Section 8

Internet culture

Double Rainbow, Bed Intruder, Old Spice, rage comics, advice animals, LOLcats, Chatroulette, forums and blogs: the memes, slang and rituals of being online in 2010.

Memes and image macros

The jokes that ran through Reddit, Tumblr and 4chan in 2010.

Supported
Rage comics
FFFFFUUUU, Trollface, Forever Alone, Me Gusta, Y U NO
Rage comics were crude, four-panel MS Paint strips about everyday frustrations, drawn with a shared cast of stick-figure faces. Born on 4chan in...
memerage comicsreddit
Supported
Advice Animals
Philosoraptor, Socially Awkward Penguin, Courage Wolf and friends
Advice Animals were image macros with an animal's head on a colour-wheel background and a two-line joke in Impact font. Advice Dog started it in...
memeadvice animalsimage macro
Supported
"Hide yo kids, hide yo wife"
The catchphrase of summer 2010
Antoine Dodson's warning to his Huntsville neighbours, "Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and hide yo husband, cause they rapin' everybody out here,"...
memecatchphrasebed intruder
Supported
"X all the Y!" (Clean all the things)
From Hyperbole and a Half to every to-do list
In June 2010, Allie Brosh's blog Hyperbole and a Half published "This is Why I'll Never be an Adult", with a crudely drawn figure shouting "CLEAN ALL...
memehyperbole and a halfblog
Supported
Deal With It
Sunglasses drop, argument over
The "Deal With It" GIF, a pair of pixel sunglasses sliding onto a face, originated on the Something Awful forums in 2010 and became the standard way...
memedeal with itgif
Supported
Demotivational posters
A black border, a photo, a word in serif, and a cruel caption
Demotivational posters parodied corporate motivational posters: a photo in a black frame, a one-word title and a deflating caption. Despair.com...
memedemotivationalformat
Supported
Facepalm
Captain Picard, hand over face
The facepalm, especially the still of Captain Picard with his hand over his face, was the standard forum and Reddit reaction to stupidity in 2010,...
memefacepalmreaction image
Supported
FAIL and WIN
Epic fail, FAIL Blog, and the Fail Whale
"FAIL", stamped over a photo of a mishap, was 2010's favourite one-word verdict, with "epic fail" for the worst cases and "WIN" for their opposite....
memefailepic fail
Supported
Forever Alone
The rage face for loneliness, born in May 2010
Forever Alone, a lumpy, tearful rage face first posted in a comic about a fake date in May 2010, became one of the year's most-used images: the face...
memeforever alonerage comics
Supported
Haters Gonna Hate
A strutting cartoon and a shrug at criticism
"Haters gonna hate", paired with an image of someone strutting obliviously (often a cartoon character or a walking pigeon), spread across Tumblr and...
memehaters gonna hatecatchphrase
Supported
Inception BWONG
The trailer noise that took over every trailer
The booming brass note from the Inception trailers, nicknamed BWONG or BRAAAM, became a meme in the summer of 2010: added to cat videos, mocked in...
memeinceptiontrailer
Supported
Let's Play videos
From Something Awful screenshots to YouTube commentary
Let's Plays, playing a game while narrating it, began as screenshot threads on Something Awful and became a YouTube video genre by 2010, with...
lets playyoutubegaming
Supported
Like a Boss
From a Lonely Island song to a caption for everything
"Like a Boss", from The Lonely Island's 2009 SNL Digital Short with Seth Rogen, became a 2010 catchphrase and image macro: any mundane act, captioned...
memelike a bosscatchphrase
Supported
LOLcats
I can has cheezburger? Still going strong in 2010
LOLcats, cat photos captioned in lolspeak with Impact font, had been mainstream since 2007 and were still the most recognisable internet joke in...
memelolcatscats
Supported
Me Gusta
The face for enjoying something you should not
Me Gusta, a bulging-eyed face drawn by Matt Oswald in March 2010, was the rage comic reaction for guilty pleasure. It spread through Reddit and...
mememe gustarage comics
Supported
Rickrolling
Three years old and still catching people
Rickrolling, tricking someone into clicking a link to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, was a 2007 4chan prank that by 2010 was the internet's...
memerickrollprank
Supported
Sad Keanu
A paparazzi photo of Keanu Reeves eating a sandwich, Photoshopped everywhere
A May 2010 paparazzi photo of Keanu Reeves eating a sandwich alone on a New York bench became Sad Keanu in June, when Reddit and 4chan users cut him...
memesad keanuphotoshop
Editorial
The animated GIF returns
Reaction GIFs, GIF sets and Tumblr's looping economy
Animated GIFs, a 1990s relic, came roaring back in 2010 thanks to Tumblr's reblog culture: reaction GIFs from TV shows, GIF sets of scenes, and...
giftumblrreaction gif
Supported
Trollface
Problem?
Trollface, a grinning MS Paint face drawn by Carlos Ramirez in September 2008, became the universal symbol of internet trolling by 2010. It appeared...
memetrollfacerage comics
Supported
Y U NO Guy
"Y U NO" + any complaint, in broken English
Y U NO Guy, a rage face taken from a manga panel, became a 2010 image macro for exasperated questions: "Facebook, Y U NO let me dislike?" It was one...
memey u norage comics

Viral moments

Videos, animals and news clips the whole internet watched at once.

Supported
Chatroulette Piano Improv (Merton)
A hooded pianist serenading strangers
In March 2010 a hooded man known as Merton posted videos of himself improvising songs about the strangers Chatroulette paired him with, and their...
chatrouletteviral videopiano
Supported
Epic Beard Man
"I am a motherf***ing ambulance"
A February 2010 cellphone video of a fight on an Oakland bus involving a 67-year-old bearded man became one of the year's first viral sensations,...
memeviral videoepic beard man
Verified
Paul the Octopus
The psychic octopus who picked every World Cup result correctly
Paul, an octopus at a German aquarium, chose the winner of all seven of Germany's 2010 World Cup matches and the final by picking a mussel from a...
memeworld cuppaul the octopus
Supported
The Fail Whale
Twitter's over-capacity page, seen constantly during the World Cup
Yiying Lu's illustration of a whale lifted by birds appeared whenever Twitter was over capacity, which in 2010 was often: during the World Cup, the...
twitterfail whaleoutage
Supported
Vuvuzela
The droning horn of the 2010 World Cup, and the internet's loudest joke
The vuvuzela, the plastic horn that droned through every 2010 World Cup broadcast from South Africa, became a meme within days: browser extensions...
memeworld cupvuvuzela

Forums, blogs and communities

Where the conversations happened before everything was a feed.

Editorial
Forum culture
vBulletin, phpBB, signatures, post counts and the ban hammer
Before Reddit and Discord ate them, forums were where the internet talked in 2010: vBulletin and phpBB boards for every hobby, game and band, with...
forumvbulletinphpbb
Supported
Anonymous and Operation Payback
Guy Fawkes masks, LOIC, and the WikiLeaks payment war
Anonymous, the loose collective born on 4chan, spent 2010 attacking anti-piracy groups and then, in December, the companies that cut off WikiLeaks:...
anonymoushacktivismwikileaks
Supported
Bieber Fever and the Beliebers
The first pop star made by YouTube and Twitter
Justin Bieber, discovered on YouTube in 2008, became the biggest teen star in the world in 2010. Beliebers organised on Twitter, where a Twitter...
justin bieberfandomtwitter
Editorial
MP3 culture
Ripping CDs, LimeWire folders, mislabelled tracks and the 4 GB iPod
In 2010 music was files: ripped from CDs, downloaded from LimeWire or torrents, bought from iTunes, traded on USB sticks, and organised (badly) in...
mp3musicipod
Editorial
The blogosphere
Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, RSS and the Technorati top 100
In 2010 blogs were still the intellectual centre of the web: personal blogs on Blogger and WordPress, mommy blogs, MP3 blogs, political blogs, and...
bloggingblogsrss
Supported
Trolling
Do not feed the trolls
Trolling, provoking people online for amusement, was the internet's defining pastime in 2010, from YouTube comment wars to 4chan raids to Trollface....
trolling4chanforums
Supported
Webcomics: xkcd, The Oatmeal, Hyperbole and a Half
The comics that lived in Google Reader
xkcd's stick-figure science jokes, The Oatmeal's ranting infographics and Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half were among the most-shared things on the...
webcomicsxkcdthe oatmeal

Viral videos, films and TV

MediaVerified
Bed Intruder Song
"Hide yo kids, hide yo wife": the most-watched video of 2010
Antoine Dodson's furious, funny interview on a Huntsville, Alabama news broadcast in July 2010 was Auto-Tuned into a song by the Gregory Brothers...
viral videoauto-tunememe
MediaVerified
Double Rainbow
"What does it mean?"
Paul Vasquez filmed a double rainbow over Yosemite in January 2010 and wept with joy on camera. The clip sat unnoticed until Jimmy Kimmel tweeted it...
viral videomemeyoutube
MediaVerified
Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
"I'm on a horse."
Wieden+Kennedy's Old Spice advert, starring Isaiah Mustafa in a single unbroken shot, was posted to YouTube in February 2010 and became the year's...
advertviral videoold spice
MediaVerified
The Social Network
"You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies"
David Fincher's film about Facebook's founding, written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, opened on 1 October 2010 to...
filmfacebookzuckerberg
MediaSupported
Glee
The show whose covers topped iTunes every week
Glee was the pop-culture juggernaut of 2010: its cast recordings sold millions on iTunes, its Madonna and Lady Gaga tribute episodes were events, and...
tvgleefox
MediaSupported
Inception
The blockbuster of 2010, and the BWONG that launched a thousand trailers
Christopher Nolan's Inception, released in July 2010, was the year's most discussed film online: forums argued about the spinning top, the trailer's...
filminceptionnolan
MediaSupported
Lost: The End
The series finale the internet argued about for weeks
Lost ended on 23 May 2010 with a two-and-a-half-hour finale watched by about 13.5 million Americans and dissected on forums, Twitter and recap blogs...
tvlostfinale
MediaVerified
Shit My Dad Says
From a Twitter account to a CBS sitcom in a year
Justin Halpern's Twitter account quoting his father's blunt remarks gained a million followers in 2009-2010, became a bestselling book in May 2010...
twittertvbook
MediaSupported
The Walking Dead premieres
AMC's zombie drama arrives on Halloween 2010
The Walking Dead premiered on AMC on 31 October 2010 to 5.3 million viewers, a cable record for a series premiere, and went on to become the...
tvwalking deadamc
MediaVerified
Toy Story 3
The highest-grossing film of 2010
Toy Story 3, released in June 2010, was the top-grossing film of the year worldwide and the first animated film to pass $1 billion. With Avatar still...
filmpixartoy story

The sites of internet culture

Supported
Chatroulette
Random strangers, webcam to webcam
Chatroulette paired you with a random stranger over webcam and let either of you hit Next. Built by 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy in late 2009, it...
webcamchatrouletteviral
Supported
4chan
Anonymous, /b/, and the meme factory
4chan's anonymous image boards, especially /b/, generated much of the internet's meme vocabulary in 2010 and gave rise to Anonymous, which attacked...
forum4chananonymous
Supported
CollegeHumor
Sketch comedy before YouTube channels
CollegeHumor produced original comedy videos, such as Jake and Amir and Hardly Working, and hosted user-submitted pictures and articles. In 2010 it...
humourcollegehumorweb video
Supported
Cracked.com
6 Reasons the Listicle Ruled 2010
Cracked.com, the former humour magazine, was at its peak in 2010 with numbered list articles about history, science and pop culture that were funnier...
humourcrackedlisticles
Supported
DeviantArt
The largest online art community
DeviantArt was ten years old in 2010 and the home of fan art, digital painting, photography and Photoshop brushes, with well over ten million...
artdeviantartcommunity
Supported
eBaum's World
Flash videos, viral clips and content wars
eBaum's World was a 2000s viral-media site that collected funny videos, Flash animations and images, often without credit, which made it notorious...
humourebaums worldviral
Supported
I Can Has Cheezburger and the Cheezburger Network
LOLcats as a media company
I Can Has Cheezburger turned LOLcats into a business, and by 2010 the Cheezburger Network ran dozens of sites, including FAIL Blog and Memebase,...
memeslolcatscheezburger
Supported
Know Your Meme
The internet's meme encyclopedia
Know Your Meme documented the origin and spread of memes with the seriousness of an encyclopedia and the deadpan of a science show. Started by the...
memesknow your memereference
Supported
Omegle
Talk to strangers
Omegle launched in 2009 as an anonymous text chat with strangers and added video chat in March 2010 as Chatroulette's popularity surged. Its tagline,...
chatomegleanonymous
Supported
Something Awful
The forums that cost ten bucks
Something Awful's forums, where an account cost $9.95, were one of the most influential communities on the 2010 internet. Goons popularised Let's...
forumsomething awfulgoons
Supported
Texts From Last Night
Anonymous drunk texts, sorted by area code
Texts From Last Night posted anonymous text messages submitted by readers, tagged only with an area code, and became a 2009-2010 phenomenon with a...
humourtflntexting

Culture events of 2010

CultureSupported
Chatroulette goes viral
The random-webcam site built by a Russian teenager exploded in February, reaching hundreds of thousands of daily users and becoming, per Google, the fastest-rising search of 2010.
CultureVerified
Old Spice posts "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like"
The single-take Old Spice advert starring Isaiah Mustafa was posted to YouTube ahead of the Super Bowl and became the year's most-shared commercial, followed in July by a two-day...
CultureSupported
Lost airs its series finale
About 13.5 million Americans watched The End, and the internet argued about it for weeks on forums, Twitter and recap blogs.
CultureSupported
Old Spice answers the internet with 186 personalised videos
Over two days the Old Spice team filmed nearly 200 short video replies to questions from Twitter, Reddit and YouTube users, one of the most celebrated social-media marketing...
CultureVerified
Inception is released
Christopher Nolan's dream-heist film became the year's most-discussed movie online, spawning the BWONG trailer meme and endless ending debates.
CultureVerified
The Social Network opens in cinemas
David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's film about Facebook's founding opened to acclaim and fixed the popular image of Mark Zuckerberg months before Time named him Person of the Year.
CultureSupported
The Walking Dead premieres on AMC
The zombie drama's Halloween debut drew 5.3 million viewers, a record for a cable series premiere, and launched a decade of live-tweeted Sunday nights.
CultureVerified
"App" is named 2010 Word of the Year
The American Dialect Society voted "app" its word of the year for 2010, beating "nom" and "junk"; the New Oxford American Dictionary had chosen "refudiate".
CultureVerified
Anonymous attacks PayPal, Visa and MasterCard for WikiLeaks
In Operation Payback, Anonymous volunteers used the LOIC tool to knock the websites of companies that had cut off WikiLeaks offline for hours.

Meme origins follow Know Your Meme and Wikipedia; the exhibit reproduces no copyrighted images, only descriptions and original illustrations.