Richard Dawkins, in his 1979 book entitled The Selfish Gene, invented the term “meme” to explain the movement of information among people with a shared culture.

The term Internet Meme has come to mean a piece of digital content that spreads rapidly online, mutating as various people alter its details before passing it along via message boards, forums, or e-mail or in more recent times via social network sites like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. It can also mean a piece of material that is viewed by so many people that it has become iconic and generally associated with a specific era in the rapidly expanding history of the Internet.

It turns out that memes really do come true. And with that phrase Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe corked the bottle on one the most phenomenally successful viral Websites or Internet Memes to come along in a very long while. Early this month Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe put up a Tumblr site that depicted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton interacting with celebrities and politicians via text messages. Their creation, using a photo taken by Time magazine photographer Diana Walker of the Secretary in C-17 flight last fall from Malta to Tripoli, called Texts From Hillary instantly went viral and has been viewed millions of times.

Some Internet Memes are arcane, insider references or catch phrases like the phrase "...until I took an arrow to the knee" which references what some would say is a too often spoken line in the hugely popular video game The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. There are several Tumblr sites where people post clever riffs on this Meme. Here's the best one. You might have recently heard someone say they used to be good at something or was recently on a diet "until I took an arrow to the knee".

Arguably the first Internet Meme to burst onto the 'Net came about 14 years ago in 1998 when Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte put up a Yahoo Geocities Webpage (remember those?) called Hampsterdance. And who cares that there is no p in the word hamster. The original Hampsterdance page consisted of rows of animated hamsters dancing in to a speeded-up version of the song "Whistle Stop" by Roger Miller. Unfortunately, the original site with its music intact has been lost due to Ms. LaCarte failing to register the domain for Hampsterdance.com. But if you were one of the only 100 million or so people world-wide on the Internet in late 1998, chances are you got an email with a link to Hampsterdance.com.

So what was the next viral Internet phenomenon? It was 1999 and Mahir Cagri's Web page proclaimed to the World Wide Web to our great delight: "WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE !!!!!!!!!I KISS YOU !!!!!" The site contained colorful phrases like, "I like to be friendship from different country ... Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate ..."

Was Sacha Baron Cohen's character, Borat, depicted in Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan! inspired by Mahir Acgri's site? Almost everyone thinks so.

In 2001 All Your Base Are Belong To Us exploded across the World Wide Web and this is the first Internet Meme that may be immortal. What does it mean? What does Jerry Seinfeld's Ya-da Ya-da Ya-da mean? The phrase comes from a poor translation in the European version of the Japanese video game Zero Wing.That game is long forgotten but All Your Base Belong To Us? Not so much.

In May of 20009 Milissa Brandts was trying to take a picture of herself and her husband in front of Lake Minnewanka using a remote-control shutter when a ground squirrel suddenly popped into the picture.

Milissa was quoted as saying, "We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intrigued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot!"

The couple submitted the photo to a National Geographic contest. The magazine posted it to an online gallery in early August and in less than a week, the Crasher Squirrel, as it's become known, has stormed the Internet. Almost immediately people all over the world were "photoshopping" the Crasher Squirrel into all sorts of pictures.

Here is a bunch of instances of Crasher Squirrel.

2003 Get a Brain! Morans Get a Brain!

20004 Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa Dance" video inexplicably sparked an internet "dance" craze, in addition to acquiring a massive following of its own. Numa Numa

2005 Chuck Norris facts. Chuck Norris facts are humourous examples about how much of a man Chuck Norris is. They cover everything from his strength, endurance, virility, attitude or anything else that would make him awesome. Chuck Norris Facts.

20006 What happens when you put a handful of Mentos candy into a bottle of diet soda? As many fans of Web video have found out, the results are pretty explosive.

2007 LOLCATS Then there was I can Has Cheeseburger. Nuff said.

Google the phrase "leave britney alone" to re-introduce yourself to a 2007 Internet meme that had a lot of us scratching our heads and smiling and emailing links to our friends that directed to this heart-wrenching defense of Britney Spears. In this 2007 Youtube video Chris Crocker tearfully defended pop singer Britney Spears's unsuccessful comeback performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

2008 RickRoll When we were Rickroll'D, we were usually watching--or intending to watch--a video unrelated to Rick Astley's 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up." Rickroll. It's a classic 'bait and switch' where you think a link is taking you somewhere but ... oh no! you've been RickRoll'd

2009 David After Dentist "Is this real life?" David DeVore asks his dad on the way home from the dentist office. David After Dentist

2010 Bed Intruder Song Antoine Dodson's television interview about a botched home invasion became one of the biggest cultural phenomenons of 2010. Bed Intruder Song

So what's the hottest new Internet Meme right now? Oh you mean beside Texts From Hillary? It could be something silly like Cat Breeding but no I meant to say Cat Breading. Go figure.

If you'll look at the left-hand side of the top of this page, you'll see list of all of the tech-related articles posted on Scoroncocolo.com.

If you would like to submit an article for publication on Scoroncocolo.com, send an email addressed to Steve at sjh@scoroncocolo.com. Please put the phrase "idea for post" somewhere in the subject line.

Monetary compensation for material submitted is negotiable.