Whether you know it or not, you’ve almost certainly seen, heard or read an Internet meme. It’s also likely you’ve participated in spreading a meme yourself. A meme (rhymes with “beam”), in its original sense, was a term created by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene”. He used the term to describe the spread of cultural ideas. Similarly, an internet meme is the spread of information, often a picture or a joke that is passed along from person to person via the internet. This can be through email, blogs, or social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Another form of internet meme is the viral video.

One of the earliest viral videos and internet phenomena was the “Dancing Baby”, also known as “Baby Cha Cha” in 1996. The video was a 3D animation of a diapered infant doing the Cha Cha. It spread across websites, through email, appeared on commercials, and ended up in a recurring role on the network television show Ally McBeal where the animation was paired with the song “Hooked on a Feeling” thereafter to be known as the “Oogachaka Baby”. The Dancing Baby meme is still in circulation today, often as a spoof or simply as a nod to 1990’s culture.

Internet meme’s often have lives of their own. Spreading, evolving, and sometimes becoming extinct. They can have worldwide popularity in a matter of just a few days. Because of this rapid growth advertisers are now attempting to use the phenomenon in a form of marketing known as viral marketing. Because memes are spread voluntarily, often enthusiastically, between family, friends and coworkers, they are cost effecting, often to the point of being free advertising.

The micro-meme, unique to Twitter, is a topic that includes a hashtag, a number symbol (also known as the hash symbol or pound sign) “#” and a short message. For example, “27. I don’t have a favorite color #100FactsAboutMe”. These can show up in search engines or trending topics and are often used in blog comments.

Some of the more popular internet memes of 2010 were:
1 – Bed Intruder. Antoine Dodson saved his sister from a would be rapist and was interviewed on local TV. That video ended up online and eventually the internet has its way with it, creating a popular music video that Antoine Dodson himself performed live at the BET awards.
2 – The Old Spice, “The man your man can smell like” campaign
3 – The Double Rainbow Guy. Paul Vasquez recorded his own reaction to a double rainbow in Yosemite triggering a pop culture phenomenon with spoofs and even merchandise.
4 – LOLCATS. Photos of cats with superimposed mispelled text such as “I can haz cheeseburger” or “I wantz ur cookiez” has evolved over time even creating its own language known as LOLspeak.
5 – The It Gets Better Project. Created in response to a rash of homosexual teen suicides, now includes thousands of encouraging videos and messages from average people, celebrities even the President of the United States.

No discussion of internet memes would be complete without mentioning Rickrolling, The first known occurrence of which was in March of 2007 where a link that was supposed to take the view to a trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV, actually led to Rick Astley’s video Never Gonna Give You Up from 1987. In a large scale practical joke in April 1, 2008 YouTube linked all of their featured videos to the same Astley video.