If you’ve already embarked on a journey through my book, you will know the internet’s greatest day was February 26th 2015. I strongly encourage you not to take my word for it, but to read Charlie Warzel’s Buzzfeed essay, which inspired the title of my book
Outrageous, controversial, and frivolous things catch fire online all the time, but February 26 was different. The Great Llama Escape and The Dress besieged our timelines just hours apart, almost as if connected, in some unknown way. On an internet that can feel increasingly toxic, these two back-to-back news events were nearly impossible to politicize. They were silly and fleeting — but, a year later, they’re still lodged in our collective cultural memory.
They were divisive, sure, but in the kind of low-stakes way that affirms, rather than threatens, our shared humanity. And they were purely joyful and universal in the way that the best things on the internet can feel. Simply put: We lost our shit, and we lost it together twice in the same day. And we had fun doing it. And we haven't seen anything like it since.
To appreciate the full technicolour dimensions of the Greatest Day, it’s worth starting with the Llama Drama as it unfolded, as it was remembered by those who lived it
The internet’s greatest day only became great with the arrival of that dress, and the collision of two mind-blowing mega memes.
The ferocity of the debate about the dress revolved around a scientific mystery explained neatly by one Australian TV station
I’ll leave you with a 2016 Superbowl advert dedicated, in part, to the dress “that caused a civil war”