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Throwback Thursday: Let's talk old flash and memes!
Inspired by some conversations I had over Discord where I realized that a lot of memes and videos from the early days of the Internet which were common knowledge are now just totally unknown. So, let's have a proper Throwback Thursday and reminisce over purer times.
My contributions: The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, which may still be the biggest crossover ever and is a great time capsule of early to mid 2000's pop culture. I forgot how much people used to joke about Chuck Norris being invincible.
The Llama Song is another old favorite to pop into my head recently. Some of the purest silliness you could find from the 2000's Internet, totally nonsensical lyrics and a catchy melody.
Oh god the llama song :D
Then I feel like it is obligatory for me to throw in All your base
Speaking of gaming memes... Leeeroy Jeeenkiins
Or the multitudes of silly flash games :)
I remember one text based adventure game called Don't Poop Your Pants lol
And of course its derivative, Zero Wing Rhapsody (edit: LoLoL the crew member playing the keyboard with just index fingers)
I still can't believe the person who made the original managed to make so many quality Photoshop images. One of the yt comments said, there are kids born today who will live to see 2101 AD. Astounding
I'd forgotten I even knew the llama song, and am horrified that I still have it down word and pitch perfect.
Similar songs also burned into my high school brain that will never vacate: We Like The Moon (also responsible for the Quiznos spongmonkies fever dream) and Magical Trevors 1-5.
Don't forget about Irrational Exuberance - otherwise known as the Yatta song meme.
Oh man, I was just thinking about Neil Cicierega the other day and how much he has contributed to my odd sense of humor. This thread could not have come at a better time. A few favorites I haven't seen listed yet:
Also, Neil is still making awesome things today. I have had PORCELAIN stuck in my head for the better part of the last month.
Edit: added a warning
The ones that tend to stick in my mind are all the old song videos, typically those that employed humorously crappy MS Painted artwork or clever editing, as was the style at the time*. And I'd argue that Hollywood still hasn't caught up with the quality of action choreography in the stick figure animations from that era.
Group X - Schfifty Five
Dark Materia - The Picard Song - there was a great flash video for this but can't find it atm
Badger Badger Badger <- stick on infinite loop
Charlie the Unicorn
Xiao Xiao Stick Fight
The End of the World
Animator vs Animation
Weebl and Bob
Salad Fingers
* Along with wearing onions in our belts
I still always say "but I'm le tired" when I'm about to take a nap (before firing ze missiles).
This lives on when I talk to my sister. This and several other things in this thread. Good times!
Oh man I remember the stick figure fights and wanting to recreate that on animation tools.
I also remember Charlie the Unicorn and Salad Fingers. My older sister is emo/scene and it was very big among that millennial crowd. Charlie for the “so random” humor and Salad Fingers for the Burton-esque atmosphere. There’s actually a current TikTok meme that uses the music from Salad Fingers.
I'm completely oblivious to TikTok trends but knowing that Salad Fingers is out there disturbing a whole new generation of Internet users is wonderful to hear ha 😁
Alan Becker (maker of the Animator vs Animation video) has generational appeal. My kids independently started following his more recent videos and I was surprised to find it was the same guy.
I do love how quality animation and humor is timeless. The asdf movies as well, there will always be a tween that finds those for the first time and loses their mind haha
Ha, yes my kids also love the ASDF series! Though I'm a bit sad to report that not all of them hold up. Still most are solid, which is pretty good by internet humor standards. There were some websites I visited in the early 2000s that I would not share today.
Hehe yeah, reminds me of how the guy that programmed and did level design for Super Meat Boy got his start with cringey "shoot Bush" style games.
We all grow, I can still go see what I was like at age 11 from my SpeedDemosArchive account.
And that reminds me of playing around with Pivot. Mainly made an animation with a girl with a helicopter ponytail. That was fun to play with :D
That’s exactly what I used!
A quick search suggests it still exists. I'm now half-tempted to download it and just play around. We could use a stick figure video renaissance!
This one reminded me of another by the same group: Mario Twins
Animator vs Animation was a fantastic series (I think 3 were made, though tbh the first one was hands down the best.) I could really relate to that one because I was learning to write games in Flash when it came out.
I still remember the leopleuridon from Charlie...
For anyone that likes Charlie the Unicorn, you may also appreciate their new series Perfect Husbands.
Welcome to zombo.com
This. Is. Zombo com.
I am so glad that still works.
According to its Wikipedia page (yes, it has its own Wikipedia page), it switched from Flash to HTML5 in 2021.
I’m glad the infinite is still possible; the unattainable, still unknown.
Trogdor the Burninator (Strongbad Email ep 58 - Dragon) and other new.homeStarRunner.com stuff of course.
That, and Cuppycake Gumdrop (wiki) is what I loop in my brain when I have idle cycles.
I still always follow "g2g" with "kaizer"
This thread wouldn't be complete without some of the first memes:
Dancing baby dates back to the mid 90's. One of the first internet memes, definitely the first one to make a giant impact on culture. Most famously featured on Ally McBeal.
Hamster dance, also from the 90's. Early mashup and pop culture reference with a sample from Disney's Robin Hood cartoon. Why was it so popular? Like many of the best memes no one will ever truly know.
I Can Has Cheezburger? The link goes to the wiki article about the blog but I'm referring to the captioned image that started the site in the first place. Early example of a pet meme, image caption meme, pet speak, and part of the beginning of the image macro phenomenon.
I highly recommend looking up the original memes for the above, not because they're that good, but because they're the the progenitors, crawling out of the primordial soup and blinking, unknowingly, in the light of what would become a new world.
A new world that would eventually become a corporate hellscape of course, but first, and for a long time, it was innocent, weird, dumb and beautiful.
Also, shoutout to the original coining of the concept of the meme from 1976.
Isn't it strange to think someone made those? Whoever created I can haz cheeseburger has had such a wide impact on culture, imagine it being your 2 truths and a lie
Good, I was worried the Hampster Dance wouldn't make an appearance!
I recently played through Castle Crashers on PS5 with my family. Fun couch coop. I remember the creators had their start back in the day on Newgrounds. Playing that game reminded me of those days. The amount of work that went into the videos and games made in Flash!
I was a fan of Ill Will Press and recently looked up the Starbucks episode to show my wife. Good times!
Does anyone remember the Big Red Button?
Flash "game" thing ... started with a Big Red Button on the screen, with a message "Do not press the Big Red Button" ... and so, of course, you press it, which started a whole 15-20 minute long extravaganza of button-pressing.
I'm not sure I know which Flash game you're specifically talking about, since I remember a few with a similar concept. But was it The Big Red Button?
p.s. For a more modern game with a similar-ish concept, check out Please don't touch anything. It has tons of different endings and was pretty fun, IMO. And The Corridor is basically the exact opposite concept and pretty amusing too.
I just adore these styles of games. The CUBE grow series jumps to mind as well. Just playing with a little digital rube Goldberg. So satisfying!
Oh and I've played both those steam games and recommend! The former is definitely a bit thinky thinky and harder to tease out than others I've played. Corridor is just non stop unexpected turns and fun, definitely worth the 2 hours!
They were all fantastic little games!!
OMG the CUBE games! I haven't thought of them in years. There was so much detail to them. Some of the later ones had multiple "endings" and I remember spending a lot of time trying to find them all.
Oh, was that that Japanese series with the buttons to add an attribute and things happen? Often with little people figures running around doing tasks? That was a super fun game.
There's a whole genre of Japanese escape games that could be delved into, starting with Crimson Room, but that is big enough to deserve its own thread. It's terrible how so much was lost when Flash was discontinued. Some devs moved to Unity but a lot just quit.
I did a bit of googling and found the original website. Everything still seems to be working, too! This should occupy some of my time today. :)
Oh, neat! It looks like Eyezmaze remade everything in HTML5 -- thanks I may be a bit busy later too, thanks!
That's the one. Yay, and thanks.
Reminder of the Flashpoint project, which is to preserve as much as they can without trampling on copyright. Sorta. I think? Anyway, it has a big database you can sort through.
My favorite flash game is Steamshovel Harry, one of the most flash games ever.
Came here to post this! ~CannibalisticApple (or is it @ CannibalisticApple ?) maybe add a link in the OP?
Yes, most definitely add Steamshovel Harry.
:^)
I just tried it but pressing control broke the game :(
How is babby formed?
Q: How girl get pragnent??
A: They need to do way instain mother who kill thier babbys.
I file that one with how is prangent formed which naturally leads to their other favorite for me the Luigi board.
I also really like the "Am I Pregant?" meme in ballad form.
This one feels slightly newer but I still love it. My best friend who has dyslexia doesn't think it's funny though
The most well known flash game of my youth was The Impossible Quiz. My friends and I would strategically trade solutions at lunch, trying not to give too many answers otherwise the other person might finish the quiz first.
Heh, the Game Grumps just played this. Two days ago I think. Dan made it much further than I ever did.
I haven't thought about The Impossible Quiz in a hot minute! I never finished it and I don't think any of my friends did, but boy did we spend ages trying! Can't believe you can still run it in a browser. I assume it's been updated somehow?
I think there was a big push to convert flash games for html5 years ago after the big browsers dropped support. It does run a bit poorly on my iphone, maybe it was an automated effort.
Another video that popped to mind is REJECTED by Don Hertzfeldt
:D dance! Everyone Dance!
I first learned what a meme was like in 2011. I started using 9Gag cause a middle school friend of mine recommended it. I would then spend endless hours scrolling.
To me a meme was what is now known as Advice Animals. That was a meme to me. Rage comics also existed but I didn’t consider that a meme. While I loved them at the time with my 11/12 year old brain, looking back a lot of that stuff was terrible. A lot of “le Justin Bieber terrible.” I ran into a video in 2020 that encapsulates the meme culture of the time.
In my opinion meme culture became much more refined in 2016. With Reddit’s me_irl stuff going mainstream, dankmemes picking up pace, as comedy stuff like Cumtown being big. That era on its own I think is really good, but I think the current era is also better than the stuff I grew up with. I love a lot of TikTok memes, I love that there’s an editing format for them. Sometimes I wish I was ten years younger because I feel like this meme culture is more to my taste, and I would probably be making tiktoks and whatnot.
This list would not be complete without Powerthirst and CollegeHumor's sequel Powerthirst 2.
Redubbed GI JOE PSAs are absolutely worth a rewatch. Also, did you know that You're The Man Now Dog (YTMND) is still going? Homepage
"Who wants a body massage?" "Uh, what the hell?" "Body massage"
"Nice catch, blanko niño"
"Give him the stick. Don't give him the stick." "Do you know my dad?" "Oooooooooooooh"
"Bwabababababwaahbwahh" "Pork chop sandwiches!"
"I just wan ride my mooooooootosickle"
"Hey kid, imma computer"
"Bet you won't touch that button, bitch"
So many hilariously bizarre lines and noises from those that I still remember to this day. I used to watch them over and over again with my friends after we smoked up, and we always giggled like maniacs afterwards. We used to randomly quote them to each other all the time too, and at other people who usually had no idea WTF we were talking about (which made it even funnier to us). Good times! :P
I heard all of these in the original voices in my head as I was reading. It's a testament to the (probably) hundreds of times I've watched them over the years.
I also really like the ones with the astronaut, because it cracks me up that no one can understand what he's saying because of the suit. :D
Oh yeah, especially when he comes out of the swamp and the kids run terrified. Brilliant
All that and more! Glad I flipped a switch for you all - those will live rent free in my brain until the end of time.
I can't tell you how many times my brother and I have invoked this phrase in conversation.
These never get old, still a go-to for a round of chuckles after a few drinks with some friends. They inspired a whole genre of cartoon redubs to boot, a personal favorite being Teesside Tintin.
Some in my memory are/were:
Joe Cartoon
Hampster Dance
The Demented Movie Cartoon
that one site that ended in .cx. If you know, you know, and I'm sorry that we do.
The stickman flash game (now has a plethora of spinoffs)
QWOP
Badgers (then Only in Kenya)
Foamy the Squirrel
[Dancing] Spiderman Has Made You Gay, the Dancing Banana, and other gifs with sound
... and naturally, anything Homestar Runner.
I wrote a 20-page term paper for a "folklore and sexuality" class on the subject of pornographic shock sites back in 2006. I believe the main subjects I presented for consideration were Goatse, Tubgirl and Lemonparty. It got an A.
This means that at some point I composed an MLA citation for friggin' Goatse. I don't know why, but I feel more than a hint of shame about that.
Edit: I had completely forgotten that the professor required local copies of any digital media we evaluated in the paper be provided. So I actually burned a CD with web page complete copies of the sites and turned it in to her. She probably bumped me 20 points for gumption alone.
That's reasonable, each new person who saw it because of you can never go back.
Well deserved.
I'm only familiar with goatse from your list, which is enough to quell my urge to google any of the others.
Google probably wouldn't give any relevant results anyway, the absolute state it's in. Lucky for us all, Knowyourmeme exists to preserve our sanity.
Tubgirl is worth forgetting, but you should know Lemonparty just so you'll get the best, most daring joke I ever saw on broadcast television.
If you didn't bother to check the link, Lemonparty.org was just a photo of three geriatric men engaging in group oral sex. I almost want to say it was tame by today's standards, but that's not exactly le mot juste. Instead, let's say that the mere existence of elderly homosexuals is possibly less conceptually challenging to today's discerning meme connoisseur.
Anyway, in S02E09 of NBC's "30 Rock" (aired 2007), Liz Lemon's family comes to celebrate the holiday season. They go out for a meal, and her father Dick insists on picking up the tab, laying down this iconic line. I think I must have first seen this episode 16 years ago, and it still pops up in my head unbidden every blue moon.
That 30 Rock joke is excellent in how bold it is. Youtube comments claim "There was also Hariet Tubman, changing her last name to Tubgirl." in a post-credits scene in one episode. Incredible.
I was there, man... I was there
/me has a Vietnam style flashback
/me realizes he's dating himself by using "/me"
I remember the Madnessvideos on new grounds being really entertaining.
In the same vein of ridiculous 00's Jack-Thompson-baiting flash violence, one of my favorite reviews on Backloggd is for Interactive Buddy.
Wow. That's quite a thoughtful write up. Thank you for sharing it. I used to play interactive buddy all the time when someone at our school figureed out how to get around safes stop.
When the Madness Combat game came out it was the coolest shit ever for a while. I remember it having a modding scene too.
I was thinking recently about how some of the memes from my earlier days of the Internet were shock images/sites disguised as links to other things and you'd always have to be ready to close the browser window in a hurry after a risky click. The relatively innocuous ones were merely pornographic in nature but I have to wonder how much the gore sites shaped part of a generation back then, I definitely saw a lot of things I'd rather not remember.
I was just talking with my wife about how pleased I was that it was basically replaced with the rickroll. You still get the core joke without being so likely to enlighten or educate in the worst way.
The O RLY? owl always made me laugh.
That was a favorite of mine as well! To the point I used "orly" in text communication a bit too much.
Have not seen Peanut Butter Jelly Time posted yet
This topic has absolutely demolished my afternoon productivity, and I could not be happier. Thank you, and feel free to mark as noise. :)
the Composer by Jazza
Before YT we had Newgrounds. Back then I was just a teenager. There was all the usual fun stuff. Pico's school, Xiao Xiao, Madness, etc. But the Composer was the first time I thought, "Wow, this is art. Newgrounds and flash can be used for art."
Sounds obvious, but I was teen lol. Even still, this is one of my favorite videos on the internet. Just the thought that one person made this, uploaded it, and I randomly got to experience is incredible.
A lot of the classic posted but not the one that lives in my head: Leek Spin (Loituma Girl)
Shoot another classic: Numa Numa
I love Leek Spin so much that a few years ago I actually tracked down the song it came from so I could then use GarageBand to turn a 25 second portion of it into my ringtone. :P
p.s. For anyone who wants the ringtone:
https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/078PZPr73E6_lcs4JaV0CUSSg#Leek_Spin
Every time I think of old school weirdness in the earlier internet days, I always remember Gonads and Strife as one of the first to make me go, “Uh…what?” before it permanently embedded in my brain. The GI Joe PSAs listed above were also peak for me.
Even earlier than that was Stickdeath.com, I remember it being the OG graphic stick figure site, definitely not very appropriate but to my young dumb self they were hilarious. Crude and primitive, but also had some underlying storylines baked in throughout, like Blues vs. Greens and the saga of ‘The Beast’. There were even a couple interactive flash games that were available (including the notorious ‘Crack House Cleanup’).
Wait! I can't believe no one has posted Nyan Cat yet.
Weebls stuff. Magical Trevor. He made it so big with that one, a version of it was used on commercial tv in the UK to advertise a directory lookup premium rate line. 🎶🎶“One one eight, twenty four seven, everyone can see it’s directory heaven. “
Demotivators were my introduction to what would become a standard meme format for years. Not sure how widely known they were, though.
I still occasionally quote bits of How To Kill a Mockingbird and am met with blank stares every time…
I have not yet seen Happy in Paraguay mentioned, and I think it may fit the vibe.
Anybody else remember Jandrew Edits? Only a portion of the original set still survive today, but they make me giddy with laughter.
Edit: Just found this link which is much more complete. Hooray!