Andy Warhol once said that a time would arrive where each of us would be famous for 15 minutes. In a way that has happened with the Internet. People who are quite ordinary, who are living quiet lives, unknown and having no reason to become famous, can suddenly find themselves globally famous via emails and YouTube because of something they have done or an image in which they are featured. There is the fat Asian kid whose face was superimposed on every image photoshoppers could think of, and the other kid using a stick as a light sabre (both kids ended up in therapy).
The spread of ideas and cultural phenomena is known as memetics, the cultural items themselves being referred to as memes. Then there are "internet memes". Wikipedia says:
The term "Internet meme" refers to a catchphrase or concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet, largely through Internet-based email, blogs, forums, social networking sites and instant messaging. The term derives from the original concept of memes, although it has come to refer to a much more narrowly-defined category of cultural information.
