Nyan Cat, also known as Pop Tart Cat, is an 8-bit animation depicting a cat with the body of a cherry pop tart flying through outer space. While such absurd themes like flying kittens and pastry cats have been around for some time, the surreal humor behind this particular combination has captivated YouTubers and online art communities, spawning dozens of fan illustrations as well as receiving some mainstream coverage in April 2011. 

The Pop Tart Cat animation was posted on the daily comics site LOL-COMICS run by illustrator prguitarman on April 2nd, 2011. Prior to the Pop Tart Cat, prguitarman had already gained a relatively large audience with a few other instances of comics circulating on the web. The GIF animation was also reblogged via Tumblr on April 2nd, 2011, accumulating over 3,000 notes (likes & reblogs) in its first two weeks:

On April 5th, 2011, YouTuber saraj00n posted a video titled Nyan Cat, using comic artist prguitarman’s Pop Tart Cat animation set to the well-known Japanese Vocaloid song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya by Japanese artist daniwellP looping in the background. The video gained over one million views in its first two weeks:

YouTuber xDaZJMx commented on the original Nyan cat video by saraj00n telling viewers to watch Slipknot’s Psychosocial (muted) with the Nyan cat song playing in the background. The comment went as follows:

Step 1: Put this song to the start and Pause it.
Step 2: Open up Slipknot Psychosocial in another tab.
Step 3: Mute the Slipknot video.
Step 4: Play this song and the Slipknot vid at the exact same time
Step 5: ????
Step 6: PROFIT!

xDaZJMx’s comment quickly gained hundreds of likes, was featured as the highest comment, and many users began flooding the Psychosocial video’s comments with Nyans. As of April 26th, 2011, Slipknot’s “Psychosocial” music video page on YouTube has over 111,000 comments, with tens of thousands reading “NYANNYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYA.” This caused confusion among Slipknot listeners, and further spread the Nyan cat meme and its hilarity.

Single-Serving Sites

Nyan.cat was launched on April 13th, 2011, featuring the text “NON-STOP NYAN CAT” and another single serving site Slowbro.org was launched on the next day, featuring a “rainy” version of the original. The flash game version featuring a timer display similar to Nyan.cat was uploaded by Newgrounds user Blind-Bane on April 27th.

 

Musical Tributes

- Piano cover

- Guitar cover

- Three-Stringed Fretless Japanese Lute

PBS LulzSec Hack

On Sunday, May 29th, the PBS website was hacked by the group “LulzSec”, and several of the website properties were defaced with Nyan Cat related images. The group claims the hack was a reaction to the Frontline episode called “Wikisecrets”, that some felt was biased against Wikileaks. LulzSec released the following statement explaining the motivations behind the hack:

Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further… perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside… wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they’re sailing next time.

On May 30th, 2011, LulzSec tweeted a link to a pastebin post saying that PBS was not hacked by SQL, but rather a “0day we discovered in mt4 aka MoveableType 4”.

“Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like a Horse”

“Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like a Horse” is a catchphrase often associated with images that compare Sarah Jessica Parker’s face to a horse. This is commonly done by placing a photo of SJP next to that of a horse in the style of Totally Looks Like / Separated At Birth images.

“Do I really have the face of a horse?”

Technoviking

The Technoviking was made famous due to a video of a blue-haired girl dancing, then being crashed into by some unruly guy during the Fuckparade 2000 (a techno street-parade in Berlin Germany) which caused the Technoviking to snatch the guy up by his arms and shove him back where he came running from. The Technoviking then pointed at the man and gazed with an extremely fierce glare in his eyes. An aura of fear eminated from the Technoviking, causing the man to step down from the confrontation. The Technoviking then started dancing wildly through the streets after being given water from one of his minions.

The original clip, titled “Kneecam No. 1,” was produced by the German visual artist Matthias Fritsch at the annual street techno festival Fuckparade on July 8th, 2000. According to Matthias, the original intention behind publishing the Kneecam video was to raise the question of its authenticity, since its set-up obscures the border of fiction and documentary genres.

The video above was first uploaded by subrelic on October 10th, 2006. Today the video has over 11 million views. To this day, no one has documented any connection to the real man. Who is he?

300 TECHNO VIKING

Techno Viking Thriller

Techno Viking High School Edition:

Technoviking Drama

In 2009, Mathias and a team of artists curated an installation exhibit titled “Technoviking Archive” in Karlsruhe, Germany, which presented the best of Technoviking remixes, parodies and re-enactments in real life. More recently, the Technoviking Archive released an official compilation of parodies and response videos created by the fans.

Cool Story, Bro!

“Cool Story, Bro” is a popular catchphrase / image macro used as a sarcastic response to to thread posts, trolls and general comments that are deemed boring, pointless or just too long to read.

The original image used for the macro originates from the issue #122 of Marvel comicsThe Incredible Hercules by Clayton Henry, first published on October 29th, 2008:

 

The origin of the expression, however, remains debatable; some argue that the dismissive phrase was first popularized through the YTP community YouChewPoop, while many others cite 4chan’s /v/(videogame board) as the birthplace of the meme.

The phrase “cool story” as a sarcastic response was first documented on Urban Dictionary on June 8th, 2006. It can be traced back to a part in the 2001 movie “Zoolander,” in which a character tells a long winded adventure story and was told, “Cool story, Hansel,” after finishing.

The full phrase “Cool story, bro” did not appear on Urban Dictionary until January 5th, 2009. It is defined as "a phrase sarcastically used to indicate one’s disgust or indifference towards a tl;dr story.

The meme has been largely endorsed by 4chan’s /v/ community and has since spread across other affiliated imageboards, forums, blogs and chatrooms in multiple languages. The expression became especially popular on /v/ due to prevalence of user posts sharing personal, often lengthy stories that bear no relevance to the videogame forum.

     

Today, the phrase is widely used online and in real life to express one’s complete indifference towards someone else’s remark or as a casual dismissal of previous post with intent to troll other (or to dispel trolls). In addition, the phrase has been used in place of TL;DR or “too long, didn’t read.” Here’s an example of its usage on 4chan’s /v/:

There are a number of similar derivative expressions based on the phrase “cool story, bro,” as featured in image macros. In addition, following the influx of “cool story bro” on /int/ board, the phrase has been also used in languages other than English.

        

Other examples of derivative macros include:

• Amazing anecdote, amigo!
• Brisk narrative, sibling!
• Fine tale, matey!
• Frigid dissertation, homeboy!
• Interesting chronicle, kinsman!