12.08.10 - 11:30AM
- by
Urlesque Staff

Breakout of the Year -- 2010 Urlies

topic:
2010 Urlies

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Breakout of the Year is the award for a web phenomenon that came into its own this year, whether it's a person, a web service or an image meme. These nominees either started on the web in 2010 or just got their big breaks this year. Every single one made its mark on web culture and inspired plenty of fans and imitators, but which breakout trend was the biggest deal? We report, you decide.

Ragetoons

2010 was the year Ragetoons exploded outside of the niche of 4chan's /b/ board and onto the wider internet. Tumblr and Facebook helped spread MS-Painted characters like Rageguy, Trollface and Forever Alone to the masses. In fact, Rageguy is now so well known that Hot Topic ripped him off for a t-shirt and got into a tussle with /b/.

Deal With It

Deal With It is a new meme for this year, apparently originating on the image site dump.fm, but it's so good that it feels like it's been around forever. It started with an animated gif of a 16-bit dog. Sunglasses descend from the top of the image, fitting the dog perfectly. The text "Deal With It" appears, and the recipient of the image just has to ... y'know, deal with it.

After the original image, parodies sprung up with different images, and rhyming puns on "deal with it," but the sunglasses have remained constant throughout. In fact, the Urlesque team loves Deal With It so much that we all have standard-issue "Deal With It" shades now. Oh, and a genius named Greg Rutter even animated his own IRL "Deal With It" moment. So, deal with that.

Chatroulette

Chatroulette was the hottest web service of early '10, connecting random strangers via webcam until one of them hung up by hitting the "next" button. Despite an early onslaught of gross naked dudes on the site, the forces of creativity won out, and a lot of great stuff was generated on Chatroulette. The most famous example is Merton, the Piano Improv Guy, but don't forget the parties and the speed painting!

The Gregory Brothers

2010 was definitely a breakout year for the Gregory Brothers. After hitting it big on YouTube with Auto-Tune the News in 2009, they continued into 2010 with more autotuned political songs. This year, though they also started something even bigger: making auto-tuned songs based on popular YouTube videos and interesting local news reports. The Gregory Brothers took rising internet stars like Antoine Dodson and Paul "Double Rainbow" Vasquez to new heights with auto-tuned remixes. It's been quite a year for the Gregorys: Michael performed with Antoine on the BET Awards, Weezer guest-starred on Auto-Tune the News and the group is working on a TV pilot for Comedy Central.

NMA News

Next Media Animation is a Taiwanese producer of humorous animated versions of American news stories, famous for its interpretations of things like the Tiger Woods scandal, The Social Network and Snooki from Jersey Shore. The animations aren't just absurdly funny, either. They also show a keen knowledge of US pop culture, and they even animate serious news stories, as we discovered when Urlbot Cole interviewed someone from NMA.