Nyan Cat (Triman Nguyen)

When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why?

Posted on daily comics site LOL-COMICS on 4-2-2011. The illustrator, Chris Torres, got the idea from a Red Cross charity event where cat and pop tart were suggested. The author was already kind of well known before Nyan Cat, and the GIF got over 3000 likes/reblogs within first two weeks.

Nyan Cat exploded a few days later on 4-5-2011 when saraj00n posted a video of the Nyan Cat GIF on top of the famous Japanese song “Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya” by Daniwell-P. This video got over a million views in its first two weeks and was picked up by popular sites like Memebase, Buzzfeed, Tumblr, and Facebook starting on 4-12-2011. From there the meme spread wildly.

Provide a context and offer an analysis of why you think this became so
popular (if no obvious reason presents itself).

Awesome cat with poptart body flying through space while shitting rainbows on top of catchy nyanyanyanyanyanyan song. How could this not get popular??!

The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.

See above.

How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google
Insights" interest).

9^th place in Business Insider’s top 10 viral videos of 4/2011 with 7.2 million total views. Original video currently has over 84 million views. It spawned countless remixes and covers. According to Google Insights, Nyan cat reached its peak around late June 2011 and again in early November 2011.

Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been

influenced by this.

Nyan cat didn’t spawn or influence any other well known memes, only parodies or remixes of itself.

Include videos or images when relevant to illustrate your description -
please try to avoid posting images or video that may be offensive.

Nyan.cat and Slowbro.org – nonstop Nyan Cat websites (repeatedly loops song and animation)

http://youtu.be/QH2-TGUlwu4 - the original Youtube video by saraj00n

http://youtu.be/8mtOdT9LBOg - nyan cat song playing on top of Slipknot’s Psychosocial music video. Spawned the Nyan Cat audio dub (playing the Nyan song on hardcore rock music vids)

Nyan-Cat.com – site listing all games about Nyan Cat

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/135474-nyan-cat-pop-tart-cat - Youtube taking part in Nyan Cat