An Internet phenomenon is akin to a fad, in which something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, but usually for a short duration of time. It is nearly impossible to accurately measure the depth of a phenomenon's popularity, and different groups of the Internet may participate more than others. The Internet's lack of physical boundaries leads to a much faster and wider spread of information and ideas, especially when the subject is based around humor or curiosity. Most Internet phenomena can be often seen as good examples of memes, the self-propagating ideas.

In literature, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition an interesting kind of Internet phenomenon — "the footage" — plays an important role.

Internet phenomena include:

Videos

• Bubb Rubb — a man who rose to fame thanks to a humorous local TV broadcast where he was interviewed on the topic of whistle tips
• Chin2, supposedly Korean kids dancing topless in front of a mirror
• Numanuma, an overweight kid (Gary Brolsma) singing along to a Romanian techno song
• The Star Wars Kid, a video digitally edited numerous times of a Quebecois teenager pretending to be Darth Maul

Animation-based

• Absurdist Flash animations such as "The Demented Cartoon Movie" [1] and "Madness"
• Animutations
• Badger Badger Badger
• Bananaphone
• Dancing baby, a 3D-rendered dancing baby.
• Group X — makers of the songs Bang Bang Bang and SchfiftyFive, adapted into Flash
• Homestar Runner
• JibJab [2], a Web site featuring many cartoons including those that satirize the 2004 Presidential Election
• The Hamster Dance a page filled with animated GIFs of hamsters, linking to other animated pages. It now has its own CD soundtrack.
• Peanut Butter Jelly Time A dancing banana singing about peanut butter and jelly.
• Salad Fingers
• Weebl and Bob
• Zombo.com, parodies the dot-com boom

Anime

• Nevada-tan — An imageboard meme featuring CG artwork of a Japanese schoolgirl who murdered her classmate
• OS-tan (http://nijiura-os.hp.infoseek.co.jp/) — operating systems personified as cute mascots by various Japanese artists

Photos

• Clock Spider, who "ate" a clock and fought Limecat
• Limecat, a cat with a lime on its head
• Pancakebunny , a bunny with a pancake on its head
• Moshzilla, a girl moshing at a show
• Oolong the Rabbit — a Japanese rabbit whose owner placed various objects on top of its head and then posted pictures
• Tubcat, a very fat cat

Shock sites

• Goatse.cx — a shock site frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels.
• Tubgirl — a shock site frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels.
• Lemonparty — a shock site frequently linked from Internet forums and IRC channels.

Websites

• Emotion Eric
• Wikipedia

Personal sites

• Hello My Future Girlfriend (http://www.pr0k.net/thechilde/)
• Mahir Cagri — personal website of a Turkish man; has received mass adoration by fans, mainly for its overly enthusiastic text.

Fan sites

• Real Ultimate Power, devoted to ninjas

• Big Trouble in Little China, devoted to the best movie Jack Burton ever starred in.

Blogs

• Rachelle Waterman — "Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered." Over 5,000 comments in her LiveJournal blog

• Currently Stationary — The original Engrish cult classic

• The Best Page in the Universe — 100 000 000+ visits to a website operated by a pirate.

Audio

• Kerpal — "You kicked my dog!" prank call
• Jared: Butcher of Song

Advertising

• Anabukinchan
• The Spongmonkeys
• The Subservient Chicken
• Whazzup? (http://www.bud-true.com/pages/movies7.htm) — Budweiser commercial series that took a new life when it was parodied with the SuperFriends (http://whassup.com/spoofs/whassup.mpg)

Uncategorized

• All your base are belong to us — a phrase from the English translation of the video game Zero Wing, adapted into a popular Flash animation.
• The Blindfolded Pianist
• Boilerplate
• Bonsai Kitten
• Ceciliantas — an EverQuest II player whose "cybering" was revealed by screenshots from an invisible player in the same room
• Exploding whale
• The End of the World — a flash animation using Group X-style voices.[3]
• Hopkin green frog
• Kurt Vonnegut's supposed 1997 "wear sunscreen" commencement address at MIT, widely circulated on the Internet. In fact, the commencement speaker at MIT in 1997 was Kofi Annan and the putative Vonnegut speech was an article published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997 by columnist Mary Schmich.
• MC Hawking
• Mr. T Ate My Balls — a Yahoo! site with images of Mr. T, captioned with various absurd and questionable statements. Repeatedly done with other subjects, both fictional and non-fictional. Spawned an entire Yahoo! category under Tasteless Humor → Ate My Balls.
• Neurocam — neurocam.com, art project / social experiment / life role play
• Red vs Blue — a popular machinima using the Microsoft Halo video game engine. A popular, fan-created outgrowth is Sponsors vs Freeloaders
• Tai Mai Shu
• Timecube The profound yet incoherent rantings of a schizophrenic philosopher.
• The individual articles from The Best Page in the Universe often spread memetically.
• Tourist guy (http://www.touristofdeath.com) — the same person Photoshopped into photos of different events, mostly disasters.
• The eBay auction of a 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich with a supposed semblance to the Virgin Mary
• Yatta
• Leet speak and AOL speak may also be considered forms of memetic Internet phenomenon.
• There Is No Cabal - a phrase used on Usenet.

Resources

• TCFB