Minus 10 points for style: The online trends of yesteryear

This year marks a special anniversary for one of the granddaddies of online humor. In 1996, college student Nehal Patel posted "Mr. T Ate My Balls" (www.geocities.com/nkpatel/mrt/). It was juvenile, it was pointless, and it conquered the Web. Patel followed up his first page with "Chewbacca Ate My Balls," and from there the phenomenon spawned countless celebrity "Ate My Balls" pages. Everyone from Bill Gates to Seinfeld found their pictures amended with not-too-witty word blurbs or crudely drawn gonads. "Useless" pages like these were how we entertained ourselves before broadband. It was considered by many to be the first Internet phenomenon -- at least among those unaware of Kibology (www.kibo.com).\nThe Internet has matured -- at least in presentation -- since then, and has generated countless more phenomena. For cheap laughs, there's the ever-hilarious "Kitty Cat Dance" (www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/kittycat.php), the eerily hypnotizing "Badger Badger Badger" video (www.badgerbadgerbadger.com), the provocative Bert is Evil (www.bertisevil.tv/index2.htm), or the downright wrongness of David Hasselhoff's performance of "Hooked on a Feeling" (www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=15042). \nThe list of Internet trends is virtually endless, and new fads are being generated all of the time. For every one that I can name, someone is going to inevitably counter with another. "Well, what about the Numa Numa kid?" (www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/206373). These sites provide an alternative to television and other traditional media, and shape our cultural landscape. One need only witness the glory of Homestar Runner (www.homestarrunner.com) to comprehend the pinnacle of modern Internet zeitgeist. \nThe mainstream media has caught on to the brute strength of Internet culture, and so have advertisers. As much as I hate to plug a Burger King promotion, the subservient chicken (www.subservientchicken.com) remains a must-see. It's a prime example of "viral" marketing -- the catchy sort of advertising that spreads by word of mouth without the need for bucket loads of money. It works though. According to Adweek, the disturbingly funny site received 20 million hits within its first week.\nYet, a hundred corporate marketing attempts couldn't hold a candle to the supernova of online moxie that was "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" (www.newgrounds.com/collections/ayb.html). The phrase spawned from a string of horribly mistranslated dialogue from the video game "Zero Wing." An outpouring of Internet culture followed in its battleship-like wake. The whole thing was summed up in a music video by the Laziest Men on Mars, who also created the video for "The Terrible Secret of Space" (newgrounds.com/portal/view/33440), another trend, which began as a prank by Richard Kyanka at the Something Awful Web site (www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=287).\nOf course, no summary of Internet phenomena would be complete without at least some mention of the Star Wars Kid (www.jedimaster.net/), also known as Ghyslain Raza. \nEveryone has had that one special high school moment in which they've totally dorked out and done something impossibly embarrassing, but most of us have been fortunate enough not to have footage of our misdeeds broadcast on the Internet. To Raza's great chagrin, a video of his embarrassing impersonation of Darth Maul was made public and then digitally enhanced several times over. \nThe results were simultaneously cruel and hilarious. Within a week, the video was watched by millions \nworldwide. \nSeth MacFarlane was obviously one of them. The Star Wars Kid trend was revived for television on an episode of American Dad (gorillamask.net/adswk.shtml). Still, the story has a happy ending for Raza, thanks to Andy Baio and Jish Mukerji. The duo started a Web-based fundraiser, which took in $4,334.44 to reimburse Raza for all of the entertainment that he'd inadvertently provided the online community, according to the Waxy Web site. \nSo here's a tip of the hat to Nehal Patel and the other online trends of yesteryear. Every time that I dare to think they are finally gone and buried, I'll get an e-mail from someone who has just found them for the first time. If it's still legal for Hasselhoff to sing, then must be another fad waiting on the fringes for a comeback.