We had Chuck Norris facts and the Flying Spaghetti Monster in 2005. 2006 brought us I Can Has Cheezburger and (gasp) lonelygirl15, and during 2007 we suffered through endless RickRolls, Leave Britney Alone, 2Girls1Cup, Chocolate Rain and Obama Girl. 2007 was the worst year yet.The 6 Quirkiest Web Memes of 2008 (So Far)Naturally, as the end of 2007 rolled around, the question people throughout the world were asking was: what kind of Web memes will 2008 bring? Will we ever see something scarier than Chris Crocker throwing a tantrum?
Well, perhaps that’s not what everyone was asking as the world got wasted and passed out on New Year’s Eve, but we’ve decided to answer the question anyway and recall the six quirkiest Web memes that we’ve seen this year—so far.
6. Garfield Minus Garfield
Garfield Minus Garfield is kind of creepy. It’s the Garfield comic strip, minus Garfield. What we’re left with are the existential meanderings of Jon Arbuckle, the famous cat’s owner, who—without his feline pal around—seems to be mentally unstable.
In an age where many creators have become defensive and hostile towards fans who create interesting derivations of the master work, it’s refreshing to know that Jim Davis, Garfield’s original creator, reads Garfield Minus Garfield and enjoys it.
5. Wii Fit Hula Girl
Boyfriend secretly videotapes girlfriend in her underwear doing the Wii Fit hula hoop thing. Boyfriend puts secret video on the Internet, which goes viral and half the world sees it. Girlfriend ends up on TV.
Oh, how I’d be interested to hear the arguments that went on in this relationship.
Nintendo was quick to announce that they had no involvement in the making or distribution of this video—but one might reasonably assume it was still very popular amongst the male engineers in the company.
4. Fred
Where’s the fine line between quirky and downright annoying? I put it here. Fred is irritating, but hey, I’m not the target market.
The character Fred is a 6-year-old kid with anger management issues and an alcoholic mother. Fred is played by a guy in his teens, and hence a pitch shifter has been used to make his voice sound not only comically younger, but headache-inducing. I’ve never met a 6-year-old that sounds like a chipmunk, but apparently they do exist.
This YouTube “webcam soap opera” is a bit of a parody of video journals where narcissists rant about their boring, pathetic lives. You know the ones, where little Sophie cries about her big argument with little Mavis over little Tim.
People are sadists; Fred’s videos get millions of views in a very short amount of time, and have a bigger YouTube (
) fanbase than Miley Cyrus.
3. I’m F#*!ing Matt Damon
Sarah Silverman breaks the news to her long-time boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel in this video: she’s f#*!ing Matt Damon.
All the great genres of the world are brought together in this theatric display. Rock, country, hip-hop, and acoustic folk, to start with. It’s an elaborate and very public way to let Kimmel know that he has been cuckolded.
While this video started on television, it gained greater notoriety on the Web and has spread around the world like wildfire. Take that, TV.
2. Big Dog
Boston Dynamics put a video of one of their projects, a big robotic dog, on the Web. It’s actually a pretty nifty bit of technology, though it’s not without amusing segments—such as the cheesy slow-mo replays of the dog getting kicked.
A few days after this video was published, a parody of the original popped up that has so far seen almost 1,400,000 views. Two people mimic the dog in a nearly-believable suit and go around town getting in people’s way.
1. Large Hadron Collider Rap
The Large Hadron Collider had half the world whipping up a ridiculous doomsday panic, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the similarly ridiculous Y2K bug panic.
But Kate McAlpine, a freelance science writer, thought she’d bring order to the chaos through rapping. And thus we have the very funny, but annoyingly catchy, Large Hadron Rap. McAlpine and her co-workers filmed the high-budget music video in the LHC facility itself.
