#Meme

7 items

Video thumbnail — Dancing Baby Screensaver. 1996 (original music)
Trends 1996–1999

Dancing Baby

A 3D-rendered infant doing the cha-cha — arguably the first viral video-meme of the internet age. Born as a software demo in 1996 and spread through email chains like a digital chain letter, the "Ooga-Chaka baby" went fully mainstream when it started haunting Ally McBeal.

Video thumbnail — The Hampster Dance website in 1999 in Netscape Navigator 4.04
Trends 1997–2000

The Hampster Dance

Four animated hamsters repeated ad nauseam, set to a sped-up Disney sample — one of the internet's first viral sensations. Created in 1997 by a Canadian art student as a GeoCities tribute to her pet hamster, The Hampster Dance puttered along unseen until a 1999 email chain sent it stratospheric, spawning hit songs, merch, and a permanent place in internet history.

Video thumbnail — Numa Numa
Trends 2004–2006

Numa Numa

One of the internet's first viral megahits: a webcam clip of a New Jersey teenager lip-syncing and flailing joyfully to a Moldovan pop song. Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa Dance" spread to hundreds of millions of views — and it happened before YouTube even existed.

Video thumbnail — Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)
Trends 2007–present

Rickrolling

The internet's favorite bait-and-switch: click a promising link, get Rick Astley's 1987 "Never Gonna Give You Up" instead. Born on 4chan in 2007 and peaking in 2008, it's the prank that never really gave up.

Video thumbnail — Darude - Sandstorm (Official Video)
Music 1999–2000

Darude — "Sandstorm"

The relentless Finnish trance instrumental that owned the year 2000 — jocked by every arena PA, burned onto every mix CD — then got a second, stranger life as the internet's favorite troll answer to "what song is this?"

Video thumbnail — Santana - Smooth (Official Video) ft. Rob Thomas
Music 1999–2000

Santana ft. Rob Thomas — "Smooth"

Man, it's a hot one. The Santana–Rob Thomas collaboration that refused to leave the radio, straddled the millennium at #1, and swept its Grammy categories. Decades later it's still the eternal-summer song the internet won't let die.

Video thumbnail — Zombo.com flash intro in 1999
Trends 1999–present

Zombo.com

Welcome to Zombo.com. You can do anything at Zombo.com. Anything at all. The only limit is yourself. And then... nothing — the internet's greatest anti-website: pulsing dots, a silky voice making infinite promises, and a quarter-century of delivering absolutely none of them.