The Greatest Internet Memes of All Time

A Shiba Inu named Kabosu ended up attached to money — Dogecoin was the first cryptocurrency built on an internet meme, and PleasrDAO paid US$4 million for an NFT depicting it. Sakura, Chiba installed a monument to Kabosu in 2023 and a manhole cover carrying her image in 2024. A US federal department later took the acronym DOGE. The meme became popular in 2013; everything else came after.

Censors got involved. China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a directive on 30 March 2009 listing 31 categories of content prohibited online, and most Chinese essays and blog posts about the animal were removed after government censors found them. The joke survived as an object — by March 2011 a Guangzhou toy manufacturer had reportedly turned out a first batch of 150 plush dolls, each with a birth certificate from the Mahler Gebi Mystical Creatures Bureau.

Up to 15 miners in Australia lost their jobs for breaching safety rules after uploading a video of themselves performing it underground — a group of Colorado College students filmed their own version on a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to San Diego, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration launched an investigation. Billboard brought forward plans to fold YouTube views into the Hot 100 while the videos were still going up.

Registering the drawing with the United States Copyright Office on 27 July 2010 turned a rage comic face into a revenue stream — Carlos Ramirez, who drew it in Microsoft Paint on 19 September 2008, estimated he had earned more than $100,000 in licensing fees, with monthly takings peaking around $15,000 and the retail chain Hot Topic selling shirts with the face on them. Meme Run, a Wii U game, was removed for copyright infringement.

Copyright law arrived in May 2013, when Charles Schmidt and Nyan Cat's creator Christopher Torres sued 5th Cell and Warner Bros. over both characters appearing in the Scribblenauts games without permission. The suit settled that September, with both men paid for the use. Fatso, the original cat, had died in 1987 — a successor named Bento turned up in an NFL advertisement that first aired during Super Bowl XLIX.

Their publisher got sued by the man himself: in December 2007 Norris filed against Penguin USA over The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World's Greatest Human, released through its Gotham Books imprint. He dropped it in 2008, then co-wrote The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book with Tyndale House, issued on 7 October 2009 — and ballots in Armenia's 2012 parliamentary election turned up with his name written in.

Seven people put signs around Sturgis, Michigan on 1 April 2003 reading 'All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time.' Police Chief Eugene Alli said the signs could be 'a borderline terrorist threat, depending on what someone interprets it to mean.' Residents were upset about them appearing while the US was at war with Iraq; the seven called it an April Fools' joke.

Chief Justice John Roberts put the phrase into a US Supreme Court argument on 15 January 2020, during questioning in the age discrimination case Babb v. Wilkie. New Zealand MP Chlöe Swarbrick had already used it in parliament to shut down a heckler during a climate policy speech. Fox Media filed a trademark application in 2019, intending an ongoing television series.

Rick Astley appeared on a Cartoon Network float at the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, interrupting a puppet number with a record scratch and lip-syncing to millions of viewers watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Members of the Oregon state legislature ran the trick through the chamber in 2011 — Jefferson Smith and colleagues slipped the lyrics into floor speeches, then cut them together into one video.

Ownership is the story here. Laney Griner sent a cease and desist letter to United States Representative Steve King in January 2020, after his fundraising campaign used the photograph without her permission. The same image had already run in a Coca-Cola ad and on Virgin Mobile UK billboards — in April 2015 she launched a GoFundMe hoping to raise $75,000 toward a kidney transplant.

English electronic group the Cuban Boys released 'Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia' in April 1999, hoping to ride the website's popularity, and the single peaked at number 4 on the Christmas 1999 UK singles chart. EarthLink used the site in a television commercial in January 2000 — the meme had got as far as selling internet access.

Sweden's advertising ombudsman determined in September 2018 that the internet service provider Bahnhof had broken rules against gender discrimination — the ad cast the attention-stealing woman as Bahnhof's job openings and the ignored girlfriend as 'your current workplace'. Underneath it all sits a 2015 stock photograph by the Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem.

Windows users could render their own copies from the 3D source file, royalty-free, and that is what pushed it into mainstream media. John Woodell's animated GIF turned up in dramas, commercial advertisements and music videos between 1997 and 1998 — Ally McBeal is the appearance people still name.

Bookings followed fast — ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show and VH1's Best Week Ever all had Gary Brolsma on after he lip-synced to 'Dragostea din tei' in front of a webcam. VH1 went on to vote him the number 1 Internet Icon in its 2007 list of the 40 Greatest Internet Superstars.

Playing herself for money worked out. Laina Morris published the video on 6 June 2012, then on 12 November 2012 played an 'Overly Attached Computer' in a Samsung commercial for the company's 840 SSD — an image of the character later sold as an NFT for $411,000 in April 2021, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon had booked her on 11 March 2013.

Associated Press photographer Stephan Savoia shot the source picture at Michael Jordan's Basketball Hall of Fame induction on 11 September 2009. Eleven years later Jordan used it on himself, delivering a eulogy for Kobe Bryant on 24 February 2020: 'Now he's got me. I'll have to look at another Crying Meme.'

One buyer, one payment, and that is the whole off-internet footprint: on 17 April 2021 Zoë Roth sold the NFT for 180 Ether, or US$486,716, to a collector known as @3FMusic. She was four years old in 2005 when her father, an amateur photographer, took the picture — she is the one who chose to sell it.