old internet

anyone could make a webpage. no skills required. the result was tiled backgrounds. midi music that started automatically. under construction gifs that never resolved. scrolling text. neon colours on black. it looked terrible and it was genuinely expressive. millions of people sharing what they loved with no audience in mind.

a geocities page created for a pet hamster named hampton. the owner added a sped-up midi song and a row of dancing hamster gifs. it got 17 million hits in a single week in 1999. no advertising. no algorithm. just word of mouth and the genuine delight of stumbling onto something weird on the early web. the first meme.

newgrounds was an entire culture. independant creators making animations and games. tom fulp built the platform and the community built everything else. madness combat. the madness sequels. pico's school. the animator vs animation. strong bad emails. none of it had a business model. all of it was made because someone wanted to make it.

a badly translated line from a 1992 arcade game became the internet's first major meme. "all your base are belong to us." people made videos, images, edits. it spread on forums and IRC. no twitter. no algorithm. just people finding it funny and showing their friends. the era of memes before the word meme existed.

created from a single scene in finding forrester. full screen image + looping audio + text. one page = one meme. the format spawned millions of variations. crude, loud, creative, political. the whole internet in a box. the creator is max goldberg and he accidentally made one of the internet's most important formats.

gary brolsma filmed himself lip-syncing to dragostea din tei by o-zone in his bedroom. he uploaded it to newgrounds. it got 700 million views at a time when that number was almost impossible. it was completely sincere. he was just having fun. the internet loved him for it. the first viral video star. the prototype for everything that followed.

brothers matt and mike chapman made a flash cartoon site in their basement. homestar. strong bad. coach Z. the cheat. strong bad's emails. teen girl squad. it was entirely independent. no network. no studio. just two guys making cartoons because they loved it. it still exists. it still updates sometimes. nothing has ever matched it.

2009 was peak youtube meme era. we took a gif of a pixelated cartoon cat flying through space trailing a rainbow and made it an international icon. we took a cat playing a keyboard and made it the send-off for every failure video. we did this as a civilisation and i think it says something important about us.

before SEO. before google's algorithm decided what you saw. you found cool websites by joining a web ring — a circle of sites linked together. you'd click "next →" and go somewhere. you didn't know where. you trusted strangers. you found incredible things. the internet was small enough that good taste could navigate it. i miss it constantly.