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."

Comments

Ah but...

[GregoryD]

It still surges because of people new to the internet. Everytime a new batch learns the forward button in there email program we get another round of things we seen before.

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.

Dot com?

[rde]

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.

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, /. is no place to talk about the motes in the eyes of others; just consider the linux clusters of natalieportman.cx .

What the hell is a 'grit' anyway?

What about l3375p34| and ....?

[SoVi3t]

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...........