Rebecca Black may not be as famous as Lady Gaga IRT (that means “in real life” btw). But Rebecca can claim one thing: she was the self-styled star of the most watched video on the internet in 2011, registering 15 million views worldwide. Just for singing a widely-panned song to “retarded lyrics.” It seems being infamous in the virtual world is just as desirable as being famous in the real world. It’s a world that teens and the "connected set" inhabit like a second skin while the rest of the world stands befuddled or amused and struggles to understand. Case in point: while Rebecca tops the charts in the Western world, the number-one-talked-about “internet star” in China in 2011 was a certain Miss Gan Lulu, who shot to fame after her own mother posted a video of her taking a shower—all in a bid to help her find a husband. And what about “memes”? The word has perfectly respectable origins—an evolution of a Greek word that means the transmission of ideas and cultural phenomena. But these days, it has come to be identified with ideas that are propagated through the net and spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, and such like. And most of these so-called ideas may seem inane, even idiotic, to some. America may be the birthplace of the internet, but Asians have taken to it like no other continent. Find out why Asia is so good at creating internet sensations, so hungry to lap them up, and so keen to grow memes of their own. Youku (China's Youtube) is replete with wannabe stars and earnest warblers hoping to do a Justin Beiber—never mind the vicious insults they have to withstand if they fall short. This is a space where the Chinese concept of face can be thrown out of the window...until they attract the attention of "black hands." These are marketers who pluck people from obscurity to be molded into endorsement celebrities. This is a space where one can become a has-been in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. But many are undeterred.