Everyone seems to be trying to break the internet these days. Kim Kardashian is doing it with her posterior. Others do it through trolling. A rare few try to create internet destruction through logic and reason. It’s not about going viral. It’s about landing more than 15 seconds of fame so that everyone knows your name.
Now for the good news: it is possible to break the internet from the comfort of your home and you don’t even need to wear a thong to do it. Here are some of the best examples of how the internet has been broken in good… and bad ways.
#1. Bill Cosby
Mr. Cosby is the most recent addition to the Hall of Fame that exists for breaking the internet. He recently asked social media followers for memes. What he got in return wasn’t a bunch of jokes about scatting, Jell-O pudding pops, or thoughts about wearing bifocals. Cosby got numerous memes about the rape allegations that have been following him about instead.
#2. Charles Carreon
For awhile, Charles Carreon became a household name. Representing FunnyJunk, he attempted to sue The Oatmeal for damages because of what amounted to unethical SEO practices that took legitimate results for FunnyJunk to The Oatmeal. The internet broke around Carreon, he created a list of people who he blamed for breaking the internet, but in the end said that he’d just made things worse by his actions. His list of the hated is still up, if you care to see it. Yours truly is still on it, right above Wil Wheaton. Not bad company for a guy like me.
#3. Grumpy Cat
Tardar Sauce aka Grumpy Cat may only be 3 years old, but this cat has made a definite splash on the internet today. With a face that is permanently grumpy, her owners say that she is a happy cat 99% of the time. The only problem is that she never looks happy and that has inspired numerous memes about life in general.
#4. Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart already had some popularity as Captain Picard in the new TNG incarnation of Star Trek. He got more popularity when he was cast into the X-Men movie franchise. He broke the internet, however, when he began making statements that made a lot of sense. He and Ian McKellen would have adventures around NYC and post the results. Stewart offered to read to kids for the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign. He’s given hugs, tried pizza for the first time on social media, and touched a lot of lives.
#5. Red Dwarf
There’s no smeging way that a low budget sci-fi series from the UK should make such a big impression, but Season 10 managed to break the internet like no other robot and cat relationship has ever been able to do before. Sure it was only a handful episodes. Sure Red Dwarf USA was canceled before it even began. Sure there have been multi-year gaps between the different series. Yet how can you go wrong with a chicken vindaloo joke? You can’t.
#6. NYPD
What started out as a feel-good campaign to raise awareness for what the NYPD does every day soon broke down into images where officers were allegedly using too much force. This has been followed up with investigations into choke holds and a whole bunch of other stuff that the NYPD didn’t want. The #MyNYPD hashtag did generate some of the nice images that they wanted, but it’s also a little hard to get the picture of a police motorcycle on a guy’s leg out of your mind.
