Time was right. You were 2006's Person of the Year. You were the " You" in YouTube, the "Me" in MySpace, the "I" in iTunes. And you, like 12-million other American adults, probably had a blog no one read. Unless you happened to be Perez Hilton. Like no year before it, 2006 swirled and swiveled in time with the machinations of the blogosphere. So instead of simply rehashing the stories of the year, we're focusing on the year in online culture. We can think of no better time capsule than a snapshot of the news, videos, fads and trends that hit the Web in 2006. Here's our attempt to create a Google cache of 2006. Hit refresh on your brain's browser, and surf along at home.
JANUARY
Jan. 8: TheSmokingGun.com releases a scathing investigation into James Frey's bestselling, Oprah-endorsed memoir A Million Little Pieces, prompting Frey to admit parts of it were made up.
Jan. 11: Chuck Norris responds on his Web site to the wildly popular " Chuck Norris Facts": "Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it."
Jan. 11: Alex Tew, a 21-year-old Web entrepreneur, wraps up a project known as the Million Dollar Homepage - selling tiny ads on a blank site until he reached $1-million in revenue - by selling the final ad on eBay for $38,000.
Jan. 27: Two Emerson College students unveil their mashed-up movie trailer of Back to the Future and Brokeback Mountain, titled "Brokeback to the Future." It becomes one of the most popular movie trailer mash-ups ever.
FEBRUARY
Feb. 11: Dick Cheney accidentally shoots a hunting buddy in the face. The bar for snarky blog humor is forever raised.
Feb. 16: Nearly three months after the Saturday Night Live digital short Lazy Sunday becomes a smash viral video, NBC asks YouTube to remove the clip.
Feb. 22: Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield, Mich., makes Coldplay's Speed of Sound the billionth iTunes download of all time.
MARCH
March 26: When a live-action recreation of the opening sequence to The Simpsons becomes a hit online, producers for the show actually use it to open the show.
APRIL
April 6: Comedian and motivational speaker Judson Laipply uploads a routine he calls "The Evolution of Dance" to YouTube. It is viewed nearly 40-million times over the next few months, making it the most popular YouTube video ever.
April 11: Deadspin.com posts a story about ESPN's Chris Berman picking up a woman using the line, "You're with me, leather." The phrase infiltrates pop culture, inspiring T-shirts and a scene on NBC's Las Vegas.
April 22: "Live 8 on AOL," a Webcast of the 2005 Live 8 concerts, wins the first-ever Emmy Award for non-traditional viewing platforms, like computers and iPods.
April 29: Stephen Colbert, left, delivers an incendiary satire routine at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The bit received little attention at first - except from bloggers and Slate.com, who lavished praise on the comedian for having the guts to speak like that to the president's face. Thus launches Colbert's cult of appeal.
MAY
May 23: Nike and Apple announce they're developing a shoe that connects with an iPod Nano to track a runner's performance.
May 25: News footage of Cleveland investigative reporter Carl Monday confronting a man accused of masturbating in a public library turns up on Deadspin.com. Monday becomes a Web phenomenon, eventually appearing on The Daily Show.
JUNE
June 13: Disgruntled AOL customer Vincent Ferrari posts a recording he made of his attempt to cancel his AOL account by phone. The 20-minute recording, in which a customer service representative tries to persuade him not to cancel, draws enormous criticism of AOL. The customer service rep is later fired.
June 20: Director Uwe Boll, who is reviled by online film fans, steps into the boxing ring against some of his toughest critics, including a writer for AintItCoolNews.com. Boll wins every bout.
June 28: Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens describes the Internet as "a series of tubes." The bar for snarky blog humor rises once more.
JULY
July 7: Nearly a year after announcing his plans to trade one red paper clip for bigger and bigger objects until he had his own house, Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald signs the deed to a home in Saskatchewan.
July 28: The entertainment news site TMZ.com breaks the Mel Gibson DUI story, posting L.A. County Sheriff's documents that include Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade.
AUGUST
Aug. 1: Video blogger Josh Wolf is sent to jail for refusing to hand footage he shot of a California anti-war protest to police. He later receives a special award from a chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Aug. 8: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launches a blog.
Aug. 11: During a campaign rally, Virginia Sen. George Allen refers to an opponent's Indian videographer as "macaca," a racial slur. The video, widely replayed on YouTube and other sites, contributes to Allen's shocking defeat.
Aug. 18: After more than a year of online hype, the film Snakes on a Plane - featuring a climactic, unprintable line inspired by blog chatter - opens at No. 1 with a box office gross of $15.2-million.
Aug. 31: Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner delivers a speech as an avatar in the game Second Life.
SEPTEMBER
Sept. 4: A Seattle Web developer posts a fake solicitation for sex on Craigslist, then reposts the names and personal contact information of all 178 people who responded.
Sept. 5: Facebook.com introduces new features that automatically update your personal page whenever any friend updates his or her page. The changes are viewed by many as an invasion of privacy and widely panned.
Sept. 12: A father-and-son team on the blog Silicon Valley Watcher posts the answer to one of the Web's great mysteries: Who is purported video blogger Lonelygirl15? Turns out she's really 19-year-old New Zealand actress Jessica Rose.
Sept. 20: Al Gore's Current TV partners with Yahoo to create the Yahoo Current Network, featuring video news, buzz and user-generated clips.
Sept. 24: The blog Stop Sex Predators posts suggestive e-mails from Florida Rep. Mark Foley to a 16-year-old page. ABC News picks up on the story, and the ensuing firestorm leads to Foley's ouster from Congress.
OCTOBER
Oct. 9: Google buys YouTube for $1.65-billion.
Oct. 16: Wired News editor Kevin Poulsen posts that a program he wrote to ferret out sexual predators on MySpace yielded an arrest of a man who'd been trying to set up meetings with underage boys.
NOVEMBER
Nov. 10: A video surfaces on Stereogum.com featuring Bank of America branch manager Ethan Chandler at a corporate event singing U2's inspirational tune One, but with rewritten lyrics about the bank's merger with MBNA. The video goes viral.
Nov. 17: Michael Richards goes on a racist tirade at an L.A. comedy club. The incident is captured on a cell phone camera and first posted on TMZ.com.
Nov. 22: A Web site launches a campaign to vote Vancouver Canucks defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick, an otherwise unremarkable player, into the NHL All-Star Game. Thanks to his online support network, Fitzpatrick rises into second place into the vote.
DECEMBER
Dec. 4: Conan O'Brien ad-libs a line about a Web site called " HornyManatee.com" during a show taping, and NBC's legal department is forced to buy the domain. The site ends up drawing millions of visitors and submissions of manatee-themed artwork, music and poetry.
Dec. 16: Andy Samberg's breakout year comes full circle when Justin Timberlake puts his d--- in a box on Saturday Night Live. And the whole world laughs.
Sources: New York Times, Google News, YouTube, Wikipedia, Stereogum.com, BoingBoing.net, Entertainment Weekly, Boston Globe, Best Week Ever, Idolator, Orlando Sentinel, National Journal, Internet Movie Database, Pew Internet & American Life Project, SportsIllustrated.com.
10 STRANGEST POSTS ON BOINGBOING
10. Godfather-inspired horse-head pillows: Plush pillows in the shape of a horse's severed head, complete with bloody neck stump. Perfect for the film aficionado in your family. (July 7)
9. Cat piano: A 17th century design for a piano with miniature slots for kittens with differently pitched voices. When you struck a key, the device would poke one of the kittens and cause them to yelp, hopefully in tune. (Feb. 28)
8. A Dairy Queen ukulele signed by Warren Buffett: Because, you know, who else would you want to sign your Dairy Queen ukulele? (May 4)
7. Puppy monorail: A man built a backyard monorail for his puppies and took a picture. (Feb. 12)
6. How to make a wallet out of Batman underwear: As if you need instructions. (May 9)
5. Jewel-encrusted Mr. Potato Head: This is exactly what it sounds like. (March 26)
4. Pac-Man butt tattoo: As fetching as it is functional. (Feb. 3)
3. Foot fetish rap music: Some lyrics from Angel Boi's self-released album Toe Lover: "Never dripping wet or sweaty, always soft and smell sweet like berries / So pretty, sometimes you want to suck them yourself." (April 8)
2. Math equation for a perfect butt: Use the following measurements: shape (S), sphericality of the buttocks (C), bounce (B), firmness (F), hip-to-waist ratio (V) and skin texture (T). Plug them into this formula, and you'll get the No. 1 bum, says a British psychology professor. Inexplicably, he fails to include a variable for Pac-Man tattoos. (April 11)
1. The flaming tuba: David Silverman, a director on The Simpsons, plays a tuba that shoots propane and flames out of the bell. (May 15)
FOODS OF THE YEAR
5. A plate-sized Kit Kat bar created by PimpMySnack.com (April 21)
4. A gnarled parsnip that won the title of Britain's Ugliest Vegetable (Oct. 19)
3. F Duerr & Son's $9,800 marmalade made from rare whiskey, champagne and edible gold flakes (Sept. 22)
2. Jimmy Dean Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick - Chocolate Chip Flavor (Sept. 29)
1. The combustible (and compulsively watchable) combination of Diet Coke and Mentos (April 8)
ANIMALS OF THE YEAR
5. Tiger, the two-faced kitten (July 14)
4. Harriet, Charles Darwin's 176-year-old tortoise, who died in an Australian zoo in June (June 23)
3. The God gator (July 20)
2. The kiwa hirsuta, a.k.a. the furry blond lobster (March 7)
1. Cy, the one-eyed kitten (Jan. 9)
THE YEAR IN BOINGBOING
BoingBoing.net calls itself "a directory of wonderful things" - which is especially true if the things you consider wonderful include video game artwork, cryptozoological oddities, and home-brewed robots. Needless to say, we have it bookmarked. The site has received two "Weblog of the Year" awards, and this year received a Lifetime Achievement Bloggy Award. Here are some of the most wonderful things we saw on BoingBoing.net in 2006. - Jay Cridlin
LET'S HEAR IT FROM THE SOURCE
Enough of what we thought mattered in 2006. We asked several bloggers and online personalities what they'll remember about The Year That Was. Here's what they said. - Jay Cridlin
Damian Kulash, singer, OK Go: "2006 has definitely been the year that convinced me that everything is unpredictable and life is crazy. It's been like living in a Wes Anderson film - like, an errant home video from our backyard got on the Internet and got downloaded tens of millions of times, and then a year after our record was released, it went to the top of the new music charts again. I got arrested this year, we went to Moscow this year - it's been such a surreal and crazy year, driven by things that I never could have imagined as a kid, or even last year. Surprise keeps winning the day."
Mark Frauenfelder, co-editor, Boingboing.net: "2006 was a wonderful year for wonderful things on the Web. YouTube became an endless source of video amusement, WikiPedia became the go-to source of information on any subject imaginable and blogs became the fastest growing form of media in history. I have no idea what's in store for 2007, but I'm looking forward to it."
Judson Laipply, the "Evolution of Dance" guy: "Perhaps the thing that stands out in my mind the most was an e-mail that I received from a great-grandmother who told me that herself, her daughter, her granddaughter and her great granddaughter all watched the video together and laughed all the way through. There are so many few things in the world today that cross that large of a span, generation-wise, and I thought that was fantastic! The other great thing that happened was at the Montreal Comedy festival. I was the warm-up act for the Galas and the first night was hosted by Jason Alexander. I was coming off the stage after doing the dance and he was waiting in the wings ready to go out for his opening. Before I could even say hello he grabbed my hand and exclaimed, 'You're the guy on YouTube! I love that video! I watch it all the time!' That was pretty surreal to say the least."
Tommy Duncan, Sticks of Fire (www.sticksoffire.com): "I'm real excited about the future. Many communities across the nation ... already have places on the Web where they discuss their part of the world - what is right, what is wrong, and debate about how to proceed. As with most trends, Tampa Bay is behind the curve, but 2007 offers some hope that more local people will get involved in what is happening in and around our community. And that Time's Person of the Year - YOU - can have a say in the future of your community."
David Scott Banghart, Seminole Heights Blog (seminoleheights.blogspot.com): " 2006 was the beginning of the slow death of unbridled conservatism, locally and nationally. Crist elected, not Gallagher. Democrats in charge in Congress. Rose Ferlita elected to Hillsborough County Commission and Ronda Storms booted upstairs to be lost admist the big boys in Tallahassee. 2007 shall see the gradual return of moderatism."
FIVE WAYS ARTISTS REACHED OUT TO FANS IN 2006
The Decemberists: The band performed the song O Valencia! in front of a green screen, then asked fans to edit in their own backdrops. This caught the attention of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, who had already issued a similar challenge to his fans. The band ended up on Colbert's show.
Beastie Boys: The band's concert film, Awesome, I F-----' Shot That!, was spliced together from footage shot by fans at a Madison Square Garden concert.
Beck: The singer's new CD The Information came with a sheet of stickers with which fans could decorate the album's nearly-blank cover.
Barenaked Ladies: The band asked fans to design T-shirts, submit a music video for the song Wind It Up, and offered downloadable music tracks that they asked fans to remix.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fans were asked to mail in footage of themselves dressed as the band, performing to the single Cheated Hearts. The footage ended up as the song's video.
