Hmm. It sure is boring today.Click. Oh, is that Rebecca Black’s new song? Click. Cool, there’s some new hipster kitty macros. Click. I think I’ll go watch that video of Nyan Cat again. Click.

 Sounds familiar? Welcome to the Internet, the home of all the Internet memes. On the screen, Keyboard cat plays side by side with Rebecca Black as she sings along to her infamous tune and the “forever alone” guy is chased by a couple of trolls. Double rainbow guy is out of breath as he freaks out over two rainbows and cereal guy just sits on the corner, munching on his cereal and making comments about the scene.

 Amidst the chaos, questions arise. What are memes (pronounced “meems”), and what are they even about? What makes them so popular? Who started them? You’ve probably seen them before online (Have you ever seen Antoine Dodson’s video on YouTube? If so, then you’ve seen a meme.) Internet memes are videos, photos, or phrases that become propagated through the Internet.

 You might have seen it before, maybe in the form of a comment that says “epic fail” or a purposely misspelled word such as “moar.” But they are much more than a simple word. They originate from a variety of places, from YouTube videos or something as simple as a post on 4chan.com’s forums. As stupid as it sounds, something that can have zero hits one day can have as many as a million hits the next day.

 As they are passed from one person to the other, the meme becomes somewhat like a snowball rolling down a hill. The uses of it escalates and sooner or later, everyone and their mom has seen it.

 Thus, a new Internet meme is born. Now prepare yourself for seeing the said meme everyday for the next few months or so, but even after it’s height of popularity, it will still occasionally pop up in conversation or somewhere on the Internet.

 Let’s take Rickrolling as an example. Rickrolling is when someone sends someone a link of a video that is relevant to whatever topic they were talking about, only to have the video turn out to be a video of Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Rickrolling does not only pertain to the Internet, but also in real life.

 This meme became so popular that on Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2008, Rick Astley came out as a surprise guest on one of the floats, thus rickrolling tens of millions of viewers. The use of this meme has died out recently.

 No one is quite sure as to how Rickrolling started. Some people have said that it all occurred first around May 2007, in 4chan’s /v/ thread, also known as the video game’s thread, where someone linked a video of what was supposed to be the first video of “Grand Theft Auto IV’s” trailer on YouTube (which was not available on the official website due to heavy traffic.)

 But instead it was linked to a video of Rick Astley’s song.

 At first, the joke just stayed on 4chan, but then a year later, it has become an Internet phenomenon. Despite the popularity of the meme, the funny thing is that Rick Astley has only made $12 in performance royalties from YouTube.

 No one will ever be sure what makes a meme “meme material.” What made Nyan Cat so popular in comparison to all of the other gifs of cats out there?

 What was it about Rebecca Black’s “Friday” music video that made it viral while there are surely even more horrible music videos waiting to be discovered? What is up with the Internet’s obsession with cats?

 Can it be the sheer stupidity in these videos? No one can be quite sure. All that we can be sure of is that right now, a new meme is awaiting to be created.