An Internet meme, or simply meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations. Characteristics of memes include their susceptibility to parody, their use of intertextuality, their propagation in a viral pattern, and their evolution over time. The name is from the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972.
Thomas Wade Brennaman is an American television sportscaster. He is the son of former Cincinnati Reds radio sportscaster Marty Brennaman. He served as the television voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1998 to 2006, and as the voice of the Cincinnati Reds from 2007 through 2020. His career with the Reds and Fox Sports ended abruptly when he was caught on a hot mic making a homophobic statement during a game broadcast. His on-air apology, in which he interrupted himself to call "a drive into deep left field by Castellanos", became an internet meme. Since leaving the Reds, he has served as a commentator for the Roberto Clemente League and for Chatterbox Sports.
The clipboard is a buffer that some operating systems provide for short-term storage and transfer within and between application programs. The clipboard is usually temporary and unnamed, and its contents reside in the computer's RAM.
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, anime, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of which approximately half are from the United States.
Rickrolling or a Rickroll is an Internet meme involving the unexpected appearance of the music video to the 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by English singer Rick Astley. The aforementioned video has over 1.5 billion views on YouTube. The meme is a type of bait and switch, usually using a disguised hyperlink that leads to the music video. When one clicks on a seemingly unrelated link, the site with the music video loads instead of what was expected, and they have been "Rickrolled". The meme has also extended to using the song's lyrics, or singing it, in unexpected contexts. Astley himself has also been Rickrolled on several occasions.
Something Awful (SA) is an American comedy website hosting content including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so did its contributors and content. The website has helped to perpetuate various Internet phenomena, and it has been cited as an influence on Internet culture. In 2018, Gizmodo placed it as 89th on their list of "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It".
An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of a number of English-language imageboards.
Encyclopedia Dramatica is a satirical online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google Search in 2010. An administrator of the website was the perpetrator of the 2017 Aztec High School shooting, and users of the site frequently participate in harassment campaigns.
Nicholas Alexander Castellanos is an American professional baseball right fielder and third baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously played for the Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds.
Steven Blake Crowder is an American-Canadian conservative political commentator and media host.
A creepypasta is a horror-related legend which has been shared around the Internet. The term creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories that are intended to frighten readers. The subjects of creepypasta vary widely and can include topics such as ghosts, cryptids, murder, suicide, zombies, aliens, rituals to summon entities, haunted television shows, and video games. Creepypastas range in length from a single paragraph to extended multi-part series that can span multiple media types, some lasting for years.
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan, is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. The site has been known to host child pornography; as a result, it was filtered out from Google Search in 2015. Several of the site's boards played an active role in the Gamergate harassment campaign, encouraging Gamergate affiliates to frequent 8chan after 4chan banned the topic. 8chan is the origin and main center of activity of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory.
/pol/, short for Politically Incorrect, is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan. As of 2022, it is the most active board on the site. It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture. It has acted as a platform for far-right extremism; the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content. /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence. It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title also ascribed to /b/.
Pepe the Frog is a webcomic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Designed as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, he had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe memes include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, "rare Pepes" have been posted on the "meme market" as if they were trading cards.
In Internet culture, shitposting or trashposting is the act of using an online forum or social media page to post content that is of "aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality". Shitposts are generally intentionally designed to derail discussions or cause the biggest reaction with the least effort. It may even sometimes be orchestrated as part of a co-ordinated flame war to render a website unusable by its regular visitors.
The Christchurch mosque shootings were two consecutive mass shootings on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 2019. They were committed by Brenton Tarrant who entered both mosques during Friday prayer, firstly at the Al Noor Mosque at 1:40 p.m. and later at the Linwood Islamic Centre at 1:52 p.m.
Serbia Strong is a nickname given to a Serb nationalist, anti-Croat and anti-Muslim propaganda music video from the Yugoslav Wars. The song has spread globally amongst far-right groups and the alt-right as a internet meme.
Thinkspot is an online social networking service started by Jordan Peterson following the banning of several content producers from the membership platform Patreon. Peterson and Dave Rubin conceived of the site together as a platform centered on free speech. Currently in public beta release, it has received mostly negative reviews from media critics.
"A drive into deep left field by Castellanos" is a phrase spoken by Thom Brennaman, a play-by-play announcer for the Cincinnati Reds, during a baseball game against Kansas City on August 19, 2020. Brennaman was replaced in the middle of the broadcast for a microphone gaffe in which he described an unnamed location as "one of the fag capitals of the world". While he apologized to listeners on the air, Reds outfielder Nick Castellanos hit a home run, which caused Brennaman to interrupt himself to deliver a home run call, describing the hit as a "drive into deep left field", before continuing with his apology. The surreal nature of the apology gave it notoriety in baseball internet culture, and has led to the phrase's use as a copypasta.
