The 6 Most Infamous Youtube Memes

A meme is defined as: “a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.” Even if you’ve never heard the term meme before, you’ve almost certainly experienced them. Sometimes they’re hilarious, sometimes they’re baffling, and sometimes they are just down right annoying. For obvious reasons, a lot of them originate or at least become popular on YouTube. Here are some of the most infamous internet memes that you should check out, if you haven’t already, or avoid completely:
 

Dancing Baby

The granddaddy of all internet memes. To be fair, it didn’t originate on Youtube, since it was created in 1996, while the internet was still in its infancy stage. It spread widely via emails. Now, I’m not sure if it was the first internet meme ever (information from that ancient time is sketchy, and best left to the archaeologists) but it was one of the first ones to break through the cyber world into the real world. It was featured on Ally McBeal (remember that show? It was about a single career woman making it on her own. Remember when every show wasn’t a single career woman making it on her own?) and became a phenomenon. Without this poorly rendered dancing baby, memes as we know them might not even exist.
 

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

That grammatically murdered sentence comes from the Sega Saturn game “Zero Wing.”  It was originally a Japanese game, and in 1991 it was translated for an European audience. Now, I’m no translator, and I get that Japanese is a tough language, but how can someone write that phrase out, think it’s correct, and still get paid? That’s not even the only mistranslation, and maybe not the worst, but it was the one that caught on. In 2000-2002 it spread quickly, becoming a popular saying on T-Shirts. On April 1st, 2003, it caused panic in a city called Sturgis, Michigan. In an April fools joke, 20 signs with the phrase written on them were placed all around the town, and people thought it was a terrorist threat. When an internet meme comes under police investigation, you know it has made it.
 

Star Wars Kid

Aww…this one is kind of sad. Imagine if something stupid you did when you were a teenager followed you around for the rest of your life. How badly would that suck? Well, I can’t do anything about it, so I might as well point and laugh. A long long time ago (2002) in a galaxy far, far away (Canada) a kid decided it would be fun to video tape himself using a golf ball retriever as a light saber. We’ve all done something similar. I used to pretend I was the Blue Power Ranger. Luckily, I never taped myself, and I never left the tape in my school’s basement. Star Wars Kid did, and a few of his classmates found it. Because teenagers are the meanest creatures in existence, they uploaded it, and the rest is history. Star Wars Kid has been spoofed on Arrested Development, American Dad and South Park to name a few, proving once and for all Star Wars ruins lives.
 

Numa Numa

This meme is less sad because the guy obviously wanted the attention. In 2004, Gary Brolsma released of video of him lip syncing and dancing…kind of, to the song Dragostea din tei. It not only spread, it became one of the most spoofed videos on the internet. The Believer, an American magazine about literature, says the video single-handedly justifies the existence of webcams. When was the last time you single-handedly justified the existence of something? I thought so.
 

Leeroy Jenkins

Or “Leeeeeeroy Jeeeeeenkins”, is a famous meme among gamers, especially World of Warcraft fans. The video is of a group of people playing WoW and planning an attack like it was World War 2. Leeroy, probably sick of listening to statistics and minute details, just decides to throw caution to the wind and fight. He promptly gets everyone killed, but not before yelling the famous battle cry: “Leeeeeeeroy Jeeeeeeeenkins.” It’s kind of like Braveheart, if Braveheart had a different ending and the cause was kind of pointless. It became so famous, World of Warcraft actually named an accomplishment after him. Later, it was discovered the whole thing was fake, but hey, it was funny, so who cares?
 

Rickroll

Ugh…no meme list would be complete without Rickroll. Ever go on Youtube and look for a video you couldn’t find anywhere else? Ever become so excited and then, suddenly, 30 seconds in a stupid, annoying music video from the 80’s starts playing? You’ve just been Rickroll’D. Don’t worry, you’re still smarter than the person who made the video. The original song “Never Going To Give You Up” was recorded in the late 80’s, and it possibly one of the worst popular songs ever made. Luckily, for a long time everyone forgot about it, until a certain website started “rickrolling” people in 2007. Why? They thought it was funny. And maybe it was the first time. Hey, maybe it was the 500th time. But before long Youtube was swamped with Rickroll videos, and we all had the suffer. This meme has left a trail of innocent computers broken by their owners. A tip: if you’re going to create a meme, don’t make it the worst thing ever.
 

Those are just some of the memes that have entered our pop culture over the last few years. Have a funny meme that we haven’t listed? Share them in your comments below!