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Dr. Mario

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,831
Netherlands
constr.gif

I have a website made in 1999 that apparently is still online. The government approached my father whether it could be archived by the national library for posterity. True story.
 

Pulp

Member
Nov 4, 2017
3,023
Based on those age polls this forum has had it would be more surprising if someone here didn't remember it
 

Deleted member 17092

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
20,360
It's kinda funny to me gifs were some mind blowing thing in the first place. It's just a short looped video lol.
 

fade

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
3,515
Ah yes... I vividly remember setting Goatse as the Internet Explorer start page on all computers in the computerlab at High School and then adding a timer that opened IE every 10 minutes or so. Good times.

I saw a variant of this that opened it every few seconds and turned the sound all the way up with a guy yelling "hey everybody im looking at gay porno!".
 

Dan-o

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,883
Very disappointed that the story in the OP leaves out the fact that Rob Sheridan, at age 16, was a crucial player in the baby dance gif.
One day, in late 1996 or early 1997, my afterschool file-scavenging led me to "babycha2.avi" on a newsgroup, described without context as "weird baby dancing" or something like that. I downloaded it and discovered, to my teenage delight, a hideously creepy bald humanoid CGI toddler cha-cha-ing on a black background; no music, no text, no explanation for why it existed or where it came from. The baby was extremely realistic by 1997 standards, rendered in lavish detail at 260x200/30fps, which I described as "hi-resolution" at the time. But it was the baby's cold dead eyes that shook me, the way it stared expressionless into a black void while it danced nightmarishly through the Uncanny Valley with its weird Benjamin Button body; a ragdoll flesh puppet made by sinister digital masters who forced it to twirl for their amusement. It was as off-putting as it was hypnotizing, perhaps a perfect prophetic metaphor for the shallow but novel alternate reality the internet would eventually foster. At the time though, it was nothing more or less than exactly the type of bizarre little oddity that brought morbid delight to a 17 year old boy.

I added babycha2.avi to the list of files in the carefully-curated "funny stuff" section of my personal homepage. I don't recall what else was in that prestigious link list, but the hamster dance, midi files of techno songs, and some 10-second Simpsons clips seem likely. Hosting space was always an issue in those days, and a 900k file was eating into my 10mb web storage allowance, so I eventually removed the link and added a note, "email me if you'd like the dancing baby file." To my surprise, I started getting daily emails from people who really wanted that creepy thing I'd found. I felt in that moment the same rush of narcissistic zest any contemporary meme-creating Redditor must feel upon discovering something weird or hilarious that no one else yet has: I had uncovered digital treasure, and I needed to curate it. I also needed avenues beyond my NIN page to continue practicing html, and thus, in April of 1997, The Unofficial Dancing Baby Homepage was born.
 

Uncle at Nintendo

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Jan 3, 2018
8,577
Wow! Is that for real? I've never seen it before. I would say the first 'meme' is probably something like a Peace-sign or a "Shit Happens" sticker, but as far as internet-based memes go, I was under the impression that All Your Base, or the ORLY Owl was the first.

Orly Owl was relatively late, that was like 2003/2004.
 

mattiewheels

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,107
Howard Stern show was kind of a proto-meme thing way before 95, where Fred's sound drops became a kind of language. Fred is awesome.
 

maruchan

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
2,173
I'm old enough to have seen the episode of ally McNeal where that dancing baby appeared. And I can't stop this dealing before guardians
 

m_shortpants

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,199
I still remember that "if WW2 was an RTS game" gif, which is probably full of slurs. Was a really long GIF though.
 

Aurongel

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
7,065
I'm old enough to remember it but even at the height of my "lul so randum" Tumblr/YTMND phase I never once found it funny.
 

Herne

Member
Dec 10, 2017
5,311
I do remember it but I remember this more, mostly because a friend and I named him Jim after a mutual friend of ours -

dancingchicken06.gif
 

AaronMT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,530
Toronto
Wow! Is that for real? I've never seen it before. I would say the first 'meme' is probably something like a Peace-sign or a "Shit Happens" sticker, but as far as internet-based memes go, I was under the impression that All Your Base, or the ORLY Owl was the first.
I mean there was probably earlier dumb shit but it was one of the first widely dumb things on the World Wide Web


Looks like it was 1996.