Today in Viral Internet: October 22
Before the feed decided everything, October 22 kept handing the internet moments it would not let go of. Five dates, five different eras of going viral.
Afro Ninja Gets A Name
The Afro Ninja clip was filmed in 2004 during an audition for a Nike commercial built around LeBron James, and it leaked online to eBaum's World, where it spread the old internet way, link by link, forum by forum. The man in the clip, stunt performer Mark Hicks, had been jetlagged at the audition and styled after Jim Kelly, and the failed backflip in the footage became instant folklore.
On October 22, 2004, blogger Andy Baio identified Hicks by name, putting a real person behind one of the first true viral clips. Hicks later said the leak felt like a violation at first, though he got over it, and the detail people forget is that his audition actually succeeded. He appears in the finished commercial, behind Jim Kelly himself.
Video Goes Local Down Under
On October 22, 2007, the biggest video platform on the planet launched local versions in Australia and New Zealand, part of a fast global rollout that had already hit Brazil, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom that June, with Canada and Germany following within weeks.
It reads like a small business note now, but it changed who got to be seen. Local homepages and local charts meant a kid filming in Sydney or Auckland was no longer shouting into an American website and hoping. The audience, the trends, and eventually the stars started forming country by country, and internet culture stopped having one capital city.
Sweden Gets Its Own Front Page
Exactly one year later, on October 22, 2008, a Swedish version launched, continuing the same localization wave through Europe. By then the pattern was set. Every new country version created a local scene, local in jokes, local early stars, and a local archive of clips that the rest of the world would discover years later, usually all at once.
This is the part of internet history that never trends. The memes get the glory, but the infrastructure decided the memes. Language versions, local charts, and local recommendations are the reason a clip can now be huge in Stockholm and invisible in Toronto on the same day, and why global hits feel so sudden when they finally cross over.
Texts From Bennett Starts As A Feed
On October 22, 2010, Kansas City rapper Mac Lethal began posting snippets of his conversations with his 17 year old cousin, known as Bennett, to a feed called Texts From Bennett. The posts moved to his fan page that November, then to a dedicated blog a year later, and coverage from BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, and others turned a family group chat into an internet institution.
Bennett became so popular that the authenticity fight became part of the story, with Mac Lethal's father claiming the texts were made up and Mac Lethal answering that the name had been changed to protect his cousin from harassment. Either way, the format won. Screenshots of conversations became a genre of comedy that social media still runs on every single day.
Faceplant Guy Takes Over The Timeline
In October 2025, a clip from a protest in Denver showing a man shouting at demonstrators, then tripping face first, twice, while chasing a younger protester who had taken his glasses, exploded across every platform. One post of the clip gathered over 27 million views and 100,000 likes in three days, and edit after edit placed the falling figure into new scenes.
On October 22, 2025, the Denver Gazette reported on the incident, noting an arrest connected to the stolen glasses while the person who tripped him remained unidentified, and Know Your Meme documented the moment the same day. A year later the name Faceplant Guy still needs no explanation online, which is the real measure of a viral moment.
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