The “Fail Whale” is a illustration of a white beluga whale held up by a flock of birds, originally named “Lifting a Dreamer”, was illustrated by Australian artist Yiying Lu. It was used during periods of downtime by the social networking service Twitter. When Twitter gets overloaded, users see the above error message.
The internet has reached a decision to name it “Fail Whale”, which was firstly suggested by Nick Quaranto from Buffalo, New York:
The fan base creative expression of the “Lifting a Dreamer” (“Fail Whale”) has grown tremendously over the past 10 years, from tattoo to 3D sculptures, Lego to beer labels, cakes to street art…the “Fail Whale” gradually became a cultural icon. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of funny ‘modified’ Lifting a Dreamer on the internet.
This project serves as an ongoing online gallery of interesting highlights of these creative expressions, which comes from people globally on the internet, to inspire more people around the world in the real life…
Enjoy!
3D knetic Sulpture by Australian Artist Hilary Talbot (@Hil121) from Canberra, Australia
Tattoo by @critter from Florida, United State
Lego Whale by Bjarne Tveskovby @tveskov, an Ex-pro LEGO Space designer from Copenhagen, Denmark
Paper quill art by Ann Martin (All Things Paper) a paper quilling artist Delaware, United States
Street Art by @smartcrew in the New York City, NY, United States
See more here