The internet is an often bizarre and wonderful place, where certain ideas, videos, or just simple jokes go viral across the connected world showing just how much people enjoy pictures of cats amongst other things… Here we break down to the top ten internet memes of the year that was 2012.
10. Grumpy Cat
Grumpy Cat
No end-of-year list of internet memes would be complete without at least one cat, and this year it is the so-called “Grumpy Cat”. The cat’s real name is “Tard”, short for Tarder Sauce, and first found fame on internet site Reddit, a hub for such memes, but has now spawned its own videos, meme generator, and twitter account.
9. Somebody That I Used To Know
Australian musician Gotye originally released Somebody that I Used To Know in 2011, and it was covered by numerous artists, bands, and chairs from across the globe who each uploaded their own versions to YouTube. What made Gotye stand-out, however, is that in August 2012 Gotye then remixed all of these cover videos into his own montage, making all these other people part of his creative process.
8. Botched Art Restoration
The botched restoration of Ecce Homo by Cecilia Giménez
Cecilia Gimenez, an elderly church worker at the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza, Spain, decided that she was the right person for the job of restoring the 19th century fresco Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez. The trouble was, that she lacked the talent to do so, essentially ruining the piece and devastating art enthusiasts. The internet, however, thought it was hilarious.
7. Ridiculously Photogenic Guy
Ridiculously photogenic guy Zeddie Little
Handsome 25 year-old Zeddie Little was happily completing the 2012 Cooper Bridge Run when he was accidentally caught on camera. That’s when a Reddit user spotted him, and created the meme of “ridiculously photogenic guy”, where his face has appeared with thousands of captions and making rocketing him to internet stardom with interviews on US television shows such as Good Morning America.
The Ridiculously photogenic guy meme also spawned others including the “ridiculously photogenic Syrian rebel” on Buzzfeed:
Ridiculously photogenic Syrian rebel
6. One Pound Fish
Pakistani Muhammad Shahid Nazir had a surprise rise to internet fame as a video of him singing his own “one pound fish” song at Queens Market in east London went viral on YouTube with over four million views. Since then he auditioned for the X-Factor, failing to get past the first round, but he was then approached by Warner Music for his own Christmas song which reached number 29 in the UK charts.
After his visa expired, Mr Nazir was deported back to Pakistan – where he received a hero’s welcome when hundreds of fans greeted him at Lahore airport.
5. Call Me Maybe
Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen released her pop single in 2011, gaining support from internet musical sensation Justin Bieber in December of that year and spawning many lip-dub and parody versions including one by Biber himself along with celebrity pals Selena Gomez and Ashley Tisdale which itself has had over 56 million views. The catchy song reached number one across the globe including Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
4. KONY 2012
The internet blackouts may have shown the political clout websites and web services have found in recent years, but the Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign in March was the campaign that went viral and showed that young people are not apathetic, just disengaged from the traditional political system.
The KONY 2012 video went viral with 60 million views in five days and thousands of children across the globe got involved in pushing their leaders to do something about the situation in Uganda. The video has had criticism from various quarters for its huge oversimplification of the situation, and that it was aimed at helping the people of Uganda when in reality Jospeh Kony and his cult-like LRA have moved locations to the Central African Republic. However it did show the power of the internet in mobilising young people on political issues.
3. Internet Blackouts
Wikipedia gone dark
Whilst the free and open internet is a fantastic resource for finding and sharing news, information, and culture, the big entertainment corporations are not such fans of these freedoms. They spent much of 2012 lobbying lawmakers of the world (ACTA), and more specifically the US (PIPA and SOPA) to curtail people’s digital freedoms in order to reign back the copyright infringement that has been around and growing since the days of Napster. The problem with these proposed laws is that they make protecting the intellectual property of some companies a more important factor than innocent people’s right to privacy and the ability of many digital companies to operate online.
The SOPA and PIPA internet protests were the first time that the huge clout of certain large websites as well as thousands of smaller websites showed the world that they had a voice. Wikipedia (English) and Google went dark on the 18th January alongside numerous other sites from across the globe, forcing the public to engage with the ideas of digital freedoms, and calling/emailing/writing to their lawmakers to tell them which side of the debate they stand. And it worked – SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA have all failed to pass into law.
2. Jumping from Space
Everyone loves a daredevil, and when Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner announced he was going to jump from 39km above the earth he was the talk of the (digital) town. After a first attempt was scuppered by the weather, on the 14th October finally took his capsule on a balloon up to 39km and jumped out, with a record 8 million people watching the Red Bull Stratos event live on YouTube.
He reached a top speed of 1,342kph, making his the highest altitude ballon flight and jump, with him also becoming the first man to break the sound barrier unaided.
1. Gangnam Style
With the first video to garner over one billion views on YouTube, and a dance craze that has got to everyone from the public schoolboys at Eton to US President Barack Obama and Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon, K-pop star Psy’s Gangnam Style was the only choice for this year’s number one.
