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The Most Important Things in the History of the Internet
So you fancy yourself an internet connaisseur? A meme master? Expert in the art of ironic jokes? Then it's important you know about the most important early memes and popular sites on the early web. Flash videos, proto-blogs, and more were the precursors to the memes and other web-garbage of today. Read on and get cultured, loser.
Yatta! Irrational Exuberance
Prior to the dotcom collapse in 2001, debt troll Alan Greenspan famously warned about the dangers of "irrational exuberance" pushing the market to unsustainable heights. He was right. The bottom fell out, people lost fortunes on websites that in retrospect did absolutely nothing useful. This famous video was born out of a combination of nihilistic celebration, ridiculous J-Pop, great Photoshoppery, and beautiful Flash animation.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
When you mix early sci-fi video game action with hilariously poor translations trying to sound intimidating, you get Zero Wing, a 1989 arcade game ported to Mega Drive in 1992. Throw in a techno backbeat and some solid early-phase Photoshopping, and you have one of the first modern web parodies. To this day, it is acceptable to declare "all your base are belong to us" when pwning n00bz. "What happen," "someone set up us the bomb," "we get signal," "main screen turn on," "how are you gentlemen," "you are on the way to destruction," "you have no chance to survive, make your time," "you know what you're doing, take off every zig," and "for great justice take off every zig" are also all strong line drops in relevant situations. Pretty much, you can quote every single part of All Your Base and be doing pretty well for yourself.
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The End of the World
H'ok, so. This one tells us how the world will end, what the French have to do with it, and which states will survive. Dang, you might say. Hh'anyway, so:
Llama Llama Duck
Mindless noise and repetition that turns your brain into mush: llama llama duck was a portent into the true nature of how one of man's most powerful inventions would become increasingly used in the years that followed. The YouTube video below loops the song a few times in a row, but for the true experience, watch the video on the original home of funny internet videos, albinoblacksheep, and let it loop in the background for a few hours. You will never be the same.
Benny Lava
Bollywood is pretty fucking incredible in general. Dancing, singing, love, mock violence between shining, flawless heroes and hapless villains. And the hero always gets the girl in the end. The only thing that can make it better? Syllable-for-syllable subtitles that somehow enhance the amazingness of an already perfect art form. Oh, and the guy in this video is a total badass.
Unfortunately, because the person who made this video has decided to poo-poo on the spirit of the internet, the video for Benny Lava can't be embedded. You can click the thumbnail below and get a link to watch it on YouTube.
Gellieman: Aicha
This is love, folks. A heart pulled still beating out of chest and posted on the internet for the world to see, all in the vain hope that Aicha, that queen on her trone, may one day see it and realize Gellieman was all she ever needed or wanted. Very Rox indeed, Gellieman. Very Rox. (She moves how?)
Rickrolling
No list of early internet humor is complete without a nod to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, the video used to troll a generation. And the dance moves in this video are pretty fricking epic.
Maddox: The Best Page In The Universe
Maddox was the first person to win the internet. With articles like this classic, he was one of the earliest, biggest trolls on the general public web. He's a hilarious asshole who doesn't give a fuck (aka, he rules), which also means he sucks.
Tucker Max
Tucker Max is also an asshole. A drunk womanizing bro who gets into all kinds of awful situations yet somehow manages to emerge unscathed, more or less. He is everything right and everything wrong with America. He is the piece of shit you wish you were, the bleeding asshole of humanity that proves we are all, eventually, doomed. But it is nonetheless hard to stop reading his hilarious, legendary stories, even though he should probably go jump off a bridge and shoot himself in the head on the way down just to make sure the job gets done.
