by Hernani Cerqueira

Created on: July 02, 2009

Internet memes represent the propagation of some sort of digital content throughout the Internet, using methods like email, blogs, social networking tools and others. The meme term refers to "a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation another by non-genetic means (as by imitation)" [1], although the Internet version has most of the times a timeline of just a few days or weeks, reaching some years and even passing the border out of the online world in some famous cases.

The origin of internet memes is not very clear, and there is no accordance to which was the "first internet meme ever", although many believe that place is occupied by the hamsterdance [2], a website created by a Canadian art student in dedication to his pet hamster in 1998. The page was composed by some animated gifs of dancing hamsters in loops, a "somewhat irritating" music in background and some pornographic banners, so it clearly had no big interest, but it passed from a couple of hits a day to 15.000 in just some weeks, and 250.000! in a year, thanks to a viral email message that spread the word about it. The success of the campaign was so huge that several songs were released based on the background music of hamsterdance, and the tune even showed up in some Hollywood movies... The website still exists [3], although much more sophisticated.

But there are records of some older memes, like "Crazy Frog", which started in 1997 by a 17 years old Sweden student, became viral in 2003, and still lives today; or "Dancing Baby", with the first appearance being somewhere between 1996 and 1997. After 1999, dozens of other viral mails showed up, promoting some websites that made hamsterdance shy in what concerns to the content. These pornographic and / or offensive websites seemed to be a trend at that time, such as tubgirl, meatspin or goatse-man, to name just a few, probably spawned by the success of the dancing hamsters. But email was the only vehicle back then. Other famous memes include "all your base belong to us" or "Chuck Norris facts", which revived his career.

Nowadays, with the so called Web 2.0, propagation of memes is made through pretty much every online platform where common users have a word to say, but video sharing websites like YouTube have a major role in it, creating some web celebrities, such as the "star wars kid" and the "numa numa guy" or the fakes "Leeroy Jenkins" and the "crazy Dutch kid". Some of these memes became so huge that reached the mass media like major TV networks and newspapers, or triggered investigations from well known journalists. You might recall Hallison Harvard, best known as Creepy Chan or Tussin Chan, which became second in 2009 edition of "America's next top model" contest, benefiting the fact of being an "old" internet celebrity.

Where do they come? Which one was the first? What actually is a meme? These are all questions with no consensual answer, and the discussion promise to keep alive somewhere, probably not so propagated as the examples above. I don't have any straightforward answer as well, but this is my small contribution to the board.

[1] WordNet definition of meme

[2] Original HamsterDance website on the internet archive

[3] HamsterDance website

Learn more about this author, Hernani Cerqueira.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.