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: File this one under oddball human tricks. There isn’t too much more that you can see about why it is a meme.

The Fuckparade is an annual summer techno demonstration in Berlin. The event developed in reaction to the exclusion of Gabber music and commercialisation of Love Parade. The Love Parade itself, in 2000, was described as Berlin’s largest tourist attraction, drawing 1.5 million young people to the city.

The “Techno Viking” internet meme features a man dancing at the 2000 Fuckparade. The YouTube video was the #1 clip on Rude Tube’s series-three episode Drink and Drugs.

Meme Anatomy: WTF, Musical

Urban Dictionary

An internet meme created on theforum.com thanks to a video of the Berlin Fuck Parade of 2000 in which a large muscle-bound German man asserts his authority upon the people and dances to demonstrate his power. He is, technoviking.

Other Sources

Videos: Techno Viking

Pictures: Techno Viking

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 2,940 – 3
Photo Search Results: 761 – 2.5
Search Volume: 268,000 – 3
Blog Search Results: 6,979 – 2.5
News Search Results: 7 – 1.5

Overall Rating: 2.5 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: Rick Rolling is a message board spawned meme that combines the Internet’s love of musical comedy with the joy of getting one over on someone. Add to that the 1980s kitsch of Rick Astley and a meme is born.

Rickrolling is an Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a web link that they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true destination of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been “Rickrolled”.

As the practice has spread, two of the various Rickrolling videos available online have been viewed more than 39 million times combined. These figures track the total number of visits, not individual viewers. Rickrolling has extended beyond Web links to playing the video or song disruptively in other situations, including public places; this culminated when Astley and the song made a surprise appearance in the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a televised event with tens of millions of viewers.

Meme Anatomy: Musical, Pop Culture, Celebrity

Urban Dictionary

To send someone a link to 80s pop star Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” video, making them believe that they’re gonna see something completely different. The meme originated in 4chan’s /v/ (videogame) board, when the official “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” trailer was coming out on the game’s website but couldn’t be watched due to heavy traffic. Playing a prank on everyone who was reading, an anonymous 4chaner said that the trailer was on YouTube and posted a link to Astley’s song. Since then, the Rick Roll has been made countless times, not only on 4chan but on the whole of the Internet.

[Link]

Other Sources

Videos: Rick Roll

Pictures: Rick Roll

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 78,000 – 4.5
Photo Search Results: 79,100 – 4.5
Search Volume: 425,000 – 3
Blog Search Results: 28,800 – 3
News Search Results: 247 – 3

Overall Rating: 3.6 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: The Internet loves cute animals, this is a proven fact, if you can get a cute animals to do something that only human beings should be doing odds are 3 to 1 that you have a meme on your hands. Keyboard Cat is a brilliant example of just this fact.

Keyboard Cat is an Internet meme. It consists of footage of “Fatso”, a cat (now deceased) owned by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, wearing a blue shirt and “playing” an upbeat rhythm on an electronic keyboard, in reality being manipulated like a puppet by Schmidt. The clip, originally posted to YouTube as “Charlie Schmidt’s ‘cool cat’”, has gained popularity by being appended to blooper and other viral videos as if to “play” that person offstage after the mistake or gaffe in a similar manner as getting the hook in the days of vaudeville, usually accompanied with the title Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat or a variant. The first such video was created by Brad O’Farrell, who secured Schmidt’s permission to use the footage. Over four thousand such videos now exist, with a website playhimoffkeyboardcat.com created to collect such videos.

Meme Anatomy: Musical, Animals, WTF

Urban Dictionary

An awesome cat with the ability to play the keyboard. Often put at the end of a video of someone failing at something and getting hurt; with the title “play him/her off, keyboard cat”

[Link]

Other Sources

Videos: Keyboard Cat

Pictures: Keyboard Cat

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 9,020 – 4
Photo Search Results: 82,400 – 4.5
Search Volume: 8,080,000 – 4.5
Blog Search Results: 48,210 – 3.5
News Search Results: 66 – 2.5

Overall Rating: 3.8 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: This is another combination meme, bringing together the Internet’s love of World of Warcraft and its fascination with adult entertainment. Add in a jazzy tune by Avenue Q and you have a homerun.

Avenue Q is a musical conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who wrote the music and lyrics, and directed by Jason Moore. The book is by Jeff Whitty. The show was produced by and opened at the Off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre in March 2003. The production transferred to Broadway in July 2003 and won several Tony Awards, including the award for Best Musical. The show has spawned a 2005 Las Vegas production, a 2006 West End production and various international productions. An Australian national tour began in June 2009 and will end in June 2010.

The show is largely inspired by (and is in the style of) Sesame Street; most of the characters in the show are puppets (operated by actors onstage), the set depicts several tenements on a rundown street in an Outer Borough of New York City, both the live characters and puppet characters sing, and short animated video clips are played as part of the story.

Meme Anatomy: Pop Culture, Iconic Catchphrase, Musical

Urban Dictionary

1. Song from Broadway play Avenue Q

2. The Internets unofficial anthem

3. A fact that will never change

Other Sources

Videos: The Internet Is For Porn

Pictures: The Internet Is For Porn

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 9610 – 4
Photo Search Results: 681 – 2.5
Search Volume: 2,120,000 – 4
Blog Search Results: 126,110 – 3
News Search Results: 294 – 4

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: Combine Anime with absurdity and Finnish folk and you’re pretty much guaranteed a meme. Leekspin just goes to show that it’s often the simplest concepts that tickle the Internet’s funny bone.

Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin) is a Flash animation set to a gibberish section of the traditional Finnish folk song ‘Ievan Polkka’ (sometimes misspelled Levan Polka) sung by the Finnish quartet Loituma, taken from their 1995 debut album Things of Beauty. It appeared on the Internet in late April 2006 and quickly became popular, drawing over a million viewers.

Meme Anatomy: WTF, Vaguely Foreign, Musical

Urban Dictionary

A five-frame animation of the anime Bleach character Orihime Inoue spinning a leek with a 26-second excerpt of the Finnish folk “Ievan Polkka” song by Loituma playing in the background, in an infinite loop.

Other Sources

Videos: Leekspin

Pictures: Leekspin

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 2,190 – 3
Photo Search Results: 9,580 – 4
Search Volume: 47,400 – 2.5
Blog Search Results: 3,451 – 2
News Search Results: 1 – 1

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: Another music meme, Group X mixes a vaguely “foreign” cast with pop culture references and as good a mastery of the English language as you will find this side of a text message. Let’s not forget that they are also responsible for the now classic “Mario Twins” video.

Self styled “Arabian Rap Sensations,” this band is actually composed of four people from Marietta, Georgia and is best known for its mangled English and its satirical anti-American lyrics. One of their most famous videos is Mario Twins. While they did not actually participate in making the animations, they did inspire these popular videos and provided the soundtrack.

Meme Anatomy: Musical, Pop Culture, Vaguely Foreign

Urban Dictionary

The opposites of sellouts, they say whatever they want no matter how stupid most trendy squares will think it sounds.

Originating from Cramshananteen Arabia, they rap about peanuts, good girls and bad girls, sch55, Mario Twins, and Sh7-Eleven.

Rag on bands like Backshotte babies, Wink 152, Katt Rock, Puff Doggy, and britney spanks. Also covered a MC Hammer song.

Sadly since the vocalist Hashmeer Shashmeer quit, no new albums have been seen for some time.

Other Sources

Videos: Group X

Pictures: Group X

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 23,400 – 4
Photo Search Results: 54,300 – 4.5
Search Volume: 897,000 – 3.5
Blog Search Results: 17,297 – 3
News Search Results: 352 – 4

Overall Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line: There really is nothing you can’t do if you set pop culture icons of the 80s to music. Lemon Demon is a brilliant example of music as a meme driver.

This is an absolutely incredible summary of mostly 1980s pop culture put together by Neil “Lemon Demon” Cicierega. The video was a breakout success on the flash animation site Newgrounds, and has been referenced in a number of parodies.

Meme Anatomy: Musical, Pop Culture

Urban Dictionary

Lemon Demon is a band that has a large following, mostly on the internet. They are most famous for the song The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, which is in turn most famous for the popular flash animation that achieved high fame on the website Newgrounds. They are also famous for being pioneers in the anti-eBaum’s World movement, by alerting the general public with an informative song, with flash animation to go with it. [link]

Other Sources

Videos: Lemon Demon

Pictures: Lemon Demon

Meme Strength

Video Search Results: 3,450 – 3
Photo Search Results: 676 – 2.5
Search Volume: 163,000 – 3
Blog Search Results: 7,400 – 2
News Search Results: 8 – 2.5

Overall Rating: 2.6 out of 5 stars