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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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Jobs.
Some days they seem like a thing of the past that might never come back.
Seriously... probly the most seen thing on the internet during the dot come boom...
They set us up the boom...
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.
in soviet russia, belong to all bases are you.
Grey and orange!
"All" trendy companies of 1999 had sleek logos in grey and orange (oh, yes, I used to work for one of those...).
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
you forgot slashdot you insensitive clod!
fact: microsoft > linux
All Your Base is most definitely post dot.com.
It was early 2001 (sheesh, that long ago?) and it was picked up by the Google Zeitgeist at the time.
Kibology is probably pre-Dot Com as well. Maybe they meant to talk about lavish parties and venture capital being burnt?
At least we never really had a Dotcom era to speak of in New Zealand...
Goatse, conese and Bathtubgirl. Persuading people to visit random websites has got to have been a dot com pastime. Just look ot the number of people this search brings up.
I am the NUL and the DEL, the beginning and the end.
Also, kibo is about *usenet* -- and predated the dot.com thing by many years. The dot.com boom was all about the web.
But when did you ever see this sort of article about the interweb get anything right?
We forgot about nostalgia for a little while...
Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to live through a boom/bust cycle like that. Kindof a Millenium Burnout Party, I guess.
And that's one fad they forgot: the Millenium.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The theme still lives on popping up on gaming message boards from time to time and providing a good laugh. Also the porn dot cum still lives on. Nostalgic? Yes. Slow Sunday? Yes. Sleepy? Yes. Loser? Yeeeeeeeee (damn 'S' key died on me)
All those graphics that say, "Powered by SomeFrigginTechnology(tm)". Sheesh, that is so 1997.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
And all your base is older than the dot come fad :/
...but think of all the things that didn't disappear, and should have.
Tierce
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Aeron Chairs. 'Nuff said.
for the first time, i actually think that the slashdot submission said everything that was worth saying; there is no need to read the article if you read the submission text :>
so; RTFST!"
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
Toaplan creates the Zero Wing video game.
Toaplan releases a port for the Sega Genesis console with the addition of an intro scene, which is then translated into english (very poorly) and released in the United States.
Toaplan goes out of business.
Someone from a Zany Video Game Quotes website notices the poor translation, and highlights the game.
Overclocked.org does a humorous voiceover of the Zero Wing intro in a fake Wayne Newton voice.
Dozens of game-related messageboards begin to post quotes from the parody, and images altered to show the phrase.
Most of the threads lose interest and die off quickly as the trend is pronounced dead countless times.
The Flash movie/video is released with images from the threads and music taken from the origional game someone had added the phrase "all your base" to.
AYB explosively expands to the general (non game messageboard-reading) public.
The origional site for the video is shut down within hours due to excessive traffic, and moves to PlanetStarsiege.
Lycos ponders how "All your Base" was transformed from obscurity to a top 50 search practically overnight.
Mainstream media begin to notice the trend, and stories appear in Time Magazine, USA Today, Fox News, The Los Angeles Times, Tech TV, Wired, and many others.
As the 'remix' used in the video goes from 58 hits a day to several thousand per day, mp3.com notices the track has been ripped directly from the video game and pulls the music off their site due to copyright violations. It is later returned unchanged.
The trend continues to grow as it expands into nearly every corner of the web.
Large websites like Angelfire and Hewlett Packard sneak "all your base" references into their designs.
"All Your Base" is pronounced dead several times every day, yet it's 15 minutes of fame continue for some reason...
All Your Base Are Belong to Us. This is an example of a saying or idea that rockets across the Net and becomes as familiar as an actual person. (The term spam, when used in reference to junk e-mail, is the most famous and successful of these.) The phrase, derived from a bad Japanese-to-English translation in the game Zero Wing, started showing up in the far corners of the Net in 2000 and shot to Web superstardom the following spring. People picked up the phrase and created a panoply of Web sites using it; they built Internet billboards, they morphed photos, they even put together music videos. But like other flashes in the pan, it retreated as quickly as it had appeared. You only wish it retreated as quickly as it had appeared. We were stuck with the links being emailed to us, or posted on our messagesboards, for months, if not years. Hell, people are STILL sending it to me.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
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?
I would've put this on the list -- not because it faded as a result of the dot com bust, but its fading was indicitive of the craziness of the dot-com boom in general.
Sadly, most people have never heard of it now...
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!!!
Use in every post, for great justice!
What I say!?!?
Someone set us up the long-running gag!
All our taste are belong to bad.
You are not the customer.
I wonder if anyone traced back the sources of the most popular slashdotisms, like the "Dear Apple" or "I am sitting here with my freelance gig" trollings or the "In Soviet Russia" jokes? Anyone knows when the first "First post!" post was posted?
--
In Soviet Russia... jokes trace back you.
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
There was the Exploding Whale
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
I've been a hardcore netizen since 1998, when I used to dial up from my uncle's home to a text-only shell account with a 1,500 bps modem :-) I remember waiting minutes to download a single JPEG file, then transferring it to my local machine using Kermit, and opening it up in Internet Explorer 3.0 on Windows 95, only to realise that it's the wrong one! Those were the days when I learnt to use Pine and Lynx, my favourite mail/www combo.
Those were the days of Internet success stories: ICQ, Napster, Winamp. Remember ShellSock?
In a perfect geek encounter, I met bluesmoon on comp.lang.java. Google didn't even exist back then.
Now, when I look around, I see "techies" with 5-10 years of experience in the software industry and no clue what All Your Base... means :-) Clearly, these guys have been here for the money. I, however, am here because I love it. The Internet is changing lives, and I want to be responsible for some of it. Somebody give me that perfect job! :-D
What about the Big Red Button that doesn't do anything?
Truly a timeless classic.
various cybercultural oddities (a.k.a. memes) over the years have made a fleeting impact on Net culture
I didn't think a meme was a cybercultural oddity. I thought it was a (usually false) idea whose character was to spread through human consciousness in a viral manner (e.g. - all small bandages are Band Aids (tm), the SR-71's fuel is the consistency of peanut butter, etc.).
This brings up a question. Has the idea of a meme become a meme?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
"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
They set us up the boom
In Zero Wing, the preposition comes before the direct object.
They set up us the boom is more correct.
Sheesh, me to need publish grammar?
Many of these great things can be found at:
ebaumsworld and maybe many new fads?:)
The Dot Com days made many changes to the work place which are both positive and negative.
Many of the positives which have been fading, taken away or restricted
Very relaxed dress code (shorts, jeans, sandals, hiking boots/sneakers)
Telecommuting
Flex Time ( work longer on Mon/Tue, take Fri off)
In-house gourmet lunches
Game room and outdoor games
Few of the negatives which are now flourishing
Oursourcing to India
H1-B Visas
Corporate executives throwing their weight around by reducing pay, taking away benefits such as flex time, telecommuting, vacations
One company that epitomizes the positives is Google's Culture. They are one of the few Dot Com type companies still around.
On the dress code, many companies have brought back dress codes especially the legal and finance industry. Where I work at, we are subcontrctors to Boeing on a government contract. Their top manager has a strict dress policy of having to wear a tie, slacks and dress shoes. This means no jeans along with hiking boots/sneakers/tennis shoes. This dress code even applies on trips on weekends and if you come in on a Saturday. Their work hours are strict 8 to 5. Those rules don't apply to us, YET ! There are rumblings in the Boeing group to force us to comply with those rules since they hold the purse strings. I take Thursday and Friday afternoons off just about every week but Monday and Tuesday are long days though. I also wear jeans everyday as well. We are in one of the top outdoor recreational states of Colorado.
Part of the rumblings in Boeing to force us to comply with their rules caused a few problems for me. Back in June/July, I took 4 weeks vacation to do some traveling, go see family and one of the Managers in Boeing told me to cancel my vacation since my focus should be on working instead of taking time off that I have earned and I told him I did not answer to him and he got irate. He told me I will pay for my attitude. The same person got pissed when I happen to be around on Friday all day that they cannot get any work done because of our flex time policy. One of their computers at 4pm went down and the person who can call in left at 11 am. He was demanded that the computer get fixed this instant. He made the comment that we are lazy since we take Friday afternoon off. He fired off some complaints to their top executives.
At Oracle which is in Colorado Springs, they started to restrict people from telecommuting who live within 50 miles of the company building. Last I heard, there is talk to take it away. Those who live in different Mountain towns may have to move if they want to keep their job.
Wow. 4 whole "Dot.com" fads. Wheeeee. Now that's what I call 'thorough'
Here's a dot-com fad that hasn't gone away just yet: The Dumbing down of the internet.
I remember my wife telling me about this new web browser thingy. I looked at it, and there were about 200 sites in all, so I shrugged and went back to reading netnews. She never lets me forget that :-)
They forgot one other fad: Mr.T Ate My Balls (and original site). I have to admit, I never got that one.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
I'm not sure Nostalgic is the right word to use for something that happened less than half a decade ago.
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
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