One thing this bizarre virtual universe offers is those viral moments we can't stop talking or even thinking about. So here's a look back at the local moments that broke the internet last year.
1. Prestonwood Baptist Church's Holiday Pageant
The holidays are usually filled with over-the-top moments, whether it's people maxing out credit cards to cover their houses in garish lights or someone stepping over an old lady to get a dough mixer on Black Friday. Prestwood Baptist Church's annual holiday pageant makes all those moments look like Arbor Day. A video from the Plano church's The Gift of Christmas show claims to celebrate the birth of their faith's savior but it's hard to see how Jesus Christ, a man who lived a life of solemn poverty and literally flipped the tables of the moneychangers in the temple (see Matthew 21:12-17), might have approved the budget of this extravaganza.
The ceremony presents hundreds of actors in period costumes, aerial sets and wardrobe choices that don't even make sense from a biblical perspective. The show even brought three live camels on the stage and had more live animals than Noah's Ark — and made as much sense.
2. The Crazy Plane Lady@markandpauly Crazy Plane Lady Original Video #crazyplanelady #crazyplaneladyapology #crazyplaneladyoriginal #crazyplaneladyspeaks #crazyplanelady2023 ♬ Spooky, quiet, scary atmosphere piano songs - Skittlegirl Sound
Tiffany Gomas became the most monikered woman in Dallas in 2023 thanks to a legendary tirade on an American Airlines flight. The internet dubbed her the "Crazy Plane Lady" in July when a video of Gomas surfaced on TikTok showing her yelling on a plane at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. She storms out of the plane screaming high-pitched notes as a passenger films her meltdown. The "crazy" part came when she turned to the back of the plane, pointed at her seatmate and claimed "that motherfucker back there is not real."
Even though airport police greeted her as she exited the aircraft, she never had to face charges for her plane-halting meltdown. Instead, she became a media sensation that resulted in a popular Halloween costume and a line of holiday sweaters.
3. The State Fair Sign with a Typo
The internet loves to point out typos, misspellings and grammatical errors. They are easy to make and even easier to point out to others — and provide a quick confidence booster that can help anyone feel superior even in their darkest moments. Just around the start of the annual State Fair, the internet jumped all over the fair's sign makers for using "your" instead of "you're" on a welcome sign that read, "We're glad your here!"
Unlike other people who become the subject of virtual ridicule, the State Fair took down the sign and admitted to its mistake. It even released a funny response video in which Big Tex himself took the blame for the sign's homophone mix-up.
4. The Naked DFW Airport Guy
Here's a handy tip for all you viral video hunters out there. If you pull out your phone and someone is telling you not to record something, chances are that you should just ignore them. That's exactly what happened at the start of this viral moment in September at DFW Airport when people witnessed a grown man walking around one of the terminals without a stitch of clothing on him.
Journalist Derek Smith caught and released the first bit of footage of the unidentified streaker. Subsequent videos followed of the wait staff from the airport TGI Fridays doing the decent thing by giving the man a couple of menus so he could hide his carry-on baggage. Eventually, airport police officers detained the man, but strangely there's been no new information about the guy. Could've he just been a glitch in the Matrix or some kind of mass hallucination?
5. @TheDadBot's Charitable Drives@thedadbot The new face of change 💪🏼 #mentalhealthawareness #bpd #salvaginghumanity #tattoo #kindness #tiktokforgood #fyp #lasertattooremoval ♬ original sound - TheDadBot
Once in a while, someone comes along who decides to use the internet to be an agent of change that actually makes a difference in someone's life. Local vlogger Karridy Askenasy who goes by @TheDadBot on TikTok has been using his channel and a massive audience to do just that for those in need to effect positive changes on people's lives.
One of his biggest campaigns happened last year when Askenasy mobilized his audience of 138,000 followers to raise money for Taylor White, a Florida woman who covered herself in tattoos when an abusive boyfriend drugged and tattooed obscenities on her face. Askenasy reached out to doctors who specialized in tattoo removals to help White and documented her story. Eventually, Askenasy surprised White with a visit from a doctor at a specialized dermatology clinic in Austin who offered to remove her tattoos at no cost.
6. Pete Delkus' "Everyone in McKinney Is Dead" Forecast
WFAA meteorologist Pete Delkus is Dallas' Chuck Norris. He's become a legendary figure on the news and in local culture with throngs of fans who hang on his every word during those dire weather conditions when a tornado might be looming nearby or the summer heat becomes unbearable. The latter is exactly when Delkus entered meme territory for the first of many times to come.
Delkus was keeping DFW up to date on the insanely high temperatures in August. When his forecast got to the heat index map, he noticed a major typo on the temperatures for the city of McKinney. While other cities were experiencing temperatures in the low hundreds, McKinney was dealing with a temperature of 101,105 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the map. Without missing a beat, Delkus pointed out the typo by just rolling with it and calmly proclaiming that "Everyone in McKinney is dead." The internet took the moment and ran with it with subsequent memes and even T-shirts.
7. Dallas' "Blue Hole"@lustytexan Massive water main break within the City of Dallas. Perhaps tens of millions of gallons of drinking water discharging daily for the past five years into the Great Trinity Forest. No fix from the city. Continuous discharge at thousands of gallons per minute is flooding hundreds of acres of bottomland hardwood floodplain forest lessening our city's ability to withstand floods, costing ratepayers, and killing thousands of trees within a vital urban forest. #dallastx #dallas #txwater #txdrought #trinityriver #whiterockcreek #greattrinityforest #dallastexas #txflood #cityofdallas #southdallas #urbanforestry #infrastructure #watersupply #waterleak ♬ original sound - lustytexan
Another video that aimed to be a force for positive change landed on TikTok at the end of July. Alexander Neal went for a kayak ride in a swamp in the Great Trinity Forest when he noticed a strange anomaly in the water. He happened upon a patch of crystal-clear water around 20 feet deep and 40 feet wide. Normally, clear water would be a welcome sight, but this water was caused by a leaking pipe from a nearby water treatment plant.
The "Blue Hole," as Neal dubbed it in his TikTok, prompted a wave of criticism and questions from citizens who wanted to know how long the leaking pipe had infiltrated the waterway and what the city intended to do about it. Eventually, the city fixed the leaks and the blue hole disappeared.
@internetfamouslol I was just shopping when i noticed this man trying to promote his new book. I honestly dont even read books nowadays. But something just told me to get a couple. #booksoftiktok #booktok #newauthor #showlovenothate #fyp #newbook #murdermystery #murdermysterybook #bookgiveaway ♬ original sound - Internetfamouslol
8. Author Shawn Warner's Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor
TikTok user Jerrad Swearenjin first met author Shawn Warner while he was autographing and selling books at a Kroger grocery store in Fort Worth. Swearenjin filmed his encounter and posted it on the video platform last July where it not only became a huge hit but helped skyrocket the sales of Warner's debut novel.
Warner's young adult mystery novel went viral, pushing sales of his book to the top of Amazon's Best Sellers list. Swearenjin's earnestness to learn more about Warner's work helped launch a writing career that built a national spotlight for both of them. They even got to reunite and discuss their chance encounter on NBC's Today show.
9. Kid Rock Being a Big Fat Hypocrite Over His Bud Light BoycottThere is always receipts! Here we have Kid Rock enjoying a bud light next to a drag Queen. It didn’t bother him back them. Yeah that’s right….he’s now trying to stay relevant so he spews fake outrage. But if it didn’t bother him then, it doesn’t really bother him now. pic.twitter.com/iTK82ITvGG
— Richard N. Ojeda, II (@Ojeda4America) April 5, 2023
It's no secret that we're not fans of Kid Rock. The strip club soundtrack musician has turned into a political force of pure idiocy who dares to take stupid stands against things such as wearing masks during a ranging pandemic and treating trans people with dignity and respect. So anytime the internet can make him look bad, it's always a win for the rest of us.
And the internet hit Kid Rock back hard in April following the Michigan singer's bizarre stance against Bud Light, the beer of choice when you have no other choice. Kid Rock boycotted the watered-down swill and its parent company because they hired a trans person as Bud Light's spokesperson. It didn't take long for the internet to prove how big of a poser Rock is (which is big when you're boycotting Bud Light) when someone posted a photo of Kid Rock knocking back a couple of Bud Lights in 2003 with a drag queen. It's one of those pictures that spoke a thousand words, and all of them were "hypocrite."
10. Plano's "Satanic Hotel"
Viral moments aren't just limited to videos. Some people are so keyed up and ready to pounce on anything they even mildly disagree with that a simple series of pictures is enough to send them to Defcon 1. That's what makes "Capital Chaos TV's" viral prank so special.
The "Satanic Hotel" hoax hit two targets in one devil red punch. The man behind the channel wanted to fight back against a bunch of alt-right hate groups in Collin County including a local chapter of The Proud Boys who wrecked a McKinney library's "Pride Story Time," a harmless event in which LGBTQ+ people read books to children. So he started a thread and made a series of AI-generated photos for a new hotel concept in Plano that catered specifically to Satanists. The proof of concepts looked so lifelike that they fooled just about everyone who didn't have a sense of humor in Collin County as well as some very disappointed Slayer fans.
