I don't really like the word "meme." It has so many definitions now that Richard Dawkins himself is probably confused. But I do like to see funny stuff on the internet, like this video of a martial-arts exhibition gone awry. (It's the third one down.) As it turns out, appreciating funny-stuff-on-the-internet is a meme, or at least individual funny stuffs are memes. (Like I said, it's hard to go wrong with that word.) At any rate, now that the World Wide Web is in its second decade of existence, it's cool to see which memes have caught on. One that took a particularly interesting route is the phrase "More Cowbell," which I wrote about in this month's issue of Wired Magazine.

Like other phrases, including "All Your Base Are Belong To Us," "More Cowbell" has taken on a life of its own since it was first uttered by Christopher Walken during an SNL skit on April 8, 2000. (You can see it over at the Cowbell Chronicles.) Perhaps the coolest thing is that it went into a virtual hibernation for almost three years before it was released as part of SNL's Best of Will Ferrell DVD and gained a strong web presence.

My editor over at Wired claims that many of these, um, memes are not actually that popular, and are instead evidence of what he terms a "massively parallel culture" that has divided us into thousands of geeky tribes, each with our own favorite funny stuff on the internet.

With that in mind, here are a few of my favorites that you might not have heard of. (If you have, I guess that means we should hang out some time.)

Dogshit Girl (whom Gelf discussed previously)
The Exploding Whale
Strong Bad and Homestar Runner

You can see more at Wikipedia's entry for Internet Phenomena.