Top 12 Internet Memes and Phenomena

There is nothing better than a good old fashioned Internet Meme or Phenomena, they single handedly make the days in the office fly by. Think about it, without them, we might actualy have to do real work! So, to celebrate, Lisa Dib has tracked down twelve of the best – and boy, are they great!

Lolcats

The seemingly effortless act of attaching amusing, often incoherent captions to pictures of cats (and, later, dogs, politicians, celebrities and everything in between) has become one of the most famous artefacts of the Internet generation.

Lolcats are an example of an ‘image macro’, which originated (where else?) on the Something Awful forums, wherein a user utilises an image, accompanied with comical and/or situational text.

Alright, when you look at it like that, it doesn’t sound that funny. But you can’t say with conviction that you haven’t spent an inordinate amount of valuable time looking at cute cats asking for cheezburgers and noms.

Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday

“Chocolate rain, some stay dry but others feel the pain…” begins the oddly baritone-d Tay Zonday, known to his mama as Adam Nyerere Bahner.

Written by Bahner, Chocolate Rain employs but one digital piano and a host of socially-conscious euphemisms. The viewer skitters between genuine empathy with the young Bahner and discomfited giggling; especially when he *moves away from the mic to breathe in.

PostSecret

Since the Internet’s glorious birth at the hands of Al Gore (citation needed), it has long been a sordid and hilarious dumping ground for people’s problems; big and tall, short and small. PostSecret is a comfy, somewhat cutesy blog, wherein strangers post their secrets (it’s all in the name, eh) on dainty postcards for the world wide web to see.

Often, the aim of this discomforting activity is, for the poster, to dislodge these painful/humiliating/illegal secrets from their conscience; by sending them out into the faceless, nameless world of the Net; they are somehow freed from their sins and sorrows. The reader, obviously, gets a great bittersweet joy out of scoping out the misery of others (which, as humans, we are oft to do) and might, perhaps, find an anonymous kindred spirit amongst it all. And I mean all.

Two Girls, One Cup

Some moments belong to the ages: the fall of the Berlin Wall, man landing on the Moon, the time you found a twenty in some old pants. These are moments one retains and, like losing your virginity or smashing your head on a rake, you will remember your first time with Two Girls, One Cup.

I refuse to add a link because that would mean looking for it and almost, maybe slightly, watching it. I love the Internet, and for a few minutes, it betrayed me. I forgave it, but I have never really forgotten that night.

I do not recommend you seek out this video: I have perhaps only spurred on your curiosity with my vagueness and mystery but, I promise you, you can live the rest of your life without seeing this ungodly display.

You have been warned.

Demotivational posters

Pretty standard: the long-douchey art of coupling scenic hi-res photographs of flowing rivers, national icons bathed in the colours and shades of sunset or graceful gazelle in glorious mid sprint with attached words of wisdom: “PERSEVERENCE: Be What You Desire” et al.

Usually found in uncreative offices and homes of the middle-aged, these omnipresent glossies usually serve to motivate even less than their Internet-sanctioned counterpart. Demotivational posters are much like Lolcats: images (usually amusing) coupled with humorous observations.

See, it’s not just porn on the Internet

Seven-Legged Spider

The Seven-Legged Spider is an example of the good humour, rather than disgusting stupidity and ignorance, of humankind. Adelaide’s David Thorne invented the doodle, sending it to a utility company in lieu of bill payment.

It sounds more like the act of a derelict that spent their fortnightly pay on Asti Spumante rather than rent, but it serves to brighten, as well as amuse. The spider itself is an adorable cartoon and the email correspondence between Thorne and the company rep is terribly amusing, especially because Thorne maintains the correspondence is totally real.

Salad Fingers

Salad Fingers is not, as the name suggests, a kitchen tool. He (using the term loosely) is a character created by cartoonist David Firth on his site, Fat Pie (a word to the faint of heart: don’t type the url without the hyphen; my god, just don’t do it).

Along with other Firth characters Burnt Face Man and Salisbury Toast Boy, Salad Fingers is a deeply worrying visage. He spends his days in a decrepit shack, befriending bugs and radio noises, fantasising about taps and fossicking for nettles and rusty kitchenware with which he might pleasure himself.

Some viewers have found Salad Fingers nightmarish; others hilarious; most, a disconcerting combination of both, with a dash of British verbosity.

Benny Lava

No, not a superhero. Benny Lava is a Hindi music video (specifically, a song and dance scene of an Indian film) that YouTube impresario Buffalax has taken into his own golden hands. Buffalax has added English subtitles to the Hindi-language clip, but the subtitles reflect only what Buffalax himself hears in the video.

So, rightly, the subtitles are often crude, hilarious, nonsensical and brilliant.

But the Buffalax addition is merely the sweet, sweet icing on an already delicious cake; Benny Lava (or, TITLE OF ACTUAL BENNY LAVA video) portrays an Indian couple dancing and singing in the throes of magical romance, as only an Indian musical can portray. I swear, I couldn’t bust some of those moves with a robot pelvis.

FAIL

The normally saddening prospect of failing has now become a comical Internet commodity. Fail Blog utilises the endless, boundless stupidity of others for the amusement of we, the blogosphere patrons.

Think of it as a cruder, funnier Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.

Numa Numa

As usual, the Internet proves what we all already thought: people love to laugh at silly fat guys.

Chris Crocker

The world has never really known what to make of Chris Crocker. When he uploaded a tearful, hysterical video of himself to his YouTube account wherein he hid under a sheet and berated the world for its treatment of pop starlet (or, word similarly rhyming…) Britney Spears, some of us laughed.

Some of us cringed and watched kittens instead.

But all of us wondered; “Is this guy for real?” we thought, as Crocker’s eyeliner-stained cheeks filled our screens. This hugely effete psychopath: can we trust him?

When digging deeper into Crocker’s YouTube resume, the legitimacy of the Britney video slowly drains away, and the average surfer (of the Net, not the waves; savvy?) is able to see through the veneer of Crocker’s shtick.

And here I thought the insane market was already dominated by Lindsay Lohan.

FML

‘FML’ is a phrase you might have heard by now from uber-Net-savvy friends. FML stands for, simply, “Fuck My Life”; an adage whose origination is attributed to a website that collates and displays stories that readers send in of their weary and painful (and, for the misanthrope, painfully amusing) life experiences.

As with PostSecret, the relationship between poster and viewer is masochistic at best; readers of the site are invited to compare the catastrophes and catastrophettes with that of the poster; the poster is then satisfied by unloading this information and perhaps getting a laugh and some sympathy out of the ordeal.