Bottom Line: Combine a song originally written by Moldovan band O-zone with a webcam video of a kid grooving out to it and you have one of the oldest and most well known memes to grace the tubes. Numa Numa proves that the Internet loves nothing more than slightly off-base music performed by people who should probably never be performing music.

Numa Numa is an Internet phenomenon based on amateur videos, most notably Numa Numa Dance by Gary Brolsma, made for the song “Dragostea din tei” as performed by the CDM Project. Brolsma’s video, released in December 2004 onto the website Newgrounds.com, was the first Numa Numa-themed video to gain widespread attention. Less than three months after the release, it had been viewed more than two million times on the debut website alone. Numa Numa Dance has since spawned many parody videos, including those created for the “New Numa Contest”, sponsored by Brolsma, which promised US$45,000 in prize money for submissions. His original video was named 41st in the 2006 broadcast of 100 Greatest Funny Moments by Channel 4 in the UK.

Meme Anatomy: Embarrassment, Vaguely Foreign, Musical, Iconic Catchphrase

Urban Dictionary

A flash video submitted to newgrounds on december 6th, 2004. it scored relatively low, until site owner tom fulp put it on the front page. it then achieved major success as a hilarious flash video, and although it gained this success too late to win any awards, it still gained a score higher than 4.10 since december it has achieved more than a million views. it has been featured on vh1, cnn, and stolen from newgrounds by at least 80 other websites. and this is only after 2 months (this definition was written on 2/13/05). it is a flash phenomenon sure to beat out all your base.

[Link]

Other Sources

Videos: Numa Numa

Pictures: Numa Numa

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 160,000 – 5
Photo Search Results: 242,000 – 5
Search Volume: 386,000 – 3
Blog Search Results: 21,078 – 3
News Search Results: 8 – 1.5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: Like LOLCats before it, FAIL is a meta-meme. The formula is simple, take something embarrassing (preferably violent) and slap the words FAIL on it. FAIL also has the advantage of finding its way into the vernacular along with its kissing cousin Epic FAIL.

“Fail” is the name of a popular Internet meme where users superimpose a caption, often the word “fail” or “epic fail,” onto photos or short videos depicting unsuccessful events or people falling short of expectations. In July 2003, a contributor to Urban Dictionary wrote that the term, “fail,” could be used as an interjection, “when one disapproves of something,” citing the example: “You actually bought that? FAIL.” This most likely originated as a shortened form of “You fail” or, more fully, “You fail it,” the taunting “game over” message in the late 1990s Japanese video game Blazing Star, notorious for its fractured English.

[Link]

Meme Anatomy: Iconic Catchphrase, Embarrassment, WTF

Urban Dictionary

Either an interjection used when one disapproves of something, or a verb meaning approximately the same thing as the slang form of suck.

Other Sources

Videos: Fail

Pictures: Fail

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 748,000 – 5
Photo Search Results: 537 – 2.5
Search Volume: 12,100,000 – 5
Blog Search Results: 27,354 – 3
News Search Results: 17 – 2

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: Another musical meme, this time with a TV cross-over. South Park has been the birth and death of many a meme.

“What What (In the Butt)” is a viral video created by Andrew Swant and Bobby Ciraldo of Brownmark Films for the song of the same name by Samwell. It is known for its numerous camp references to homosexuality and anal sex. The lyrics of the song, a production of Mike Stasny, mostly revolve around the title. The video was shot in wide-screen format and was primarily produced with a green screen. It was uploaded on Valentine’s Day 2007 to YouTube and Google Video.

With regard to the Christian imagery in the video, Samwell, in an interview with KROQ-FM, said that the opening image is “not a cross, but a flaming symbol that [he] just happened to use,” but according to Stasny, “[Samwell] wanted it because he’s a Christian but he doesn’t do Christian morality. For him, having a burning cross is a way to pay respect to his beliefs.” The video also parodies the flower petal scene from the movie American Beauty. Brownmark Films released an interview with Samwell on April 8, 2007, in which he discussed the public reception of the song at length.

Meme Anatomy: Musical, Iconic Catchphrase, WTF

Other Sources

Videos: What What In The Butt

Pictures: What What In The Butt

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 157,000 – 5
Photo Search Results: 18,900 – 4
Search Volume: 12,100,000 – 5
Blog Search Results: 27,354 – 3
News Search Results: 17 – 2

Overall Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: If there is anything more meme-worthy than a celebrity losing his mind in private, it’s a celebrity losing his mind in public. The scene between Kanye West and Taylor Swift at the VMAs set off a tidal wave of photos, spoofs and days worth of Twitter Trending Topics.

On September 13, 2009, during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards while Taylor Swift was accepting her award for Best Female Video, West went on stage and grabbed the microphone to proclaim that Beyoncé’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, nominated for the same award, was “one of the best videos of all time”. He was subsequently removed from the remainder of the show for his actions. When Beyoncé later won the award for Best Video of the Year for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, she called Swift up on stage so that she could finish her acceptance speech. West was criticized by various celebrities for the outburst, and by U.S. President Barack Obama, who called West a “jackass” in an “off the record” comment. Kanye’s VMA disruption originated a large amount of internet photo meme with blogs, forums and tweets with the “Let you finish” photo-jokes. West posted two apologies on his blog, one the night of the incident and the other the same day he appeared on The Jay Leno Show, on September 14, 2009, where he apologized again. After Swift appeared on The View two days after the outburst, partly to discuss the matter, West called her to apologize personally. Swift said she accepted his apology.

Meme Anatomy: Celebrity, Overreactions, Iconic Catchphrase

Urban Dictionary

Verb: Taking attention away from someone; stealing another person’s moment

Other Sources

Videos: Kanye West

Pictures: Kanye West

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 19,000 – 4
Photo Search Results: 2,000,000 – 5
Search Volume: 15,300,000 – 5
Blog Search Results: 2,386,322 – 5
News Search Results: 2,840 – 4

Overall Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: A classic movie meme that involves overreactions and Samuel L Jackson. What more could you ask for?

The film gained a considerable amount of attention before its release, forming large fan bases online and becoming an Internet phenomenon, due to the film’s title and premise. In response to the Internet fan base, New Line Cinema incorporated feedback from online users into its production, and added five days of reshooting. Before and after the film was released, it was parodied and alluded to on television shows and films, fan-made videos, video games, and various forms of literature.

Many of the early fan-made trailers and later other viral videos and commercials circulated via YouTube, and captured media attention there with such titles as: “Cats on a Plane”(which was featured in Joel Siegel’s review of “Snakes” on “Good Morning America”), “Snakes Who Missed The Plane”, “All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us” (a spoof of the All your base are belong to us phenomenon), and “Steaks on a Train”. Several websites also held contests about the film in fan-submitted short films and posters. On July 6, 2006, the official Snakes on a Plane website started a promotional sweepstakes called the “The #1 Fan King Cobra Sweepstakes”. The contest makes innovative use of the publicity-generating potential of the Internet, requiring contestants to post links on forums, blogs, and websites and collecting votes from the users of those sites. The winner was Max Goldberg, owner of YTMND, who opted to split the prize with the second place winner.

Meme Anatomy: Celebrity, Iconic Catchphrase, Pop Culture, Overreactions

Urban Dictionary

A simple existential observation that has the same meaning as “Whaddya gonna do?” or “Shit Happens”. Taken from the upcoming Samuel L. Jackson movie of the same name, and immortilised by screenwriter Josh Friedman on his blog post of Wednesday, August 17, 2005.

[Link]

Other Sources

Videos: Snakes On A Plane

Pictures: Snakes On A Plane

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 8,900 – 3.5
Photo Search Results: 120,000 – 5
Search Volume: 7,640,000 – 4.5
Blog Search Results: 1,177,263 – 5
News Search Results: 7,950 – 4.5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: As we may have mentioned before, the Internet loves cats. It really, really loves cats. LOLCats is a classic meme that is still running strong. Combine a picture of a cat doing something silly with an adorable broken English catch phrase and you have an instant meme.

A lolcat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak” or “kitty pidgin” and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang. The name “lolcat” is a compound word of the acronymic abbreviation “LOL” and the word “cat”. A synonym for “lolcat” is cat macro, since the images are a type of image macro. Lolcats are designed for photo sharing imageboards and other internet forums.

The term lolcat gained national media attention in the United States when it was covered by Time, which wrote that non-commercialized phenomena of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have “a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to [them]“.

Meme Anatomy: WTF, Animals, Iconic Catchphrase

Urban Dictionary

Hilarious pictures of cats (or sometimes other animals) in cute and/or strange poses with a funny made-up caption. The most popular caption is “I can has cheeseburger?”

[Link]

Other Sources

Videos: LOLCats

Pictures: LOLCats

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 19,000 – 4
Photo Search Results: 3,500,000 – 5
Search Volume: 1,100,000 – 4
Blog Search Results: 180,646 – 4
News Search Results: 308 – 3

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: Leave Britney Alone is a vintage embarrassment / overreaction meme that features everyone’s favorite YouTube personality Chris Crocker. If a tearful rant about a celebrity wasn’t enough to get this one on everyone’s lips he managed to do it right at the height of Miss Spears less than ideal return to the public spotlight.

Crocker is best known for his Britney Spears videos, posted to YouTube in September 2007. The first part of the infamous work though was posted September 9, 2007 called “Leave Britney Alone pt.1″ to his MySpace page, while the better-known “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” (part 2) was posted to both MySpace and YouTube. In “Leave Britney Alone pt.1″, an emotional Crocker stated that he did not want fellow Southerner and gay icon Britney Spears to spiral out of control like Anna Nicole Smith, who had died in February 2007. As of January 2009[update], the video has been viewed over 3.5 million times and has accumulated a total of nearly 500,000 comments. It is just a few seconds shorter than the second part, and Crocker, although emotional, remains relatively calm and composed, becoming teary only at the very end.
Screen capture showing an upset Chris Crocker from his LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! video.

In the videos, Crocker lashes out at gossip columnists such as Perez Hilton, and at reality TV star Simon Cowell, who criticized Britney Spears’ onstage music performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas. Within the first 24 hours of its posting, the video had accumulated over 2 million views. As of January 2009[update], it has accumulated a total of 24 million views and is the second most discussed video of all time on the site (in all categories), with over 350,000 comments. “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” is one of YouTube’s fastest “climbing” videos, reaching the minimum seven million views needed (as of September 2007[update]) to be included in the “Top 100″. The video was nominated in the Commentary category in the 2007 YouTube Awards. The video received worldwide attention and earned Crocker interviews on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The Today Show, Maury, The Howard Stern Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Ryan Seacrest’s KIIS-FM morning show. Crocker and his video were also commented on in the mainstream media by shows like The View and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. YouTube said “the melodramatic two-minute clip made Crocker an instant YouTube star” and named it one of the top videos of 2007. Wired magazine named it the top video of 2007.

Meme Anatomy: Iconic Catchphrase, Celebrity, Embarrassment, WTF

Urban Dictionary

An exclamation made when your friends or family are teasing you to a point where you can’t handle it anymore and a hissy fit is in order.

Derived from a YouTube user’s famed outburst following Britney’s lackluster performance at the 2007 VMA’s.

Other Sources

Videos: Leave Britney Alone

Pictures: Leave Britney Alone

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 9,350 – 4
Photo Search Results: 39,500 – 4
Search Volume: 259,000 – 3
Blog Search Results: 23,299 – 3
News Search Results: 487 – 3.5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: The meme that launched a sea of memes.

YTMND originated in 2001 from Max Goldberg’s original website, “yourethemannowdog.com”, which he registered along with “dustindiamond.com” after seeing a trailer for the movie Finding Forrester in which Sean Connery says the line “You’re the man now, dog!”. Originally, the website featured the text “YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG.COM” drawn out in 3D ASCII text with a sound loop from the Finding Forrester trailer of Sean Connery reciting the phrase “You’re the man now, dog!”. The advent of zoomed text currently on the website was seen in the following months, where the website also featured a photograph of Sean Connery. Goldberg’s new creation inspired others to make similar sites with other movie and television quotations (or any other sound clip they wished to use). At first, Goldberg maintained a list and mirror of these sites, but the list soon became exceptionally long.

In 2004, Goldberg wrote a press release after winning a lawsuit filed by Dustin Diamond for the “fan page” at the aforementioned dustindiamond.com. He mentioned yourethemannowdog.com, as well as a new website, YTMND, that would be ready by April 10. The website opened that day after a rushed coding and design process. The site caught on in popularity and became an Internet phenomenon when major weblogs and Internet forums began linking to the Picard Song YTMND.

Meme Anatomy: Pop Culture, Iconic Catchphrase, Celebrity

Urban Dictionary

A general statement of praise intended for a male. Popularized by the film “Finding Forrester” in which Sean Connery triumphantly and uncharacteristically exclaims that his pupil is now ‘the man’. Subsequently immortalized on the website www.yourethemannowdog.com. One of the most bizarre ‘tributes’ on the internet.

[Link]

Other Sources

Videos: YTMND

Pictures: YTMND

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 2,020 – 3
Photo Search Results: 263 – 2
Search Volume: 94,000,000 – 5
Blog Search Results: 2,042 – 2
News Search Results: 63 – 3

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: One of the godfather’s of Internet memes, Chocolate Rain combines our love of musical comedy with our unceasing desire to share awkward human tricks.

“Chocolate Rain” is a song and music video written and performed by Tay Zonday, a singer and songwriter.

After being posted on YouTube on April 22, 2007, the song quickly became popular. By 2009 the video had over 40 million views. The music video portrays a bespectacled Zonday in a recording studio wearing a white T-shirt and singing into a condenser microphone. Occasional cutbacks to Zonday playing a digital piano are also shown. The video is also famous for a caption displayed early in the video “**I move away from the mic to breathe in,” which has been parodied many times. The song, and its writer/performer, attracted major media attention.

“Chocolate Rain” is ranked as the hottest viral video of Summer 2007 by CTV.ca and as the number 2 viral video in the world by utalkmarketing.com. It was the winner in the Music category in the 2007 YouTube Awards.

Meme Anatomy: Musical, Iconic Catchphrase, Embarrassment

Urban Dictionary

“Chocolate Rain” is a euphemism for racism created by Tay Zonday in his hit YouTube song “Chocolate Rain”.

Chocolate Rain

The school books say it can’t be here again

Chocolate Rain

The prisons make you wonder where it went

Other Sources

Videos: Chocolate Rain

Pictures: Chocolate Rain

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 73,800 – 4.5
Photo Search Results: 22,200 – 4
Search Volume: 946,000 – 4
Blog Search Results: 37,812 – 3
News Search Results: 545 – 3.5

Overall Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: There is nothing quite like “leaked” footage of someone getting electrocuted to spur on a mean. Well, maybe there is when that person decides to scream, “Don’t Tase Me Bro” moments before the faithful incident.

On September 17, 2007, U.S. Senator John Kerry addressed a Constitution Day forum at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which was organized by the ACCENT Speaker’s Bureau, an agency of the university’s student government. When Meyer asked Kerry about his connection to the Skull and Bones society, university police removed Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old fourth-year undergraduate telecommunications student, from the forum, restraining him and drive stunning him with a Taser.

Several videos of the episode were then posted on the Internet. The most viewed version of the video, shot by Kyle Mitchell of The Gainesville Sun, had more than 3.8 million views on YouTube by May 2009. The New Oxford American Dictionary listed “tase/taze” as one of the words of the year for 2007, popularized by the widespread use of “Don’t tase me, bro!” The Yale Book of Quotations designated the same quote as the most memorable quote of 2007.[1] Mick Jones, former guitarist for The Clash, wrote and published a song inspired from the event, “Don’t Tase Me, Bro,” and new wave band Devo use the quote in their song “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man).”

Meme Anatomy: Leaked, Iconic Catchphrase, WTF

Urban Dictionary

1. An utterance emitted by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer on the evening of September 17, 2007 in efforts to ward off the vicious bite of a police taser after he was detained for getting uppity at a forum with U.S. Senator John Kerry.

2. A phrase used (with ironic reference to the above incident) to express feigned dissatisfaction with another’s recent or impending actions or speech.

Other Sources

Videos: Don’t Tase Me Bro

Pictures: Don’t Tase Me Bro

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 1,050 – 3
Photo Search Results: 19,900 – 4
Search Volume: 12,800,000 – 5
Blog Search Results: 16,272 – 3
News Search Results: 526 – 4.5

Overall Rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars