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Dotcom Era Fads
prostoalex writes "Nostalgic USA Today looks at the fads of the dotcom boom era. The Dancing Baby, HamsterDance, I Kiss you dot org and the phrase 'All your base are belong to us' made the list."
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How many more times am I going to have to forward this darn "5 cents donation for every forward for the liver transplant" email and end this flower to people you love!!! email. I think I am destined to see the Hampster Dance at least once a year for the rest of my life as every female in the world forwards it to me.
I suppose that the reason they called it a 'dot com' phenomenon is that it was around then that the internet reached critical mass among users; there were enough to make business viable, and - like spam - inane memes had no problem finding an audience.
/. is no place to talk about the motes in the eyes of others; just consider the linux clusters of natalieportman.cx .
Of course, the internet is perfect for memes like 'all your base' to flourish; it takes no effort to forward an url to everyone you know; I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows at least one individual who regularly sent messages where the To: field was longer than the rest of the message combined. A swift (and usually repeated) larting usually took care of these eventually, but in a lot of cases that just meant that their list was transferred to Bcc: instead.
Two things that I noticed around that time that didn't make the list: The warning about GoodTimes, and the now-legendary one-line email that you had to scroll through eight metres of crap and and a myriad '>>>>>' of variable length in order to read 'Check it out!!!!!!!!!' followed by an asinine url that leaves you wondering why the fuck anyone'd want to send it in the first place, let alone forward it to the universe.
Of course,
What the hell is a 'grit' anyway?
Hell, l3375p34| was a fad (well, I *wish* it was a fad...won't go the fuck away). Not sure if it would qualify as a dotcom fad. How about things like The Terrible Secret of Space? And yes, we will always get people who are new to the net (or for the most part, female), that will send us links of pictures, articles, or flash movies, that we've seen countless times. I swear, I'll have kids in 20 years, and they'll come up to me and tell me to come see the funny AYB cartoon on the computer...........
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
But I'm certainly not above laughing at clever derivatives. Are you?
I laughed at a highly-moderated comment posted just several weeks ago, recounting "All your base" with IBM and SCO taking parts.
Sometimes there is nothing funnier than at a particularly unexpected moment someone making a silly reference -- perhaps as a derivative -- to something like "All your base".
"It's a trap!", something I've seen seen in some fairly weird places, which also seems to be really quite silly, is also humorous at some unexpected moment.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, right?
Lighten up a little, eh?
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
"All Your Base" is pronounced dead several times every day, yet it's 15 minutes of fame continue for some reason.
Now, things can be famous for being famous. Once things were famous for being great. Then they could be famous for being popular. Now, having been famous is enough.
"But like other flashes in the pan, it retreated as quickly as it had appeared."
ohhhh don't i wish! When i don't here this phrase 10 times a day I'll finally be able to take the plugs out of my ears
Um, dood, I hate to tell you this, but there's a majority of people here that were netizens when Yahoo didn't even exist, so your bragging is quite a bit less than impressive. Now give me back my Geritol...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
memes are not false ideas. they are the units of cultural inheritence. AYB is as valid a meme as Christianity. The difference is that the AYB meme doesn't organive and influence large groups of people as well. So yes of course the idea of meme is a meme. that is the point
Sigh.. It was supposed to be a joke, not a piece of evangelism, but there's always one, isn't there?
No, Apple just has a hell of a lot of really smart people in marketing
Can you say Powerbook? Can you say OSX? Can you say G5?
They do have a lot of smart people in marketing, but their products currently kick Wintel's ass all over the place as well.
And I use both on a daily basis, so I *am* in a position to know. Are you?
Not in America. We specialize in taking offense at anything here.
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