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Image Credit: Wikipedia

If you didn't see this image last week, you may have been hiding under a rock. Wikipedia reports that 162 million people viewed this image on January 18 as a result of their protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, which involved blocking all English-language content on the website. As a result of the blackout, 8 million people looked up their representatives in Congress, and a unknown number of people tweeted amusing and seeemingly illiterate things. (Mildly NSFW content in full post.)

As the Northeast prepared for Hurricane Irene last week, southerners who had weathered dozens of hurricanes sent both insults and helpful advice to their less-experienced neighbors in the north. The internet was abuzz with people wondering why New Yorkers were incapable of understanding what to do in a hurricane, and snarky retorts concerning Texans' inability to manage mild ice storms abounded. On reddit.com, the Australian redditor Xsophos posted this infographic comparing Irene and Hurricane Katrina with Tropical Cyclone Yasi, which hit Queensland, Australia this year. 

Image credit:  ABC News

Some American redditors promptly took offense, thinking that the post was intended as an insult to Americans' preparedness or fright, even though Xsophos offered no commentary about Australian superiority or the danger involved in any of these storms. One user sarcastically calls Australians "lucky" and another thread devolves into Australians insulting American sexuality and Americans making snide remarks about Australian censorship, as well as comparisons of flora and fauna.