I Kiss You vs Numa Numa Dance

Two friends of mine reminded me lately about these two memes and, even though they happened in different years, they’re both funny (in a way)…

I Kiss You

On year 1999 a Turkish guy named Mahir Cagri became the first internet celebrity by creating a personal web page in broken English. His most famous lines were “Welcome to my home page! I kiss you!”, “I live alone! I have home – car” and of course his open invitation to women “Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate . She can stay my home”. This page is reported to have received half million hits just on its first three days on the net thanks to word of mouth. Mahir posted many pictures of him playing ping pong, the accordion, and wearing a red Speedo, that were as naïve as his writing. He became so famous that he was invited to the USA were he was a guest at the Rosseane Show, and had interviews with the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Wired Magazine, Forbes, C-NET and others. He even has an entry on Wikipedia! This year, his page was ranked one of the top 10 fads of the decade by C-NET. Check by yourself!

The second story is a little bit longer, but it is worth it so please, check the links to understand the whole stuff. There are many videos so, please, be patient...

Numa Numa Dance

On year 2003 a Moldovan band called O-Zone recorded Dragonstea Din Tei, a song that became a hit in Moldova that year and a summer hit in Europe next year. Some people in Japan liked that song and made a Flash Video featuring some dancing cats, with images and text interpreting the lyrics into similar sounding English or Japanese words. Check that version here.

Gary Brolsma, a New Jersey teenager, saw that Japanese version on the Internet and, bored one day, decided to make his own silly video for his friends. His energetic lip-syncing version was first uploaded to the Internet on December 12th 2004, and became an instant hit counting up to eight million views and popping up on hundreds of websites. Please, check his video (called Numa Numa Dance) here.

That video appeared later on ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s The Tonight Show and VH1’s Best Week Ever. Many parodies have been appearing on the internet, of which these are the most famous ones:

• American Idle
• Lego Version
• Chicken Little Trailer
• Marica Tú (Queer you) - Spanish version

By the way, O-zone finally did a presentation on the Japanese TV, in which they used parts of the Flash Video. See that presentation here.

Conclusion: if you want to be really famous you can either do something really great (like finding the cure for Cancer), or just post something silly on the Internet. Good luck!