Bongo Cat is an Internet meme that originated when a Twitter user created and tweeted a GIF of a white cat-like blob smacking a table with its two paws. [1] [2] The tweet was then replied to by another Twitter user [3] with an edited version of the GIF including bongos hit to the tune of a Super Mario World track. [4] The reply went viral and caused the GIF to be edited to many other songs. [5] [6]
The original Bongo Cat GIF originated on May 7, 2018, when an animated cat GIF made by Twitter user @StrayRogue [2] was edited by @DitzyFlama, with the edit including bongos which were hit by the cat to the tune of "Athletic" from the Super Mario World soundtrack. [7] The original artist clarified that Bongo Cat was a cat-like blob rather than an actual cat, showing a drawing of the character's full body in another tweet. [2]
It has later been edited to many other songs and many different instruments in fan-made videos, appearing on social media such as YouTube and Twitter. [5] [8] The meme has covered many songs from video game soundtracks, such as music from Persona 5 and Super Mario , as well as mainstream songs such as Toto’s "Africa" and Darude’s "Sandstorm". [9] After an increase in popularity, Stray Rogue began making and selling Bongo Cat merchandise. [1] Bongo Cat also has been made into an interactive website. [3]
Polygon and Uproxx both described Bongo Cat as the best meme of 2018. [10] [11] Ellen Scott of Metro also described Bongo Cat as bringing "happiness to all, even in the trashfire [sic] year that was 2018". [12] The Daily Dot described it as the most earnest and wholesome meme of 2018. [13] Reid McCarter of The A.V. Club and Megan Farokhmanesh of The Verge both praised the meme. [8] [3] Nicole Clark of Vice described the meme as "the only good thing on the internet." [14]
Praised for its flexibility, Bongo Cat has also been compared to the keyboard cat meme. [2]
Know Your Meme (KYM) is a website and video series which uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, Internet celebrities and more. It also investigates new and changing memes through research, as it commercializes on the culture. Originally produced by Rocketboom, the website was acquired in March 2011 by Cheezburger Network, which, in 2016, was acquired by Literally Media. Know Your Meme includes sections for confirmed, submitted, deadpooled, researching, and popular memes.
Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 10-minute-long looping video clips. It was originally launched on January 24, 2013, by Vine Labs, Inc and Big Human. Bought by Twitter, Inc. in 2012 before its launch, the service was shut down on January 17, 2017, and the app was discontinued a few months later.
Doge is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog, accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English. The meme most frequently uses an image of a Shiba Inu named Kabosu, though versions with other Shiba Inus are also popular.
Images and videos of domestic cats make up some of the most viewed content on the World Wide Web. ThoughtCatalog has described cats as the "unofficial mascot of the Internet".
The Ted Cruz–Zodiac Killer meme is an Internet meme which originated in 2013 and gained popularity in 2015. A facetious conspiracy theory, the meme suggests that Ted Cruz, a United States senator and 2016 US presidential candidate, is the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified serial killer active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is mathematically impossible for Cruz to be the Zodiac Killer, as the murders began before his birth. Circulators of the meme do not genuinely believe that he was the Zodiac Killer, citing the absurdity of its premise; NPR wrote that the meme captured "a feeling they have about Cruz: they think he's creepy. And they want to point that out, as clearly as they can."
Dat Boi is an Internet meme originating from the clip art website Animation Factory. The meme garnered popularity on Tumblr in 2015 before gaining more recognition through Twitter in 2016. It is usually accompanied by a person saying "here come dat boi".
In Internet culture, a Milkshake Duck is a person who gains popularity on social media for some positive or charming trait but is later revealed to have a distasteful history or to engage in offensive behavior. The term has been connected to cancel culture, a perceived trend of call-out culture on social media, sometimes resulting in celebrities being ostracized and careers abruptly derailed by publicized misconduct.
@dril is a pseudonymous Twitter user best known for his idiosyncratic style of absurdist humor and non sequiturs. The account and the character associated with the tweets are all commonly referred to as dril or wint, both rendered lowercase but often capitalized by others. Since his first tweet in 2008, dril has become a popular and influential Twitter user with more than 1.8 million followers.
DoggoLingo is an Internet language that is created from word conversion, meme lexicon, and onomatopoeia. Emerging in the 2010s, DoggoLingo is implied to be a dog's own idiom, and is presented as what humans have long believed goes on in the canine brain. Elyse Graham, assistant professor at Stony Brook University, describes DoggoLingo as "upbeat, joyful, and clueless in a relentlessly friendly way".
"Mooo!" is a song by American rapper and singer Doja Cat. Originally self-published exclusively as a music video on August 10, 2018, it became a viral internet meme and amassed over 578 million views. It was subsequently released as the lead single from the deluxe edition of her debut studio album Amala. The viral success of "Mooo!" is considered a major factor in Doja Cat's internet fame, ultimately "setting the tone for her career", despite being considered by Doja Cat herself as a "throwaway" and a "joke".
Bowsette or Koopa-hime, is a fan-made, moe anthropomorphized and gender-swapped version of the Mario franchise character Bowser, in which he is transformed by the Super Crown power-up to resemble the franchise character Princess Peach. The character was originally created on 19 September 2018 by Ayyk92, a Malaysian online artist, as part of a comic strip which he posted to Twitter. Bowsette subsequently became an internet meme and rose in popularity internationally, with related hashtags in English and Japanese trending on Twitter; several professional Japanese artists contributed their own renditions of the character on the website.
The NPC, derived from non-player character, is an Internet meme that represents people who do not think for themselves or do not make their own decisions; those who lack introspection or intrapersonal communication. The meme gained further viral status on TikTok, with the surge of "NPC Streamers". In terms of politics, it's often been used by those with anti-establishment views to describe those who fail to question authority, "groupthink", or a stance that would display conformity and obedience. The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.
Stan Twitter is a community of X users that post opinions related to celebrities, music, TV shows, movies, video games, social media, and others. The community has been noted for its particular shared terminology but also for incidents of harassment and bullying. Usually, Stan Twitter revolves around discussing public figures — primarily those in the entertainment industry such as actors and musicians.
SiIvaGunner, formerly GiIvaSunner, is a comedic musical collective based mostly around bait-and-switch YouTube videos claiming to be "high quality rips" of video game music that are in reality remixes, parodies, and/or mashups, usually incorporating Internet memes, popular music, or sounds similar to the original track.
Woman yelling at a cat is an Internet meme first used in a post by Twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL on May 1, 2019. It juxtaposes two images: on the left, a screen capture of "Malibu Beach Party from Hell", an episode from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, depicting cast member Taylor Armstrong crying and pointing ; and a picture uploaded to Tumblr in June 2018, depicting a cat from Ottawa, Ontario, Smudge, sitting at a dinner table behind a salad with a seemingly confused expression.
Extremely online, also terminally online or chronically online, is a phrase referring to someone closely engaged with Internet culture. People said to be extremely online often believe that online posts are very important. Events and phenomena can themselves be extremely online; while often used as a descriptive term, the phenomenon of extreme online usage has been described as "both a reformation of the delivery of ideas – shared through words and videos and memes and GIFs and copypasta – and the ideas themselves". Here "online" is used to describe "a way of doing things, not [simply] the place they are done".
uwu, also stylized UwU, is an emoticon representing a cute face. The u characters represent closed eyes, while the w represents a mouth. It is used to express various warm, happy, or affectionate feelings.
Meme Man, sometimes also referred to as Mr. Succ or the Stonks guy, is a character often featured in internet memes. He is depicted as a 3D render of a smooth, bald, and often disembodied blue-eyed male head. He was popularized in the mid-2010s by the artist "Special meme fresh", and became a common character in many surreal memes, a genre of internet humor inspired by surrealism. During the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, Meme Man was popularized by users of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets as the face of the "stonks" meme.
Zoom Cat Lawyer, also known as I'm Not a Cat, is an Internet meme that refers to a viral video taken from a live stream of a civil forfeiture hearing, and being held on the video conferencing application Zoom in Texas' 394th Judicial District Court. The video features an attorney named Rod Ponton, who is struggling to disable a cat filter that shows a white kitten instead of his face, making it appear as though a cat is speaking.
