duck

A flood of AI images of Donald Trump cradling cats, marching with ducks, and wading through floodwater with kittens under each arm, produced in September 2024 after the debate claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets. Posted by supporters and by official accounts, shared as memes rather than as evidence, which was new. The record's entry for AI images that were fake on purpose and political anyway.

A free social deduction game in the Among Us mould, with geese instead of crew and ducks as the traitors, released in October 2021 to a small audience and, in January 2023, one of the most-played games on Steam with over 700,000 concurrent players after a member of BTS was seen playing it on a live stream. The record notes that Among Us never reached that Steam figure, and that a K-pop singer did it by accident.

A duck on wheels served instead of what a link promised. Existed for weeks before its successor, and is filed here so the record shows the mechanic came first and Astley second.

Lips pushed out and together for the camera. Named, mocked, and gone within four years; the pout was replaced by not smiling at all.

A thing the internet adores for five minutes before discovering it is unforgivable. Coined in a single tweet; now a standard unit of the news cycle.

A children's song about a duck who walks up to a lemonade stand and asks, repeatedly, for grapes. Written by Bryant Oden with animation by forrestfire101, it took nearly 90 million views within three years and ran to a fifth part before finishing in October 2024. The record's entry for a joke told to the same rhythm fifteen times.

Explaining your code, line by line, to a rubber duck until you find the mistake yourself — rubber duck debugging — from a 1999 programming book into an actual duck on every developer's desk. The record's entry for the method, which works, and the duck, which has heard everything.