The term “meme” has changed drastically over the last few years. These days just about anything that has a big enough following, or shared in a short time-frame over multiple Social Networks can be classified as a meme. When we think back to the infancy of the word meme, there were those that defined the term, that started it all. The original old school internet memes. We decided to to take a look at our top 7 original memes.
Wikipedia defines an internet meme as:
An Internet meme (meem) is an idea, style or action which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via theInternet, as with imitating the concept. A meme can be considered a mimicked theme, including simple phrases or gestures. An Internet meme may take the form of animage, hyperlink, video, picture, website, or hashtag. It may be just a word or phrase, including an intentional misspelling. These small movements tend to spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email, or news sources
The list of internet memes are massive. There are literally millions of internet memes. But in the beginning, we’re talking dail-up internet times in the 90′s, before LOLCats and there were a few people/memes that reached stardom. Sadly some of the popular people were ridiculed, even to the point of them having to move and settle matters in court.
Here’s our list of the top 7 original memes:
1. Dancing Baby
Considered to be the original meme by most, the dancing baby was one of the first Internet memes, originating in 1996. It contains a 3d animation baby and was originally created as a demo for 3d Studio Max. The baby dances to music and appeared frequently on the television programme Ally McBeal – symbolising the main characters ticking biological clock.
2. Numa Numa Guy
“Dragostea din tei” also informally known as “Numa Numa” or “Mai Ya hee“, is the most successful single by the Moldovan pop group O-Zone, sung in Romanian. The original song was made notable in the United States by the viral video of Gary Brolsma dancing to the song, calling it “Numa Numa”.
He made appearances on ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s The Tonight Show, and VH1′s Best Week Ever. Brolsma’s video “single-handedly justifies the existence of webcams… It’s a movie of someone who is having the time of his life, wants to share his joy with everyone, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks”. He was voted the Number 1 Internet Icon by 40 Greatest Internet Superstars on VH1, beating the Star Wars kid at Number 2.
For a long time, Brolsma tried to hide from the attention, but eventually returned to the spotlight with a second, more professional video, New Numa.
3. Star Wars Kid
The starwards kid is an Internet phenomenon which started when a video clip recorded by Ghyslain Raza, a fourteen-year-old French Canadian male high school student, was leaked online. The video was filmed at the studio of his high school, and the tape was left forgotten in a basement. The original owner of the videotape discovered his recorded acts and immediately shared it with some friends. Thinking that it would be a funny prank, they encoded it to a WMV file and shared it using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing network.
Within two weeks it had been downloaded several million times. Since then it has been downloaded over 900 million times, making it the most popular viral videos. In July 2003, his parents filed a $250,000 lawsuit against four of his fellow students who settled out of court.
4. All Your Base
Worn on T-Shirts by millions of Geeks world-wide. The “All your base are belong to us” meme is a personal favourite, and probably one with the longest lifespans thus far. All Your Base was a flash animation that parodied the horrible english translation of the Japanese game Zero Wing. With great phrases like “All your base are belong to us,” “You have no chance to survive make your time,” and “Take off every ZIG,” it’s no wonder it got so popular.
5. Goatse
Long live the Goatse meme. Goatse.cx is a shock site featuring an image of a naked man stretching his anus with both of his hands. One of the most widespread shock media on the web, the site has been notoriously used for bait-and-switch pranks or website vandalisms to provoke reactions of disgust. Although the original domain was taken down in 2004, the image continues to circulate online through mirrored sites. First seen in 1999 under the domain name Goatse.cx.
According to the Wikipedia entry, the earliest known instance of the shock image was uploaded circa 1997 as “gap3.jpg” in a set of 40 additional images compressed into a single zip file named “Gap.zip.” Goatse currently is still being used as a hot-linking deterrent.
6. The Hamster Dance
The hamster dance was the most irritating meme for sure. The dancing hamster craze started when Canadian Deidre LaCarte’s best friend challenged her to a web page view contest. Deidre’s bright idea: animate her hamster 392 times doing different dances moves to a nine second sample of a Roger Miller song. It was a popular e-mail, blog, and bait-and-switch share, and was even sampled in a 1999 song by The Cuban Boys. Below is the closest version of the Hamster song we could find:
7. Peanut Butter Jelly Time
Peanut Butter Jelly Time is a flash animation that consists of an animated Dancing Banana character and the song “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” by The Buckwheat Boyz. Known for being both obnoxious and funny, the Dancing Banana video became a hit in the early 2000s, leading to PBJT-related merchandise and dozens of parodies and tribute videos on YouTube.- See more at: http://geekshizzle.com/?p=20980&preview=true#sthash.jRoUyjkB.dpuf
