Baloney

My co-worker was pondering which came first - the phrase "That's baloney" or the meat. A quick search on wikipedia gives us the answer - the meat (and we all know that all information on the Internet is for sure true). Whatever the truth is, it did make me wonder what it takes to turn a personal catch-phrase into an accepted slang term, even becoming the first definition at dictionary.com. Does it take teaching the catch-phrase to all your friends, encouraging them to tell all their friends and so on? Could you start it on a blog? Insert it into a movie or TV show and watch its popularity go from there? Or does it take some elusive popularity boost and advertising pitch in order to gain its acceptance in the lexicon of American or even international language? One thing is for sure - you must start with a good phrase. Hmmm...