmates going for another YouTube hit". GMA News. 12 August 2007. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  121. ^ Mosqueda, Mars W. Jr. (19 January 2010). "MJ's choreographer trains dancing prison inmates". Manila Bulletin. Archived from the original on 29 January 2010. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  122. ^ "The Delightful Triangle Dance Is the New Viral Craze Getting People Working as a Team". Time. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  123. ^ "Goodbye flossing, the new dance craze is 'the Triangle' – video". the Guardian. 13 March 2019. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  124. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara; Mikkelson, David P. (16 December 2008). "Microsoft/AOL Giveaway". Snopes. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  125. ^ Crabb, Don. "Bill Gates: An Urban Legend in His Own Time." Chicago Sun-Times 15 February 1998
  126. ^ "Flood of postcards continuing after Craig Shergold cured of brain cancer". Kingman Daily Miner. 6 July 1998. Retrieved 14 June 2012.
  127. ^ Jones, Les (12 December 1998). "Good Times Virus Hoax F.A.Q". fgouget.free.fr. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  128. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara; Mikkelson, David P. "Virus Hoaxes & Realities". Snopes. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  129. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara (18 March 2008). "The Obstinate Lighthouse". Snopes.com. Retrieved 17 September 2011.
  130. ^ LoFiego, Mathew (29 March 2009). "Classic Bilge: The Lighthouse vs. The Aircraft Carrier". Military Officers Association of America. Retrieved 20 September 2011.
  131. ^ United States Navy (2 September 2009). "The Lighthouse Joke". Archived from the original on 21 September 2011. Retrieved 17 September 2011.
  132. ^ Rudnitskaya, Alena (2009). The Concept of Spam in Email Communications. GRIN Verlag. p. 6. ISBN 978-3640401574. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  133. ^ Gil, Paul. "The Top 10 Internet/Email Scams". About.com. Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
  134. ^ De Vos, Gail (1996). Tales, rumors, and gossip: exploring contemporary folk literature in grades 7–12. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited (A Member of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.). pp. 21–22. ISBN 1-56308-190-3. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  135. ^ Payton, Dave (29 April 2002). "E-mail puts new life into old Nigerian Scam". Chicago Tribune. p. 2.
  136. ^ Seavers, Kris (7 June 2017). "The Babadook is this year's Pride Month's unofficial mascot". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  137. ^ Stolworthy, Jacob (8 June 2017). "The Babadook is being celebrated as a gay icon". The Independent. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  138. ^ Bucher, Chris (7 June 2017). "'The Babadook' Is an LGBT Symbol: Best & Funniest Memes". Heavy.com. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  139. ^ Whitehead, Mat (8 June 2017). "Just FYI, The Babadook Is A Queer Icon Now". Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  140. ^ Jaworski, Michelle (29 June 2023). "Barbenheimer is the cinematic meme of the summer". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  141. ^ Gregory, Elizabeth (30 June 2023). "Barbenheimer: the internet reacts to the release of both films". Evening Standard. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  142. ^ Purdom, Clayton (17 November 2016). "People are inexplicably flocking to watch Bee Movie at "20,000X speed"". Retrieved 29 November 2016.
  143. ^ Alexander, Julia (23 November 2016). "YouTube removes Bee Movie memes due to its policy on spam, deception and scams (update)". Polygon. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
  144. ^ Shamsian, Jacob (2 December 2016). "This YouTube video that has been viewed over 13 million times could be the heralding of a new meme". INSIDER. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  145. ^ Hathaway, Jay (24 November 2016). "Why is YouTube Killing All These Sweet 'Bee Movie' Memes?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  146. ^ Martineau, Paris (2 November 2017). "A Complete History of Bee Movie's Many, Many Memes". NYMag. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  147. ^ "The Blair Witch Project – Marketing and method". Archived from the original on 23 February 2012.
  148. ^ Reynolds, Shelby (11 August 2015). "Pop culture says hello to 'Bye, Felicia'". Wichita Eagle. McClatchy. Retrieved 30 May 2024.
  149. ^ "Has 'Cloverfield' Jumped the Shark?". Yahoo!. 10 January 2008. Archived from the original on 13 January 2008. Retrieved 10 January 2008.
  150. ^ "Netflix's Dahmer Series Controversy". Time. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  151. ^ Rich, Jameson (13 October 2021). "Do the Memes Help the Movies?". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
  152. ^ Bunz, Mercedes (2 February 2010). "Just how many Hitler videos does the world need?". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  153. ^ Masnick, Mike (22 January 2010). "Director of the Hitler Downfall Movie Likes The Hundreds of Parody Clips". techdirt. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  154. ^ Poole, Oliver (13 December 2002). "Elf who launched a thousand hits". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
  155. ^ Poole, Oliver (11 January 2003). "The elf who turned into a chick magnet". The Age. Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
  156. ^ McNary, Dave (4 April 2011). "'Conchords' star McKenzie an elf in 'The Hobbit'". Variety. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
  157. ^ Kircher, Madison Malone (22 November 2022). "The Fake Scorsese Film You Haven't Seen. Or Have You?". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  158. ^ a b "Martin Scorsese's Goncharov 1973 movie would be box office hit – if it were real". The Focus. 21 November 2022. Retrieved 21 November 2022.
  159. ^ a b "Lost Martin Scorsese movie, Goncharov, takes over the internet". The Digital Fix. 21 November 2022. Retrieved 21 November 2022.
  160. ^ a b Baker-Whitelaw, Gavia (21 November 2022). "Martin Scorsese's 'Goncharov' is the hottest film on Tumblr. It doesn't actually exist". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 21 November 2022.
  161. ^ O'Keefe, Meghan (21 November 2022). "Where to Stream 'Goncharov' (1973), The Mysterious Martin Scorsese Movie Dominating Tumblr". Decider. Retrieved 21 November 2022.
  162. ^ Radulovic, Petrana (21 November 2022). "'Martin Scorsese's lost film' Goncharov (1973), explained". Polygon. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  163. ^ Diaz, Ana (14 August 2023). "TikTok has invented a fake '80s horror movie named Zepotha". Polygon. Retrieved 15 August 2023. Zepotha really just seems like TikTok's take on Goncharov...So far, Zepotha hasn't reached the same depth of planning, and it's prompted a bit of a rivalry between the two films.
  164. ^ Rosenblatt, Kalhan (14 August 2023). "'Zepotha' is social media's favorite film — but it doesn't exist". NBCNews.com. Retrieved 15 August 2023. "Zepotha" is not the first fake film to go viral. Last year, Tumblr users became obsessed with "Goncharov,"...It garnered similar fervor from people online
  165. ^ Kemp, Ellie (15 August 2023). "Who is Emily Jeffri? The independent artist behind TikTok's Zepotha trend". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 16 August 2023. Last winter, a meme of a similar nature...on Tumblr...resulted in the concept of Goncharov
  166. ^ "YouTubers Are Using Memes To Help The Robbie Rotten Actor Fight Cancer". We The Unicorns. 30 November 2016. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  167. ^ "China Web Users Race to Post Censored Video on Lockdown Troubles". Bloomberg News. 23 April 2022.
  168. ^ Lichtenstein, Isabelle (14 July 2021). "One cannot simply separate the Lord of the Rings movies from meme immortality". Polygon. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
  169. ^ McCarter, Reid (1 June 2020). "Sean Bean checking his script in Lord Of The Rings created a classic meme". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
  170. ^ a b Gail Arlene De Vos (2012). What Happens Next?. ABC-CLIO. p. 162. ISBN 9781598846348. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  171. ^ a b Peters, Lucia (14 May 2011). "Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren't: The Marble Hornets Project". Crushable. Archived from the original on 20 January 2013. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  172. ^ Coates, Tyler (10 December 2019). "Marriage Story Proves Anything on Netflix Can Be a Meme Now". Wired. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
  173. ^ Yeo, Michelle (9 December 2019). "'Marriage Story' memes are helping the internet cope with their broken hearts". Mashable. Archived from the original on 25 September 2022. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
  174. ^ Gonzales, Erica (17 December 2019). "The Marriage Story Memes Deserve Just as Many Awards as the Movie". Harper's Bazaar. Archived from the original on 25 September 2022. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
  175. ^ Helling, Steve (15 May 2009). "Deborah Gibson Becomes a Viral Video Star". People Magazine. Archived from the original on 11 May 2011. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
  176. ^ "Minions, explained". 10 July 2015.
  177. ^ "How the Minions Took over the World". BuzzFeed News. 29 June 2017.
  178. ^ "The 'Despicable Me' stars are baffled by the bizarre ways people are using Minions to express themselves". Insider.com.
  179. ^ Murphy, J. Kim (5 July 2022). "The Rise of #Gentleminions: Why Gen-Z Is Wearing Suits to See 'Minions: The Rise of Gru'". Variety. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  180. ^ Shaw, Danny; Baker, Viola (4 July 2022). "Introducing the Australian high school students who started the viral 'gentleminions' trend". The Tab UK. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  181. ^ Strike, Joe (5 July 2011). "Of Ponies and Bronies". Animation World Network. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
  182. ^ Watercutter, Angela (9 June 2011). "My Little Pony Corrals Unlikely Fanboys Known as 'Bronies'". Wired. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  183. ^ Eagen, Daniel (20 June 2012). "Movie Mash-ups That Beat Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter". Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 24 June 2012. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  184. ^ Kornblum, Janet (22 January 2007). "Mashups add splice to movies". USA Today. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  185. ^ "'Scary Poppins' y otros montajes alternativos – CINEMANÍA" (in European Spanish). 1 October 2011. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  186. ^ Roberson, Chris Chan (17 November 2017). "15 Cartoons You Always Said You Hated (But Secretly Watched)". CBR. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  187. ^ Billingsley, Kristen (12 August 2022). "Pingu Is Trending On TikTok Again: How To Use The 'Noot Noot' Filter". ScreenRant. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
  188. ^ The SportsGrail (6 July 2022). "Terrfied Pingu Penguin Noot Noot Viral Meme And Tiktok Trend Meaning Explained". The SportsGrail. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
  189. ^ Washington, Julie (29 January 2010). "A bad movie called 'The Room' is a picture of success". Cleveland Plain Dealer. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  190. ^ Collis, Clark (12 December 2008). "The Crazy Cult of 'The Room'". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 4 November 2019. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  191. ^ Wilkinson, Alissa (2 February 2024). "The Point of 'Saltburn' Isn't What You Think It Is". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  192. ^ "Will TikTok take Saltburn from bathtubs to Baftas?". 16 February 2024. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  193. ^ Gearan, Hannah (25 January 2024). "Saltburn's Internet Sensation Prompts Response From Director". ScreenRant. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  194. ^ Stelter, Brian (13 July 2013). "'Sharknado' Tears Up Twitter, if Not the TV Ratings". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  195. ^ Feldman, Brian (19 July 2016). "America Inspired by Teen Protester's Call at RNC: 'Make Memes Great Again'". New York. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
  196. ^ Amidi, Amid (25 March 2014). "'Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life' by Airplane Randy (NSFW)". Cartoon Brew. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
  197. ^ Alfonso III, Fernando (27 March 2014). "A history of the Internet's freakish obsession with Shrek". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
  198. ^ "'Snakes on a Plane': Phenomenon on the Net". NPR. 26 March 2006. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
  199. ^ a b Aran, Isha (17 June 2016). "SpongeBob may be getting a musical, but the show's real legacy is on the internet". Fusion. Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
  200. ^ Watson, Elijah (13 May 2016). "What makes 'SpongeBob SquarePants' the most memeable cartoon?". Daily Dot. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
  201. ^ McCluskey, Megan (14 December 2016). "These Are the Most 'Googled' Memes of 2016". TIME.com. Retrieved 4 January 2017.
  202. ^ Barnes, Shane (2 June 2016). "Clinton Trounces Trump, a Guide to Primitive Sponge, and More: Today's Recommended Reading". Flavor Wire. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
  203. ^ Tsuji, Alysha (12 May 2017). "This SpongeBob SquarePants meme is taking over the internet, but wHaT DoEs iT mEaN?". For The Win. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  204. ^ Hathaway, Jay (9 May 2017). "'Mocking Spongebob' is the most insulting meme of 2017". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  205. ^ Harbison, Cammy (24 April 2019). "A new line of Spongebob Squarepants Masterpiece Memes figurines bring all your favorite SpongeBob memes to life". Newsweek. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  206. ^ Tigg, Fnr. "Nickelodeon Releases Official Spongebob Meme Figures". Complex. No. 24 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  207. ^ Shanley, Patrick (3 January 2017). "'Revenge of the Sith' Dubbed With Bootleg Chinese Dialogue Is a Fan-Made Masterpiece". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
  208. ^ "Let Us Rejoice That Someone Dubbed The Entire Chinese Bootleg of Revenge of the Sith". io9. 7 January 2017. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
  209. ^ Frank, Allegra (2 January 2018). "The internet revives The Simpsons' greatest joke, 'Steamed Hams' (update)". Polygon. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  210. ^ "Interview: Jason Zada, The Director Behind That Creepy "Take This Lollipop" Website". Indiewire. 20 October 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  211. ^ Shayon, Sheila (18 October 2011). "Take This Lollipop Spooks Facebook Users". Brandchannel. Archived from the original on 4 June 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  212. ^ "Take This Lollipop Facebook App – Creepy Way to Visualize Your Privacy". Social Media Today. 31 October 2011. Archived from the original on 9 August 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  213. ^ Moreno, Denisse (10 January 2018). "'Somebody Touch My Spaghet' Memes Take Over Snapchat, Twitter". International Business Times. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  214. ^ Weber, Lindsey (16 January 2015). "20 Years After Its Release, a Brady Bunch Movie Meme Emerges". Vulture. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  215. ^ Spencer, Ashley (5 August 2021). "'Sure, Jan': How 'A Very Brady Sequel' Became a Trippy, Quippy Cult Classic". VICE. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  216. ^ Underhill, Fiona (1 March 2022). "West Side Story scene goes viral because Spielberg is the GOAT". The Digital Fix. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
  217. ^ Perine, Aaron (26 February 2022). "West Side Story Fans Celebrate Gorgeous Spielberg Cinematography". ComicBook.com. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  218. ^ Massoto, Erick (28 February 2022). "Guillermo del Toro Praises Steven Spielberg's Work on 'West Side Story'". Collider. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
  219. ^ Benner, Jeffrey (23 February 2001). "When Gamer Humor Attacks". Wired. Archived from the original on 28 April 2006. Retrieved 15 May 2006.
  220. ^ Stephan, Bijan (17 February 2021). "All Your Base Are Belong To Us has turned 20". The Verge. Retrieved 17 February 2021.
  221. ^ Garratt, Patrick (19 October 2010). "Android Angry Birds breaks 2 million downloads in 2 days". VG247. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
  222. ^ Patel, Viral (30 May 2018). "Mobile App Growth Study: Why The Angry Birds Are So Popular". Game Developer. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  223. ^ Takahashi, Dean (7 May 2012). "Angry Birds creator Rovio says merchandising is 30 percent of revenue". GamesBeat. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  224. ^ Smith, Mark (25 April 2012). "Angry Birds Land Theme Park Set to Open in Finland". Condé Nast Traveler. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  225. ^ "Angry Birds". KnowYourMeme. 29 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  226. ^ "Realistic Angry Birds". KnowYourMeme. 30 April 2021. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  227. ^ "I'm the Biggest Bird". KnowYourMeme. 6 January 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  228. ^ Lorenz, Taylor (14 October 2020), "With Nowhere to Go, Teens Flock to Among Us – YouTubers, influencers and streamers popularized the multiplayer game. Then their fans started playing too.", The New York Times, archived from the original on 14 October 2020, retrieved 14 October 2020
  229. ^ Rodriguez, Salvador (14 October 2020), "How Amazon's Twitch turned an obscure game called Among Us into a pandemic mega-hit", CNBC, archived from the original on 15 October 2020
  230. ^ Carter, Johnathan Grey (10 December 2011). "Skyrim Fan Takes An Arrow in the Knee". The Escapist. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  231. ^ Silver, Curtis (6 April 2012). "Epic Video: "The Dragonborn Comes" by Peter Hollens & Lindsey Stirling". Wired. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  232. ^ Totilo, Stephen (20 February 2012). "How They Came Up With Skyrim's 'Arrow in the Knee' Line". Kotaku. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  233. ^ Radulovic, Petrana (28 September 2018). "Bowsette: An Investigation". Polygon. Archived from the original on 28 September 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  234. ^ "But Can It Run Crysis? 10 Years Later". Tom's Hardware. 13 November 2017. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  235. ^ "A Catalogue of All the Devices That Can Somehow Run 'Doom'". Motherboard. 8 May 2016. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  236. ^ "Pianos, printers, and other surprising things you can play Doom on". pcgamer. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  237. ^ "But Can It Run Doom?". WIRED. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  238. ^ Lee, Julia (24 February 2020). "How did Animal Crossing's Isabelle and the Doomguy become best friends?". Polygon. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
  239. ^ a b Fenlon, Wes (14 April 2022). "'Let me solo her' is Elden Ring's first legendary player". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  240. ^ Wood, Austin (8 March 2023). "Let Me Solo Her has played Elden Ring for almost 1,000 hours and beaten Malenia over 4,000 times". GamesRadar+. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  241. ^ Dinsdale, Ryan (7 July 2022). "Bandai Namco Sent Let Me Solo Her a Sword In Recognition Of Their Elden Ring Exploits". IGN. Archived from the original on 16 July 2022. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
  242. ^ Dinsdale, Ryan (19 April 2022). "Elden Ring Hero Let Me Solo Her Is Now an NPC Thanks to New Mod". IGN. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  243. ^ Gurwin, Gabe (15 April 2022). "Legendary Elden Ring Player Immortalized As Free 3D-Printed Model". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  244. ^ Colp, Tyler (21 December 2022). "Gamer of the Year 2022: Let Me Solo Her". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 22 December 2022. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
  245. ^ Jiang, Sisi (28 February 2022). "Elden Ring Players Keep Owning Each Other About Being 'Maidenless'". Kotaku. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
  246. ^ Cryer, Hirun (28 February 2022). ""Maidenless" has quickly become the Elden Ring community's most devastating insult". GamesRadar. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
  247. ^ Ellis Hamburger, Ellis (5 February 2014). "Indie smash hit 'Flappy Bird' racks up $50K per day in ad revenue". The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
  248. ^ Nguyen, Lan Anh. "Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App 'Gone Forever' Because It Was 'An Addictive Product'". Forbes. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
  249. ^ Terdiman, Daniel (18 October 2004). "I Love Bees Game a Surprise Hit". Wired. Archived from the original on 10 July 2011. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  250. ^ Good, Owen S. (13 January 2021). "GTA 5's 'Lamar roasts Franklin' meme goes IRL with original actors". Retrieved 23 January 2021.
  251. ^ Boom, Daniel Van. "GTA V's dumbest meme re-created IRL with the game's actual actors". Retrieved 23 January 2021.
  252. ^ "Lamar roasts Franklin again in GTA Online's The Contract update". Retrieved 6 January 2022.
  253. ^ Pearson, Craig (August 2005). "The Ballad of Leeroy Jenkins". PC Gamer UK.
  254. ^ Berg, Madeline (14 October 2015). "The World's Highest-Paid YouTube Stars 2015". Forbes. Retrieved 15 October 2015.
  255. ^ McConnell, Fred (2 January 2014). "Let's Play – the YouTube phenomenon that's bigger than One Direction". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
  256. ^ Ressner, Jeffrey. "The Newest Time Waster: Line Rider". Time. Archived from the original on 21 November 2006. Retrieved 30 April 2006.
  257. ^ Asarch, Steven (9 January 2019). "'That's how mafia works' has become January's biggest meme (sorry Big Chungus)". Newsweek. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  258. ^ Braga, Matt (11 April 2011). "Q&A with Portal 2 writers Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton". The National Post. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  259. ^ Grayson, Nathan (7 February 2012). "Impressions: Skyrim's Portal 2 Mod". GameSpy. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  260. ^ "Gaming's most ridiculous button prompts, including Call of Duty's 'Press F to Pay Respects'". 3 November 2014. Archived from the original on 14 April 2019. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  261. ^ "Madden's Jacksonville tribute stream and a new language of digital mourning". 7 September 2018. Archived from the original on 14 April 2019. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  262. ^ Benenson, Fred (26 July 2011). "Soul-Crushing Realism Is a Videogame Hit". Wired. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  263. ^ Clark, Cindy (19 April 2012). "Kevin Bacon embraces 'six degrees' idea after all". USA Today. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
  264. ^ "How Kevin Bacon sparked a new branch of science". BBC. 5 May 2009. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
  265. ^ Ridley, John (20 December 2005). "IMDb Turns 15 Years Old". NPR. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
  266. ^ Anderson, Sage (9 May 2019). "Voice actors overdubbed the worst 'Sonic' game to make it the best 'Sonic' game". Mashable. Archived from the original on 9 June 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
  267. ^ Arguello, Diego (16 July 2021). "How an online improv group became the 'MST3K' of video games". Inverse. Archived from the original on 27 July 2021. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
  268. ^ Good, Owen S. (26 November 2017). "Sonic Forces pays tribute to Sanic Hegehog meme". Polygon. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  269. ^ Alexander, Julia (8 January 2018). "'Ugandan Knuckles' is overtaking VRChat". Polygon. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  270. ^ "The Ugandan Knuckles, 'do you know de wey' meme explained". USA TODAY. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  271. ^ Britton, David (26 October 2018). "Surprised Pikachu is the internet's new favorite reaction meme". Daily Dot. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  272. ^ "Surprised Pikachu Is Twitter's Latest Favourite Meme". NDTV. NDTV Offbeat Desk. 14 November 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  273. ^ McWhertor, Michael (14 February 2014). "How Twitch is crowd-sourcing an amazing Pokémon multiplayer game". Vox Media. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  274. ^ Frum, Larry (18 February 2014). "Can 80,000 people play this video game together?". CNN. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  275. ^ Sliwinski, Alexander (18 September 2007). "'U R MR GAY' message discovered in Super Mario Galaxy box art". Engadget. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  276. ^ Cundy, Matt (17 September 2007). "Super Mario Galaxy says: U R MR GAY". GamesRadar. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  277. ^ "How a horrible goose topped the gaming chart". BBC. 2 October 2019. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  278. ^ Ohlheiser, Abby; Rao, Sonia (30 September 2019). "Playing 'Untitled Goose Game' is the new punching a wall". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  279. ^ Victor, Daniel (3 January 2022). "Wordle Is a Love Story". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  280. ^ Wakefield, Jane (5 January 2022). "Wordle creator promises viral game will stay simple and ad-free". BBC News. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  281. ^ Tracy, Marc (31 January 2022). "The New York Times Buys Wordle". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 31 January 2022. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  282. ^ Jaworski, Michelle (29 May 2013). ""Baby mugging" isn't what it sounds like". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  283. ^ Varma-White, Kavita (1 April 2014). "Baby Suiting: It's a thing. Share pics of your mini moguls with us". Today Parents. NBC News. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  284. ^ Taylor, Victoria (28 March 2014). "Suit up! New Instagram trend turns babies into mini businessmen". New York Daily News. NYDailyNews.com. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  285. ^ Moye, David (11 January 2016). "Ancient Babylonian Cellphone Isn't Ancient, Babylonian Nor A Nokia". Huffington Post. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  286. ^ "Bert in the frame with Bin Laden". BBC News. 12 October 2001. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
  287. ^ "'Muppet' producers miffed over Bert-bin Laden image". CNN. 11 October 2001. Archived from the original on 2 June 2009. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
  288. ^ "We Talked To The "White Guy" From The White Guy Blinking Meme And He's Blown Away By It". BuzzFeed. 22 February 2017. Archived from the original on 24 February 2017. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
  289. ^ "This salty reaction GIF is the internet's best new meme". Mashable. 17 February 2017. Archived from the original on 19 February 2017. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
  290. ^ "17 Tweets That Prove That GIF of a Dude Blinking Is the Most Relatable Meme Ever". Cosmopolitan. 21 February 2017. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
  291. ^ Biggers, Alana (16 January 2020). "Blue waffle disease: Is it a real STD?". Medical News Today. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  292. ^ Duffy, Eric (3 April 2013). "Trenton councilwoman falls prey to 'blue waffle disease' internet hoax". NJ.com. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  293. ^ "Prankster Leads Trenton Councilwoman To Raise Question About Made-Up 'Disease'". CBS New York. 6 April 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  294. ^ Akbareian, Emma (13 April 2015). "Kim Kardashian recreates iconic Jean-Paul Goude naked 'Champagne Incident' photo". The Independent. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  295. ^ "#BBCtrending: Did Kim Kardashian #breaktheinternet?". BBC. 13 November 2014. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  296. ^ "FACT CHECK: Brian Peppers". Snopes. 24 May 2005. Retrieved 18 July 2018.
  297. ^ "The Daily Dozen". National Geographic. 7 August 2009. Retrieved 28 August 2009.
  298. ^ "Scene-stealing squirrel crashes Banff tourist photo". CBC. 13 August 2009. Archived from the original on 16 August 2009. Retrieved 28 August 2009.
  299. ^ Wells, Jane (20 August 2009). "Can "Crasher Squirrel" Make Money?". CNBC. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  300. ^ Lawrence, Derek (25 September 2017). "A tribute to David Caruso, Horatio Caine's sunglasses, and CSI: Miami cold opens". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  301. ^ Baranowski, Jordan (31 March 2021). "What Happened To The Cast Of CSI: Miami?". Looper. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  302. ^ Wells, Jane (23 January 2012). "CSI Miami: the Funny Years". CNBC. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  303. ^ Hongo, Hudson (30 August 2016). "Cursed Images Is the Last Twitter Account You See Before You Die". Gizmodo. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  304. ^ Dart, Chris (13 May 2016). "Inside Dat Boi, the year's weirdest meme". The A.V. Club.
  305. ^ Klee, Miles (2 May 2016). "Say 'waddup' to Dat Boi, the unicycling frog meme". The Daily Dot.
  306. ^ Feldman, Brian (12 May 2016). "The Strange Journey of 'Dat Boi,' the Year's Best Meme So Far". New York Magazine.
  307. ^ Cook-Wilson, Winston (6 May 2016). "What is 'Dat Boi,' and Why Is It So Sweet?: An Exploration". Inverse.
  308. ^ Peterson, Eric (16 July 2014). "Social media convention in Schaumburg implodes". Chicago Daily Herald. Retrieved 16 July 2014.
  309. ^ "From Trump Nevermind babies to deep fakes: DALL-E and the ethics of AI art". TheGuardian.com. 18 June 2022.
  310. ^ Hathaway, Jay (24 August 2017). "The distracted boyfriend is everyone's favorite new meme". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
  311. ^ Pous, Terri (22 August 2012). "Dogshaming: The Greatest Tumblr of Canine Misbehavior Ever". Time. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
  312. ^ Wickman, Forrest (15 November 2013). "How Do You Pronounce "Doge"?". Slate. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  313. ^ Ritzen, Stacey (13 December 2019). "The 50 memes that defined the decade". Daily Dot. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  314. ^ Soen, Hayley (4 December 2019). "The votes are in: This is officially the best meme of the entire decade". The Tab. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  315. ^ Romano, Aja (18 December 2019). "11 memes that captured the decade". Vox. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  316. ^ Imam, Jareen (26 February 2014). "Man selling home for $135,000 in Dogecoins". CNN. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  317. ^ Bergado, Gabe (18 March 2016). "The Internet has one simple demand: 'Don't talk to me or my son ever again'". Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021.
  318. ^ Ford, Dana (27 February 2015). "What color is this dress?". CNN. Retrieved 28 February 2015.
  319. ^ Rogers, Adam (26 February 2015). "The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress". Wired. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  320. ^ Dover, Sara (27 August 2012). "Ruined fresco draws attention, fans in Spain". CBS News. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  321. ^ Boone, John (24 August 2012). "Jesus Restoration Gone Awry and Five Other Botched Pop-Culture Redos!". E! Online. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  322. ^ Horen, Tom (20 October 2008). "Domo: From underground to advertiser". Star Tribune. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
  323. ^ "Life beyond the meme: what happens after you go viral". BBC Three. 6 March 2019. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
  324. ^ Smolikhina, Ekaterina (1 July 2021). "Знакомьтесь, Шлепа, большой русский кот: как домашний каракал покорил соцсети". amic (in Russian). Retrieved 5 July 2022.[permanent dead link]
  325. ^ Nambiar, Prerna (22 May 2022). "Raise a Floppa creator reveals why the game was deleted from Roblox". HITC. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  326. ^ Kirkpatrick, Stewart (9 June 2004). "Lazy Guide to Net Culture: NSFW". The Scotsman. Archived from the original on 29 June 2012. Retrieved 15 March 2007.
  327. ^ Webb Mitovich, Matt (5 June 2020). "Baby Yoda's Soup-Sipping Moment: How Mandalorian Director Bryce Dallas Howard's Kids Made It Happen". TVLine. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  328. ^ Jain, Sanya (3 December 2019). "These Baby Yoda Memes Are A Big Hit on the Internet". NDTV. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  329. ^ Rosman, Katherine (31 May 2013). "Grumpy Cat Has an Agent, and Now a Movie Deal". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 30 May 2013.
  330. ^ Mezzofiore, Gianluca (17 May 2019). "Grumpy Cat, the grouchy-faced furball that launched a thousand memes, is dead". CNN. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  331. ^ "Hide the pain Harold, the Hungarian internet sensation". Daily News Hungary. 20 January 2018. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
  332. ^ Cavender, Elena (9 June 2022). "Bitch, you better show me the best memes of 2022 (so far)". Mashable. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  333. ^ Krol, Jacklyn (18 May 2022). "The Homophobic Dog Meme, Explained". PopCrush. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  334. ^ "Fact Check-The Washington Post did not publish a headline on a dog becoming the 'new face of online homophobia'". Reuters. 17 May 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  335. ^ Faguy, Ana. "Fact check: Screenshot of purported homophobic dog story is fabricated". USA TODAY. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  336. ^ Spocchia, Gino (18 May 2022). "DeSantis press secretary 'duped' by fake story about 'homophobic dog'". The Independent. Archived from the original on 18 May 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  337. ^ Ibrahim, Nur (17 May 2022). "Did WaPo Publish, 'This Dog is the New Face of Online Homophobia'?". Snopes. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  338. ^ Eveleth, Rose (18 November 2014). "Hurricane Sandy: Five ways to spot a fake photograph". BBC Future. BBC Online. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
  339. ^ Victor, Daniel (30 September 2022). "For Once, the Hurricane Shark Was Real". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 September 2022. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
  340. ^ Hall, Ellie (29 September 2022). "The Hurricane Shark Is Real". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
  341. ^ Tasimone, Ashley (14 January 2019). "An Egg Dethrones Kylie Jenner & Travis Scott's Baby for Most Liked Instagram Photo Ever". Billboard. Archived from the original on 10 April 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  342. ^ Thorne, Dan (14 January 2019). "Egg photo breaks Kylie Jenner's record for most liked image on Instagram". Guinness World Records. Archived from the original on 28 January 2019. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
  343. ^ News Desk (14 January 2019). "'Egg' becomes most-liked Instagram post". Globalvillagespace.com. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  344. ^ Rajghatta, Chidanand (1 July 2007). "Kashmir's 'Rage Boy' invites humour, mirth". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 27 January 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
  345. ^ Henley, Jon (17 March 2009). "What crisis?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 November 2013.
  346. ^ Walker, Rob (1 July 2009). "Remixed Messages". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 November 2013.
  347. ^ Buzz Staff (3 November 2022). "Listenbourg is at the Centre Of a Meme Storm, Here's Why". CNN-News18. New Delhi. Archived from the original on 4 November 2022. Retrieved 25 November 2022.
  348. ^ Brezar, Aleksandar (4 November 2022). "What is Listenbourg? Why is it going viral on Twitter? Why did the meme become so big in Europe?". Euronews. Lyon. Archived from the original on 20 November 2022. Retrieved 25 November 2022.
  349. ^ Coonan, Clifford (16 November 2006). "The new cultural revolution: How Little Fatty made it big". The Independent. Archived from the original on 19 November 2006. Retrieved 21 February 2007.
  350. ^ Macartney, Jane (22 November 2006). "A fat chance of saving face". Times online. Archived from the original on 10 May 2011. Retrieved 21 February 2007.
  351. ^ Lajara, Ivan (13 January 2010). "Life LAJARA: Internet teems with crazy, silly memes". Daily Freeman. Archived from the original on 13 November 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2010.
  352. ^ Richards, Paul (14 November 2007). "Iz not cats everywhere? Online trend spreads across campus". The Daily Pennsylvanian. Archived from the original on 23 August 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2010.
  353. ^ "Манул стал культовым котом Рунета" [The manul has become a cult figure on the Runet]. Postimees. 21 October 2008. Archived from the original on 24 October 2008.
  354. ^ "Кот манул – новая звезда Рунета" [The manul cat is a new star of the Runet]. Argumenty i Facty. 31 October 2008.
  355. ^ "MediaSapiens (radio show)". Moskva.FM. 1 November 2008. Archived from the original on 30 January 2013.
  356. ^ "Степной отшельник". National Geographic (Russia). June 2009. pp. 85–91. Archived from the original on 13 November 2011.
  357. ^ "Талисманом московского зоопарка стал манул" [Manul became the mascot of the Moscow zoo]. 2012. Archived from the original on 29 November 2013. Retrieved 4 July 2013.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  358. ^ [354][355][356][357][358]
  359. ^ Cohen, Ben (8 August 2012). "McKayla Is Not Impressed By This Meme". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 16 August 2012.
  360. ^ 8 September 2012 Updated: 8 September 2012 4:44 pm (9 August 2012). "McKayla Maroney Tumblr Shows She 'Is Not Impressed' With Pretty Much Everything (PHOTOS)". Huffington Post. Retrieved 16 August 2012.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  361. ^ "McKayla Maroney meme goes viral | Photo Gallery". Yahoo! Sports. 9 August 2012. Retrieved 16 August 2012.
  362. ^ Edelman, Scott (14 December 2012). "Spock + Pie = 1 weird website". Blastr. Syfy. Archived from the original on 8 October 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  363. ^ Guzman, René A. (27 April 2010). "Nimoy Sunset Pie: When art meets artifice with Mr. Spock and baked treats". San Antonio Express-News. Hearst Corporation. Archived from the original on 14 April 2021. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  364. ^ Laessig, Gavon (26 April 2010). "Nimoy Sunset Pie". Lawrence.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  365. ^ MelissBuzzFeed (1 May 2010). "Spock Pie [PIC]". BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed, Inc. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  366. ^ Plait, Phil (14 May 2010). "Nimoy. Sunset. Pie". Discover. Kalmbach Publishing. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  367. ^ Schmidt, Mackenzie (21 May 2010). "Your New Favorite Non-Bro Meme: Nimoy Sunset Pie". The Village Voice. Village Voice, LLC. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  368. ^ Hogstrom, Erik (19 August 2007). "Cat-tales". Telegraph-Herald. Dubuque, Iowa. Archived from the original on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 7 March 2010.
  369. ^ Boxer, Sarah (25 May 2003). "Prospecting for Gold Among the Photo Blogs". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  370. ^ Khan, Imad (12 April 2015). "4chan's Pepe the Frog is bigger than ever—and his creator feels good, man". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  371. ^ Kiberd, Roisin (9 April 2015). "4chan's Frog Meme went Mainstream, So They Tried to Kill It". motherboard.vice.com. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  372. ^ "The Creator of Pepe the Frog Talks About Making Comics in the Post-Meme World". VICE. 28 July 2015.
  373. ^ Notopoulos, Katie (11 May 2015). "1,272 Rare Pepes". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  374. ^ Eördögh, Fruzsina (22 May 2015). "With all its political bluster, Anonymous can't shake its 'prankster' past". Archived from the original on 3 June 2015. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  375. ^ "Te Pepe". New Zealand Government. Archived from the original on 7 January 2016.
  376. ^ "New Zealand flag designs: Kwi, piwi or kiwi?". The Sydney Morning Herald. 16 May 2015.
  377. ^ Hunt, Elle (15 May 2015). "New Zealand's new flag: 15 quirky contenders". the Guardian.
  378. ^ "McDonald's racist Twitter message was hoax". CBS News. 15 June 2011. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  379. ^ a b Leston, Ryan (23 February 2022). "Marvel Releases the 'Spider-Man Pointing' Meme... in Live-Action". IGN. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  380. ^ a b Yehl, Joshua (21 December 2018). "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse End Credits Scene Explained". IGN. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  381. ^ Dennin, James (August 2019). "The 'stonks' meme can teach you a lot about the stock market". Mel Magazine. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  382. ^ Lupkin, Sydney (14 April 2015). "Success Kid's Dad Needs a Kidney Transplant". ABC News. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  383. ^ Thaitrakulpanich, Asaree (11 February 2017). "Thainet Flips Out Over Headbanging Bird". Khaosod English. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  384. ^ "Trash Dove is spreading like a virus. Can Facebook do anything to stop it?". The Daily Dot. 14 February 2017. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  385. ^ "Facebook sticker "Trash Dove" floods comment conversations on social media". cleveland.com. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  386. ^ "What does this purple bird mean?". BBC News. 14 February 2017. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  387. ^ "What's up with this purple bird that is all over your Facebook?". The Daily Dot. 14 February 2017. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  388. ^ Cresci, Elena (15 February 2017). "Trash dove: how a purple bird took over Facebook". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  389. ^ "Trash Doves: The Purple Floppy Bird Flocking Your Facebook Newsfeed". Huffington Post Australia. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  390. ^ Palosaari, Ben (12 August 2008). "Being Tron Guy". City Pages. Archived from the original on 9 March 2010. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  391. ^ Ross, Nick (19 June 2011). "Vancouver Riot Kiss becomes internet meme". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
  392. ^ Gadre, Soham (4 April 2020). "Inside the Male-Dominated Meme Hijacked by Lib-Bashing Trumpsters". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  393. ^ Myers, Quinn (4 December 2020). "HOW WOJAK MEMES TOOK OVER THE INTERNET". MEL Magazine. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  394. ^ "El origen del meme de la mujer exaltada y el gato malvado". Semana (in Spanish). Bogotá: Publicaciones Semana. 31 August 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  395. ^ Mitchell, Amanda (8 November 2019). "What is The Cat Meme, and Why Is That Woman Yelling? An Explanation of the Hilarious Viral Moment". The Oprah Magazine. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  396. ^ "'The worst person you know': the man who unwittingly became a meme". The Guardian. 19 June 2022. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
  397. ^ Zargoza, Alex (27 March 2020). "The Untold Story of Wood, the Well-Endowed Man From Those Coronavirus Texts". VICE. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  398. ^ Radulovic, Petrana (6 September 2019). "The best memes of 2019, so far". Polygon. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  399. ^ Brinkhof, Tim (27 May 2024). "Art Behind the Meme: Two Comical Portraits of a Serious English Scholar". Artnet News. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
  400. ^ Browne, David (24 September 2019). "The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  401. ^ "Surreal Memes Are the Last Escape the Internet Has". www.vice.com. July 2017. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
  402. ^ Messina, Victoria. "This Sensually Sassy Chef Just Set the Internet on Fire With a Hilarious New Meme". POPSUGAR Tech. Retrieved 24 January 2017.
  403. ^ Lang, Cady (23 January 2017). "The Salt Bae Meme Has Inspired a Portrait Made of Real Salt". TIME.com. Retrieved 24 January 2017.
  404. ^ Burton, Monica (6 February 2018). "What the Critics Are Saying About Salt Bae's NYC Restaurant". Eater. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  405. ^ "What it's like to become a stock photo meme". The Independent. 1 July 2017. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  406. ^ onBRANDS (6 September 2019). "A COCA-COLA HAZAI REKLÁMARCA LETT HIDE THE PAIN HAROLD". ONBRANDS – ÉRTÉK ALAPON (in Hungarian). Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  407. ^ "Fake Putin arrest video becomes online hit". Yahoo! News. 16 February 2012. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
  408. ^ "'Arrest of Vladimir Putin' Video Goes Viral in Russia". International Business Times. 16 February 2012. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
  409. ^ Kaufman, Leslie (30 October 2013). "Making Silly Showdowns for YouTube". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
  410. ^ a b Hess, Amanda (9 February 2016). "The Bernie vs. Hillary meme is weird, ceaseless, and kind of sexist, just like the 2016 campaign". Slate. The Slate Group. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  411. ^ Lewis, Gabriella (20 March 2016). "We Asked an Expert if Memes Could Determine the Outcome of the Presidential Election". Vice. Vice Media. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  412. ^ a b Sanders, Sam (5 February 2016). "#MemeOfTheWeek: Bernie Or Hillary. Sexist Or Nah?". NPR Politics. NPR. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  413. ^ Millstein, Seth (16 January 2017). "The 15 All-Time Best Joe Biden Memes, Ranked". Bustle. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  414. ^ Feldman, Brian (28 July 2016). "[Grabs Podium], the Best Vice-Presidential Meme, Faces Down the Tim Kaine Era". Intelligencer. New York. Archived from the original on 13 November 2018. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
  415. ^ McNear, Claire (28 July 2016). "Joe Biden's Final Great Moment". The Ringer. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  416. ^ Willingham, AJ (14 November 2016). "The 11 Best Joe Biden Memes as America Says Bye to its Uncle in Chief". CNN. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  417. ^ Wallace, Lewis (16 December 2008). "Bush Shoe-Toss Immortalized in Games, Animations". Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  418. ^ YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day. John Wiley & Sons. 2009. pp. 142–143. ISBN 978-0-470-45969-0. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
  419. ^ Murray, Mark (18 January 2019). "As Howard Dean's 'scream' turns 15, its impact on American politics lives on". NBC News. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  420. ^ Gilbert, Jason; Chiel, Ethan; Matthews, David. "The 10 Best 'delete Your Account' Tweets of Twitter's First 10 Years". Fusion. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  421. ^ Lang, Cady (9 June 2016). "Hillary Clinton Tweets 'Delete Your Account' to Donald Trump". TIME.com. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  422. ^ Victor, Daniel (9 June 2016). "Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump: 'Delete Your Account'". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  423. ^ Stirland, Sarah Lai (19 September 2007). ""Don't Tase Me, Bro!" Jolts the Web". Wired. Retrieved 9 October 2007.
  424. ^ Ngak, Chenda (31 August 2012). "Eastwood's speech sparks Twitter trend, "Eastwooding" photo meme". CBS News. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  425. ^ Ortiz, Erik (31 August 2012). "Clint Eastwood inspires 'Eastwooding': Social media users upload empty chair pics online". New York Daily News. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  426. ^ Tsukayama, Hayley (31 August 2012). "#Eastwooding is the Twitter meme of the day". The Washington Post. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  427. ^ Khawaja, Jemayel (10 December 2019). "'Jeffrey Epstein Didn't Kill Himself' Is Peak Meme After Art Basel Prank". Variety. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  428. ^ Simon, Scott; Caldwell, Don (16 November 2019). "Epstein's Death Becomes A Meme". NPR. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  429. ^ Grey Ellis, Emma (15 November 2019). "'Epstein Didn't Kill Himself' and the Meme-ing of Conspiracy". Wired. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  430. ^ White, Abbey (5 January 2020). "Golden Globes: Read Ricky Gervais' Scathing Opening Monologue". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  431. ^ "Finland churns out hilarious memes mocking Trump's raking comment". SFChronicle.com. 19 November 2018. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  432. ^ Bai, Matt (19 November 2006). "The Last 20th-Century Election?". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  433. ^ Wilson, Jason (23 May 2017). "Hiding in plain sight: how the 'alt-right' is weaponizing irony to spread fascism". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  434. ^ Zhou, Naaman (20 December 2018). "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him: the evolution of one of 2018's best memes". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 February 2024.
  435. ^ Gay, Mara (9 February 2010). "Bush Billboard Poses $64,000 Question". Aol News. Archived from the original on 20 June 2010.
  436. ^ ""Miss Me Yet?" Bush Merchandise a Hit Online". CBS News. 31 May 2012. Archived from the original on 23 March 2010. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  437. ^ Bushard, Brian. "Trump Mug Shot Memes: Here Are The Most Popular Ones Flooding The Internet". Forbes. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  438. ^ Dashevsky, Evan (5 June 2014). "A Remembrance and Defense of Ted Stevens' 'Series of Tubes'". Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  439. ^ "A History of Internet Fads And Trends". 7 August 2008. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  440. ^ Feldmann, Linda (12 December 2011). "'Perrodies'? How Rick Perry ad spawned a viral Internet sensation". The Christian Science Monitor.
  441. ^ Barthel, Mike (9 December 2011). "Why Do People Want Rick Perry To Be More "Disliked" Than Rebecca Black?". Village Voice. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  442. ^ Sanders, Sam (26 February 2016). "#MemeOfTheWeek: Ted Cruz and the Zodiac Killer". NPR. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  443. ^ Schwarz, Hunter (13 February 2015). "'Thanks Obama.' The evolution of a meme that defined a presidency". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 15 September 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  444. ^ Graham, Jefferson (11 December 2009). "JibJab satirists turn to e-card genre". USA Today. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  445. ^ "Theresa May quits: PM's most memorable moments". BBC News. 7 June 2019. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  446. ^ Mills, Jen (17 July 2019). "Theresa May really regrets that 'field of wheat' confession". Metro. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  447. ^ Haas, Benjamin (7 August 2018). "China bans Winnie the Pooh film after comparisons to President Xi". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  448. ^ Galvez, Daphne (20 November 2018). "Xi the Pooh memes swamp PH social media". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  449. ^ Ritzen, Stacey (24 May 2019). "How 'and I oop' became the perfect reaction meme for shocking developments". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 13 July 2019.
  450. ^ "April the Giraffe live stream set to end today". Associated Press. 21 April 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
  451. ^ Alfonso III, Fernando (2 March 2020). "How the 'banana for scale' became the yardstick of the Internet". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 28 October 2020. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  452. ^ Van Allen, Eric (28 October 2017). "The Zelda Ghost Story That Helped Define Creepypasta". Kotaku. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  453. ^ a b "Binod: The most bizarre meme trend of the year". The Times of India. 9 August 2020. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  454. ^ "'What is Binod': Know about viral trend that made it to Google's 'Year in search' list". Hindustan Times. 10 December 2020. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  455. ^ a b "Netflix India makes 'Binod' memes on 'Stranger Things', 'Sex Education', netizens have a hearty laugh". The Economic Times. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  456. ^ Spence, Shay. "People Are Trolling Cracker Barrel's Facebook Page After an Alleged Employee Firing". People. Meredith Corporation. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
  457. ^ Saggio, Jessica. "BDB: People are STILL trolling Cracker Barrel, the road closure saga continues and an epic video". Florida Today. USA Today. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
  458. ^ Wieczner, Jen. "These Companies Are Hiring Brad's Wife After Cracker Barrel Fired Her". Fortune. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
  459. ^ Dewey, Caitlin (17 June 2015). "Comment: The fascinating, feel-good psychology of Internet cat videos". SBS. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  460. ^ Yang, Jeff (17 May 2019). "Grumpy Cat may be gone, but our obsession with internet cats will never die". CNN. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  461. ^ Williams, Rhiannon (19 February 2014). "Top 10 internet cats hall of fame". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  462. ^ Farhi, Paul (2 January 2006). "Tough Love: Norris Fans Board the Chuck Wagon". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 January 2013.
  463. ^ Considine, Austin (12 November 2010). "Bored at Work? Try Creepypasta, or Web Scares". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  464. ^ Romano, Aja (17 August 2016). "Harambe the gorilla is still dead. But Harambe the meme won't die". Vox. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  465. ^ Feldman, Brian (27 July 2016). "The Dark Internet Humor of Harambe Jokes". Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  466. ^ "Conservative influencers are using AI to cover up photos of sex workers".
  467. ^ "4Chan Chuds Used AI to Clothe Her. She Fought Back". Rolling Stone.
  468. ^ Crear, Simon (19 November 2012). "Cute Melbourne safety video Dumb Ways to Die becomes internet smash". Herald Sun. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  469. ^ Popper, Ben (20 February 2017). "Adults dressed as superheroes is YouTube's new, strange, and massively popular genre". The Verge. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
  470. ^ Munzenrieder, Kyle (12 May 2015). "How Florida's Proud Open Government Laws Lead to the Shame of "Florida Man" News Stories". Miami New Times.
  471. ^ Siegel, Robert (14 February 2013). "'Florida Man' On Twitter Collects Real Headlines About World's Worst Superhero". National Public Radio. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  472. ^ Hill, Logan (15 July 2019). "Is It Okay to Laugh at Florida Man?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  473. ^ Clarke, Jeremy (27 June 2005). "Treasure or trash?". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 14 November 2012.
  474. ^ Tiffany, Kaitlyn (17 September 2016). "What to do when pop culture forgets your favorite meme". The Verge. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  475. ^ Sommer, Liz (14 August 2020). "What Is Stick Bugging? – Get Stick Bugged LOL". StayHipp. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
  476. ^ "Irate Uber Driver Is Caught On Tape: 'Get Out Of My Car NOW!' – CBS Los Angeles". www.cbsnews.com. 13 July 2016. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  477. ^ "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?". thisman.org. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
  478. ^ Orlean, Susan (24 September 2013). "Horse_ebooks is human after all". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 25 June 2014. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  479. ^ Meyer, Robinson (24 September 2013). "@Horse_Ebooks Is the Most Successful Piece of Cyber Fiction, Ever". The Atlantic. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  480. ^ "Hou de Kharcha". The Indian Express. 24 November 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  481. ^ Andrews, Robert (30 June 2005). "Misery Loves (Cyber) Company". Wired. Archived from the original on 10 January 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
  482. ^ Shamsian, Jacob. "The bizarrely catchy 'Johny Johny Yes Papa' meme is freaking people out". Insider. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
  483. ^ "ligma Meaning | Pop Culture by Dictionary.com". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  484. ^ Heath, Alex (28 October 2022). "People are pretending to be laid-off Twitter employees carrying boxes outside of HQ". The Verge. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  485. ^ "The Most Awesomest Thing Ever? Website Lets Users Decide – TIME". 22 April 2010. Archived from the original on 22 April 2010. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  486. ^ "Most Awesomest Thing Ever". mostawesomestthingever.com. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  487. ^ Roose, Kevin (27 August 2015). "'Netflix and chill': the complete history of a viral sex catchphrase". Fusion.net. Archived from the original on 28 August 2015. Retrieved 14 November 2015.
  488. ^ Rickett, Oscar (29 September 2015). "How 'Netflix and chill' became code for casual sex". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 November 2015.
  489. ^ Caesar, Chris (20 November 2017). "So many world maps forget New Zealand it's now become a hilarious meme". Mic.
  490. ^ "Man turns paper clip into house". BBC UK. 11 July 2006. Retrieved 21 July 2009.
  491. ^ "The lying down game: how to play". The Daily Telegraph. 9 September 2009. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  492. ^ Inside 'reality shifting', the trend where TikTokers claim they can enter the world of Harry Potter, 17 July 2021, retrieved 28 December 2022
  493. ^ Nussenbaum, Evelyn (24 March 2008). "The 80's Video That Pops Up, Online and Off". The New York Times.
  494. ^ "Videogyan Kid's channel". 22 July 2021. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  495. ^ Eichler, Alex (21 February 2010). "Enter the SCP Foundation's Bottomless Catalog of the Weird". io9. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  496. ^ a b Baker-Whitelaw, Gavia. "Meet the secret foundation that contains the world's paranormal artifacts". Daily Dot. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  497. ^ "Welcome to the Ethics Committee" Archived 16 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine, at Belfield FM/UCD Student Radio; by Una Power; published 8 October 2014; retrieved 15 April 2015
  498. ^ Watts, Rachel (10 July 2020). "Meet Siren Head, a horrifying monster haunting the internet". PC Gamer. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  499. ^ @slimyswampghost (1 May 2020). "Just to clarify, Sirenhead is not and never was an SCP! Nothing against them, I just want to keep him his own thing" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  500. ^ "Sirenhead". SCP Foundation. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  501. ^ Cerastes (10 May 2020). "SCP-5987 – Sirenhead". SCP Foundation.
  502. ^ Panecasio, Steph. "TikTok Is Playing 'Smash or Pass' With Disney Filters". CNET. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  503. ^ Baker-Whitelaw, Gavia (17 November 2013). "The saga of Spiders Georg, Tumblr's weirdest phenomenon". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  504. ^ "This Meme Is A Reminder You Really Can't Trust Facts You Read On The Internet". HuffPost. 3 June 2014. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  505. ^ Jones, Feminista (2014). "What's the Deal With "Steak and Blow Job Day"?". SheKnows Media. Archived from the original on 1 August 2018.
  506. ^ Matei, Adrienne (17 July 2019). "1.5 million people have signed up to storm Area 51. What could go wrong?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  507. ^ Baynes, Chris (21 September 2019). "Storm Area 51: Hundreds of people gather at US military base to 'see them aliens'". The Independent. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
  508. ^ Zialcita, Paolo (20 September 2019). "'Storm Area 51' Fails To Materialize". NPR. Retrieved 4 October 2019.
  509. ^ "Surreal memes deserve their own internet dimension". Mashable. 6 February 2019. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  510. ^ "Student's cash-raising net scheme". BBC. 22 September 2005. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  511. ^ Emery, Daniel (21 May 2009). "Joke review boosts T-shirt sales". BBC.
  512. ^ Gannes, Liz (1 May 2014). "Throwing Back to the Origins of Throwback Thursday". Vox. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  513. ^ Kooser, Amanda (29 November 2017). "Hell in a Cell: The surprising story behind the Reddit meme". Cnet. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  514. ^ Zara, Christopher (29 October 2019). "Vibe check diagnosis: Now there's a viral 'test' to go along with the viral meme". Fast Company. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  515. ^ Vary, Adam (20 November 2020). "Meet the Man Behind the 'Vibe Check' TikTok Videos Taking the Internet by Storm". Variety. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  516. ^ Brown, Damon (9 July 2010). "Vuvuzela chorus may peak online Sunday". CNN. Archived from the original on 2 September 2010. Retrieved 3 December 2010.
  517. ^ Frank, Sarah (9 July 2010). "Requiem for a Bzzzzzzzzz". Newsweek. Retrieved 3 December 2010.
  518. ^ Watson, Calum; Mckinnon, Morven; Bonar, Megan (1 March 2024). "Willy Wonka experience: How did the viral sensation go so wrong?". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2 March 2024. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  519. ^ Salam, Maya; Victor, Daniel (15 May 2018). "Yanny or Laurel? How an Audio Clip Divided the Internet". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  520. ^ Stryker, Cole (2011). Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan?s Army Conquered the Web. Penguin. ISBN 9781590207383.