The Biggest Internet Sensations of 2013

2013 may be remembered as the year that the Internet was civilized. When viral videos and memes first burst into the public consciousness, there was a sense that Internet explosions were random. A kid in front of his computer making funny faces and dancing now had a shot at rising to instant fame and a guest spot on Ellen. It is still possible to come from total anonymity to Internet fame or infamy, but now there are systems and channels ready to profit from your newfound virality. This year, Miley Cyrus shocked us, Grumpy Cat compelled us to LOL, and Upworthy clickbaited us, but more so than ever before, the content we consumed felt branded, packaged and planned. The Wild West of the Web has come to an end; in 2013, "going viral" is left as much to corporate planning as to chance. It's hard to tell what will capture the right Redditor's imagination, but rest assured, whether it is a pop star, a cranky kitten, or a foul-mouthed sorority girl, t-shirts will be pressed, Funny or Die videos will be shot, and money will be made. You watched the video, made the meme, and bought the t-shirt, and now we can look back at The Biggest Internet Sensations of 2013.

Upworthy is the epitome of Internet lameness. These videos crowd our Facebook feeds with sappy, overwrought headlines courtesy of friends from high school who buy Yankee Candles and have their own Etsy stores. Yes, Upworthy is annoying, but one of the reasons we are so annoyed is that the site has become ubiquitous on the Internet in the last half of 2013. This site (and its legion of clones) has found the formula for shoving simplified, digestible liberalism down our throats, and the glut shows no signs of slowing. Upworthy, like Bitstrips and Farmville, show us that there are two paths to Internet dominance. You can be a cool kid, and depend on blogs, Reddit, and Twitter for fame, or you can court the audience that isn't quite as tech savvy, not nearly as plugged-in, and far more boring. Not everyone is a hip blogger; some people look to the Internet for nothing more than to see a girl play a piano, end racism, and restore our faith in humanity all in one minute-long video.

Just a few years ago, Internet sketch comedy and parody felt like a way for the little guy to get their comic stylings in front of the masses. College sketch groups and man-on-the-street pranksters busted out video after video in hopes of becoming the next viral hit. Though these rags-to-comedy-riches stories still sometimes happen, College Humor and Funny or Die have shown big media that viral videos can boost the profile of the already famous and fill their coffers. The James Franco-Seth Rogen shot for shot remake of Kanye and Kim's "Bound 2" is just the next salvo in the big money hijacking of Internet comedy. Comedy viral videos can be a proving ground for the little guy, but going forward, bet on more profile-raising fodder from the already famous.

You may remember this video from your lame friend's Facebook wall a few months back. There's nothing wrong with this triumphant "take this job and shove it" moment; it's earnest sweetness evokes the viral wedding dance videos that took over America's YouTube accounts several years ago. Give us a gut-busting college coach rant or a ridiculous dance Vine any day; this video left us with a collective "meh." Regardless of our opinion, the video struck a nerve, receiving more hits in five days than there are people who watched the Breaking Bad finale. Shifrin received job offers from the video and as of press time, we are still receiving this video in forwarded emails from our aunts.

What does the internal monologue of a dog sound like? Apparently, it sounds quite cute. At least this is the thesis advanced by the Doge Meme. Though misspelling "dog" as "doge" traces its roots back to early viral sensation Homestar Runner, 2013 saw a Renaissance-de-doge. The Doge Meme is the web equivalent of that indie band that you've known about for a while, but is just now finally blowing up. Variants of this meme have been kicking around Reddit and Tumblr since 2010, but only this year has Doge become a household meme. As usual, KnowYourMeme has an in-depth history of Doge, for those interested in learning more about how 2013 became the Year of the Doge.

If you're looking at popularity of memes in 2013, Miley Cyrus was the pop culture Internet champion by a landslide. If you're looking for quantity of memes, then Drake reigns supreme. Keeping up with Drake memes is basically a full-time job. The memes began to flow with "Wheelchair Drake" in 2010, and the pace has never let up. Some of our favorites included "Drake Wearing Dada," "Starbucks Drake Hands," "Drake-ing Bad," and "Drake's New Friends." To those who say there are too many Drake memes out there, we say, "YOLO."

Another year, another viral dance craze. 2013 was the year of the Harlem Shake. Though the track was released in 2012 and the dance itself is decades old, the trend erupted in February of this year. Once YouTuber hiimrawn uploaded "Harlem Shake v3 (office edition)" , the trend took on a life of its own. YouTube estimates that 4,000 "Harlem Shakes" videos were uploaded to its site every day during the second week of February. The trend didn't end there. Think pieces (the best of which came courtesy of Kevin Ashton at Quartz), analytics, and controversy followed. Of course, there are a number of reports of people being fired and/or arrested for making Harlem Shake videos at inappropriate times, which is how you know something has truly arrived on the Internet.

Last week, Amanda Bynes was released from rehab, hopefully completing her turn as this year's mentally unstable former-child-star-turned-pop-culture-punching-bag. As is often the case in situations like these, what seemed funny and strange at first eventually took at turn for the worse. Here's hoping that Bynes finds her footing after rehab and a little time out of the harsh light of the public eye.

At this point, we're pretty sure that local news reports only exist as a hothouse for the creation of viral videos. Like Kai the Hitchhiker, Sweet Brown, and Antoine Dodson before him, Charles Ramsey rose to Internet stardom thanks to a local news report. Never mind that Charles Ramsey actually did some good. If he hadn't mentioned eating McDonald's, salsa music, and big testicles, he would have faded into obscurity, never to be immortalized in meme. The Internet loves heroes, but it loves them even more if their accounts of their heroics are hilarious.

Though not every Internet hoax begins on Twitter, pranksters and charlatans have learned just how much fuel Twitter can add to their fake fires. This year brought us the "Dayna Morales LGBT Waitress" hoax, the "Elan/Diane in-flight argument" hoax, the "Jimmy Kimmel Twerk Fail" hoax and many others. In the age of lightning fast Internet and instant viral reach, information now travels infinitely faster than it can be vetted. The easy move is to blame the media, to lament the death of fact finding, to demand that we responsibly verify sources. Blaming the media for the way the flow of information has changed is about as effective at shouting at the sky because you don't like the weather. Internet hoaxes aren't going away. You'll just have to take everything you hear with a grain of salt and wait until they clear it up on Snopes.com.

2013 was the year of the Vine star. We all have our favorite Vine auteurs, but none of them shine quite as brightly as Lil Terrio. As a people, we have enjoyed fat kids dancing since Truffle first shuffled his way through The Goonies. There is something special about Lil Terrio though. It may be his dope dance moves. Perhaps it is his complete lack of self-awareness. It could be his trademark "Oooh Kill 'Em!" Maybe all of these factors make the kid hypnotic. Whatever the reason, Terrio has captured our hearts, six seconds at a time.

Before you take to the digital streets in protest that we didn't rank these whistle blowers (or as Fox News would call them, leakers) number one, hear us out. Ranking Snowden and Manning on a list like this is a challenge. In history books, certainly Manning and Snowden will be covered more thoroughly than Grumpy Cat, but what makes an Internet sensation? Do they sell Snowden t-shirts at the mall? Are Manning memes shared on any but the most politically savvy forums? Manning and Snowden are remarkable partially because of how little they're talked about. Fox News spent more time covering Snowden and Manning than most other outlets, and this was only due to their insatiable desire to brand them traitors. The book is still being written on Snowden and Manning's legacies, but if you did a nationwide poll, we guarantee that more people could identify a half-dozen Miley Cyrus songs than could identify either of these two.

Breaking Bad simultaneously illustrated the power and weakness of The Internet in 2013. Netflix, memes, Twitter, and Reddit are responsible for the incredible finale number of 10.3 million viewers. The back half of season five averaged 5 million, which is a huge number for a cable drama lacking zombies or bikers. Breaking Bad also re-enforced the distance between the blog and tweet-driven dialogue online and TV viewers who live most of their life offline. While your friends on Twitter mark the seasons by whether they are watching Game of Thrones, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad, odds are your Facebook feed, populated with friends from high school, tells a different story. The highest rated drama on cable, The Walking Dead averages 19.9 million viewers. Big Bang Theory, in a hum-drum thousandth season averages 18.6 million. A show you thought only your grandmother watched, NCIS, draws 21.3 million viewers. The pre-game show for Sunday Night Football routinely pulls in 13.5 million viewers. Breaking Bad was a wonderful show, and its longevity was driven by the Internet, but as Walter White leaves us, we are reminded that there are more viewers than just those who are making noise.

The recent feel-good trend on the Internet has been incredibly annoying. Upworthy videos and BuzzFeed lists that "restore your faith in humanity" have become the obligatory sharable content all over the Internet. Why have a dialogue when you can have picture of a paraplegic corgi cuddling with an underprivileged toddler? Even those of us whose hearts have been hardened by the Internet's commodification of cute and sale of empathy have some love for San Francisco Bat Kid. In an age where all good things seem to have a hidden dark bent (Kony 2012 anyone?), Make-A-Wish and San Francisco came together to do something selfless and lovely. It's okay if you aren't ready to say that Miles Scott's vigilante justice restored your faith in humanity (In fact, it's okay if you never lost your faith in humanity in the first place, right?), but the Internet seems to be in agreement that Batkid was sweet and nice. That alone is an achievement worthy of applause.