The Birth of the Internet Phenomena

by Edward Lam

There is a place where unexpected legends are born while others have met their downfall from trying to seek their fortune. A dark place that was left to its own devices after mankind created it. Unwatched and abandoned, such a place grew into an entity that became further and further unrecognizable with each passing year. Despite appearing innocent at its surface, children were warned never to venture too deep and yet those who failed to heed such words remained scarred by the contents within. Dominated by those of a feral origin, the world has commonly referred to such a place as the “Internet”.

Introduced to society’s young in the form of web browsers, the gateway to the Internet is met with full force as soon as a single query is typed within a search engine. Whether it is Bing, Yahoo or Google, the trap remains the same. With thousands of search results in a matter of seconds, the Internet attracts its prey through such impressive displays of offered knowledge. But imagine as fictional Little Timmy from 8^th grade is researching facts about Abraham Lincoln for his historical figure project, he innocently stumbles upon a video of a cat, dressed as the very man he was meant to research. Timmy finds amusement from such a video and proceeds to dive further with the grip of the Internet tightening with each new distraction that Timmy discovers. Perhaps it is another cat video. Maybe this then transitions to videos of a baby’s reaction to eating lemons. The results remain the same: Little Timmy’s history project is one that will fail to be finished.

But can one truly blame the antics of Little Timmy? He is but only one example of the millions that fall under the same spell that the Internet spreads. From social and media outlets such as YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr, the next online sensation in the form of social fads or viral videos is simply waiting to captivate the public’s attention.

Interestingly enough, while Internet sensations seem to appear out of the blue, it should be acknowledged that the road to the Internet phenomena is a delicate one consisting of numerous aspects. Factors include major categories such as cuteness, stupidity, simplicity, comedy and replicability (with the presence of all factors usually increasing viral potential). While each factor has virtue alone, their potency is usually seen when such factors go hand in hand. With the combination of cuteness and simplicity demonstrated in past sensations such as Nyan Cat or the “Charlie Bit My Finger” video, the combination of stupidity and replicability can be a dangerous and influential one as well. From the Cinnamon Challenge to the Ice Bucket Challenge (with this spread actually going toward a beneficial cause), the very word “challenge” seems to invoke a drive within people especially when such a challenge is popularized to a nation-wide scale. While the act of planking is certainly a joy not to be missed, there are phenomena that sometimes can simply not be explained.

Alex from Target. Left shark. Moon Moon. A string of words that had it not been for their Internet relevance, would seem to be either gibberish or codes for a disgruntled coach to yell at his players to anyone passing by. With nothing necessarily astonishing about sensations such as Alex from Target (picture of a teen Target employee by the name of Alex presumably popularized due to the boy’s attractive features), such phenomena can only be placed in the category of “random” as there is no clear explanation for their rise to fame other than simply the general public’s interest in something that suddenly becomes popular. With such sensations depending on being popular in the first place rather than actually displaying anything of significance, survivability of such sensations typically last up to a week as attention spans slowly diverge toward the next big thing.

Therefore, there is a point at which it must be accepted that the Internet is unpredictable; a beast that simply cannot be tamed. So instead of attempting deflect the influence of the Internet, we must simply deem it a wave that must be rode and ask ourselves one simple question: black and blue or white and gold?