Meme: Unicorns (née Ponies)
Origin: TheTXI
Cultural Height: April 1st, 2009
Background: The pony meme began without fanfare early in TheTXI's time as a member of Stack Overflow. Its first recorded usages can be traced back to long-running comment threads and arguments on both Stack Overflow and User Voice. The comment "I like ponies" would be interjected into threads, seemingly at random, which inevitably led to those threads getting completely derailed.
Before long, it became evident that TheTXI was not the only SOpedian who found ponies to be the most wonderfullest things ever. Ponies' popularity grew to the point where Jeff Atwood and the Stack Overflow development team implemented the Cornify button on all questions and answers on April Fools' Day 2009. From there, the popularity of ponies — and their magical weaponized form, unicorns — grew exponentially.
For April Fools' Day 2010, all avatar requests were sent to Unicornify instead of Gravatar, resulting in every user having a personal unicorn for the day.
For April Fools' Day 2011, voting on questions triggered unicorn animations.
For April Fools' Day 2014 unicoins where added to stack allowing users mine coins which could then be used to purchase different powers for use on stack sites. What are Stack Overflow unicoins?
Historical notes: In 2006, for April Fools' Day, Slashdot switched to a pink ponies theme. This subsequently led to an "OMG Ponies" Slashdot meme.
