86 born · 34 peaked · 8 died · 12 blog posts
Born in 2009 86
- ◐1v1 MeThe challenge to a duel, issued over Xbox Live in the late 2000s by anyone who had just l…
- ▲=3 (Equals Three)Ray William Johnson's three-times-weekly viral-video review show, '=3', begun in 2009, wh…
- ●AMA'Ask me anything' — the interview format in which the internet asks and the subject answe…
- ●AO3Archive of Our Own — the fanfiction archive built by fans, run by volunteers, tagged with…
- ↺Angry BirdsA slingshot game in which birds are fired at structures built by egg-stealing pigs. The r…
- ●AntiA person in a fandom who is against a character, a ship, or a celebrity — an anti — and, …
- ◐BeliebersJustin Bieber's fandom — Beliebers — from around 2009, the first YouTube-born fan base an…
- ●Betteridge's LawAny headline ending in a question mark can be answered with no. Older than Betteridge, bu…
- ☠Blue CheckA badge meaning the account was who it said it was. Sold for $8 a month from November 202…
- ▲BoxxyA teenage girl's hyperactive 2008 vlog, rediscovered by 4chan in January 2009 and fought …
- ●Cake DayThe anniversary of a Reddit account, marked with a cake icon and a post asking for upvote…
- ▲Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)Infinity Ward's 2009 sequel, the biggest entertainment launch in history at the time, wit…
- ☠CanabaltA man in a suit runs across rooftops in a grey city while something large destroys it beh…
- ◐ChatrouletteThe site, built by a 17-year-old in Moscow in November 2009, that connected you by webcam…
- ☠ChillwaveWashed-out, reverb-heavy, lo-fi summer pop — chillwave — as the genre named by the anonym…
- ●ComebackIn K-pop, any new release by an existing group — the comeback — a Korean industry term fo…
- ↺Content FarmA company producing thousands of cheap articles a day to catch searches and serve ads — t…
- ☠Cool Story BroA response indicating nobody had asked. Printed on so many T-shirts that the T-shirt beca…
- ◐DAE'Does anyone else' — the opening of a post seeking company in a private habit, which beca…
- ▲David After DentistA seven-year-old in the back of a car, still under dental anaesthesia, asking 'Is this re…
- ◐Doodle JumpA small creature with a nose bounces up platforms on graph paper, tilting the phone to st…
- ☠DuckfaceLips pushed out and together for the camera. Named, mocked, and gone within four years; t…
- ●Eliezer YudkowskyThe self-taught researcher who founded the LessWrong forum in 2009, spent two decades arg…
- ●EvonyA strategy game known for two eras of advertising: the 2009 browser banners of women in l…
- ◐FML'F*** my life' — the sign-off of a website where strangers posted their worst moments, wh…
- ●FTC DisclosureThe legal requirement that paid endorsements say so, clearly and near the endorsement — t…
- ☠FarmVilleA farm that sent notifications to your friends when your crops needed them. Eighty millio…
- ●FeedingDying repeatedly to the enemy, making them stronger — feeding — as the MOBA's worst crime…
- ●Fei-Fei LiThe Stanford professor who built ImageNet, the 14-million-image dataset released in 2009 …
- ◐Fireboy and WatergirlTwo characters share one keyboard: one is fire and cannot touch water, the other is water…
- ↺FirefliesA 2009 synth-pop single that returned in May 2017 as a meme in which the opening bars are…
- ☠FormspringThe anonymous-question site, launched in November 2009, where a teenager invited the worl…
- ☠Foul Bachelor FrogAn Advice Animal of 2009 — a frog on a green colour wheel confessing the domestic habits …
- ☠Foursquare MayorThe title given to whoever checked in most at a place. Coffee shops gave mayors free drin…
- ☠Free RealmsA free online world for children from the makers of EverQuest, with jobs, kart racing, a …
- ☠Google WaveEmail, chat and documents merged into one live-updating thing nobody could explain. Invit…
- ↺GowallaChecking in to places, with better stamps than Foursquare. Bought and closed by Facebook …
- ●HMU'Hit me up' — the invitation to contact, from 2009 texting into Instagram bios and dating…
- ●Hover HandA man's hand not quite touching the woman he is photographed with, hovering an inch from …
- ▲I Dreamed a Dream (Susan Boyle)A 47-year-old unknown singer walks onto a talent show, the judges pull faces, she sings t…
- ◐I Feel FantasticA promotional video for a singing animatronic called Tara the Android, built by John Berg…
- ●IDEK'I don't even know' — the acronym of exhausted confusion, one step past 'idk', which appe…
- ☠Imma Let You FinishKanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift's 2009 VMA speech — 'Imma let you finish, but B…
- ☠Insanity WolfThe inverted, black-and-white version of Courage Wolf, created in 2009 to give the same a…
- ▲JK Wedding Entrance DanceA wedding party dancing up the aisle to Chris Brown's Forever instead of processing to it…
- ☠Joseph DucreuxAn eighteenth-century self-portrait of the French painter Joseph Ducreux, pointing and sm…
- ●JugaadAn ingenious, improvised, slightly alarming fix — the Hindi word for making it work with …
- ☠Le (Reddit)'Le' — the French article, put in front of English words for no reason — 'le me, walking …
- ●League of LegendsThe free five-a-side game built from the DotA map by one of its former maintainers, which…
- ▲Learn to FlyA penguin who has read that penguins cannot fly builds a ramp, buys a glider, and launche…
- ◐Like a BossThe tag from the Lonely Island's 2009 SNL short, appended to any everyday action to make …
- ◐Little MonstersLady Gaga's fandom, the Little Monsters, named during the Monster Ball tour of 2009–2011 …
- ▲Lord BendtnerNicklas Bendtner, Arsenal's spectacularly self-assured striker, elevated by football foru…
- ◐MFW'My face when' — the caption for a reaction image, from 4chan's reaction-image culture in…
- ●MaknaeThe youngest member of a group — a Korean word that international K-pop fandom took on wh…
- ●ManosphereThe loose network of men's-interest websites, forums, YouTube channels and podcasts — pic…
- ●MinecraftA block-building sandbox first posted by one Swedish developer in 2009, fully released in…
- ☠Move Fast and Break ThingsA company's official permission to itself. Retired by the company in 2014 in favour of Mo…
- ◐MovieStarPlanetA Danish browser world in which children play film stars, make short animations, buy clot…
- ▲Muppets Bohemian RhapsodyThe Muppets performing a rearranged Bohemian Rhapsody, with Animal on the operatic sectio…
- ☠Narwhal Bacons at Midnight'The narwhal bacons at midnight' — a password for redditors to recognise each other in pu…
- ●Nvidia GTCNvidia's annual developer conference, held since 2009 and for a decade a technical event,…
- ☠OmegleTalk to strangers, on camera, at random. Ran for fourteen years and closed with a letter …
- ●Oppa'Older brother' — the Korean term a woman uses for an older male, including the boyfriend…
- ●PSA'PSA:' — the prefix for an announcement the poster believes is important: a warning, a co…
- ●PentakillKilling all five enemy players in quick succession in League of Legends, announced by the…
- ●Pivot (Startup)Changing a company's entire purpose while claiming continuity — the pivot — from a 2009 s…
- ◐Plants vs. ZombiesZombies walk toward a house across a lawn and the only defence is a garden of peashooters…
- ▲Poker Face (Rage Comic)The straight-mouthed, half-lidded rage face used to end a comic where the narrator has be…
- ▲RevoLucianLucian Piane, a producer who took leaked audio of celebrities losing their temper and cut…
- ●SextortionBlackmail using real or fabricated intimate images — sextortion — a word in press and leg…
- ●ShoutoutA public mention — 'shoutout to my mum' — from radio into the creator economy, where it i…
- ●ShrinkflationThe product staying the same price while quietly getting smaller — 'shrinkflation' — coin…
- ●SlendermanA tall figure in the treeline. The first folk monster in history with a documented birth …
- ☠Socially Awkward PenguinA penguin walking away from a difficult moment. Died in 2015 when the photograph's owner …
- ●Stealth WealthWealth that does not want to be seen — stealth wealth — as the recession-era phrase for r…
- ◐SubtweetA complaint about someone who is not named but will know. Fading with the platform it was…
- ●TW'Trigger warning' — the content label, from 2000s feminist blogging and LiveJournal, that…
- ▲The Duck SongA children's song about a duck who walks up to a lemonade stand and asks, repeatedly, for…
- ☠TrololoA 1976 Soviet television clip of baritone Eduard Khil performing a wordless song with a f…
- ☠U Mad Bro'You mad, bro?' — the troll's question to a victim, asked with a Trollface, as the 2009–1…
- ●Ultimate TeamEA's card-collecting mode in FIFA (now EA FC), launched as paid downloadable content in M…
- ▲United Breaks GuitarsA country song by Sons of Maxwell about United Airlines breaking Dave Carroll's guitar an…
- ◐VaguebookingPosting something deliberately vague to provoke concern — 'some people just don't get it'…
- ☠Witch HouseSlowed hip-hop drums, occult imagery, triangles, crosses, and band names made of Unicode …
- ◐Words with FriendsScrabble by another name, played by turn on a phone against friends or strangers over day…
Peaked in 2009 34
- ↺Awesome FaceThe yellow smiley with the enormous grin and eyes pointed off to one side, born around 20…
- ▲BlackBerryThe email-first phone with the physical keyboard, born as a two-way pager in 1999, that r…
- ▲Brick Breaker (BlackBerry)A Breakout clone pre-installed on every BlackBerry, played with the trackball or the scro…
- ☠Charlie Bit My FingerTwo English brothers and a bitten finger, viewed nearly nine hundred million times. Delet…
- ▲Defense of the AncientsA custom map for Warcraft III, passed between anonymous developers, that invented the fiv…
- ☠Epic (2000s)'Epic' — the mid-2000s' word for anything good, from a battle to a sandwich: 'epic win', …
- ◐FTW'For the win' — appended to anything the poster approved of, from a game to a sandwich, i…
- ☠Fail WhaleA whale carried by birds, shown whenever Twitter was down, which was often. Retired when …
- ●Fergie TimeStoppage time that seems to stretch when a big club needs a goal, named for Alex Ferguson…
- ●GriefingRuining other players' fun within the rules. The distinction between griefing and playing…
- ◐It's Over 9000A Dragon Ball Z line about a power level, misquoted from the dub, as the internet's numbe…
- ☠Keyboard CatA cat in a blue shirt playing someone off after a failure. The pistachio adverts arrived …
- ●Konami CodeUp, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Older than the web and hidden in more…
- ◐Left 4 DeadFour survivors, a horde of zombies and an AI director that decided when to hurt you. Valv…
- ☠Lolwut'Lol, what?' — amused confusion, in one word, with a painting of a pear as its image — as…
- ◐Lurk Moar'Lurk more' — the instruction to a newcomer to read before posting, in the spelling of th…
- ↺Marvel vs. Capcom 2Three-on-three tag fighting with fifty-six characters, a jazz soundtrack about taking you…
- ◐Metin2A Korean martial-arts MMORPG that Europe adopted after a German publisher localised it in…
- ▲Milhouse Is Not a MemeThe 4chan paradox of 2007: a campaign to make Milhouse a meme, met by the reply 'Milhouse…
- ●NecropostingReplying to a thread that had been dead for years. Frowned upon everywhere and, in this d…
- ◐No JohnsA Smash Bros. community rule against excuses, named after a player called John whose reas…
- ▲Noob TubeAn under-barrel grenade launcher used by people who could not aim. The most hated weapon …
- ◐PeggleA ball drops through a field of pegs, and when the last orange peg goes the game slows do…
- ☠Rock BandGuitar Hero's creators added drums and a microphone and sold the whole band in a box. Its…
- ▲Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)Beyoncé and two dancers in black and white, in leotards, performing choreography that peo…
- ▲The Lazer CollectionDom Fera's 2008 series of animated sketches in which anyone, at any moment, fires a laser…
- ▲The World's Hardest GameA red square moves through blue circles to a green zone, collecting yellow coins, and thi…
- ●UnfriendTo remove someone from your friends list. Word of the Year in 2009, and one of only two i…
- ▲Unregistered HyperCam 2The watermark 'Unregistered HyperCam 2' in the top-left corner of a screen recording — as…
- ▲Video ResponseA video posted as a reply to another video and linked beneath it — a video response — as …
- ☠Wii Shop ChannelA store with the most relaxing music ever written for commerce. Closed in January 2019; t…
- ◐World of GooBalls of goo with eyes are dragged into towers and bridges to reach a pipe, and the lefto…
- ☠Yahoo AnswersWhere the public asked how babby was formed and other people guessed. Sixteen years of qu…
- ◐YouTube PoopA genre of deliberately nonsensical video remix — stuttered clips, reversed audio, ear-ra…
Died in 2009 8
- ▲AngelfireGeoCities for people who had already been thrown off GeoCities. Technically still online,…
- ↺Axel F (Crazy Frog)An animated frog dubbed over the Beverly Hills Cop theme, sold relentlessly as a mobile r…
- ↺Crazy FrogA blue animated frog with a motorcycle and an exposed absence of trousers, built in 2003 …
- ☠EncartaMicrosoft's CD-ROM encyclopedia, launched in March 1993, which for a decade was where eve…
- ☠GeoCitiesThirty-eight million personal pages, deleted on a Monday. The largest single act of cultu…
- ▲Magical TrevorJonti Picking's 2004 Flash song about a magician who makes a cow disappear — 'Everyone lo…
- ▲SporeWill Wright's 2008 game about evolving a species from cell to galaxy, whose creature crea…
- ☠Top 8Eight friends, ranked in public, on your profile. The most emotionally dangerous feature …
From the blog, 2009
Give Up Internet Don't Give Up Internet Yet.11 Oct 2009
Screwed? Seriously Newegg? [PIC]9 Aug 2009
Haikus are Easy... But Sometimes They Don't Make Sense Refrigerator [COMIC]9 Aug 2009
Usher - Love In This Club vs Keyboard Cat mixed by Keyboard Cat [VIDEO]9 Aug 2009
Play Him Off Keyboard Cat - Super Mario Bros Edition [FUNNY VIDEO]9 Aug 2009
Why I <3 my Toyota Prius [PIC]9 Aug 2009
Things to do with old GI Joe toys. [PIC]9 Aug 2009
Reddit: I give you Redditor! [PIC] 9 Aug 2009
Pillow: 1 Cat: 0 [GIF] 9 Aug 2009
Flying From the Mountain to a Little Pool [ANIMATED GIF]7 Aug 2009
Om nom nom | Pacman in The Eye [PIC]7 Aug 2009
This is the problem with the Sonic the Hedgehog series. [COMICS] 6 Aug 2009
Haikus are Easy... But Sometimes They Don't Make Sense Refrigerator [COMIC]9 Aug 2009
Usher - Love In This Club vs Keyboard Cat mixed by Keyboard Cat [VIDEO]9 Aug 2009
Play Him Off Keyboard Cat - Super Mario Bros Edition [FUNNY VIDEO]9 Aug 2009
Why I <3 my Toyota Prius [PIC]9 Aug 2009
Things to do with old GI Joe toys. [PIC]9 Aug 2009
Reddit: I give you Redditor! [PIC] 9 Aug 2009
Pillow: 1 Cat: 0 [GIF] 9 Aug 2009
Flying From the Mountain to a Little Pool [ANIMATED GIF]7 Aug 2009
Om nom nom | Pacman in The Eye [PIC]7 Aug 2009
This is the problem with the Sonic the Hedgehog series. [COMICS] 6 Aug 2009