1 yr. ago • 90%

It's actually wholesome that early internet most famous meme/ viral video is a song about "never giving someone up and never letting them down"

75 comments

Rick roll is hardly early internet.

Source, im old

132
- Yeah, but goatse isn't very wholesome. Let the kid believe :P
  
  50
  
  You're the man now dog?
  
  Dancing baby?
  
  Hell there were viral things before Google existed.
  
  27
  
  Goatse is the definition of some hole, tub girl on the other hand...
  
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  No, but it is hole-some.
  
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  Star wars kid, daft punk hands, daft punk girls, ninja kid there are tons of earlier internet memes.
  
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- I second this comment. I am old too. 🤣
  
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  I think all your base is pretty wholesome :3
  
  I mean, TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG!! 🥰
  
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- Actually it was found that Rick roll was originally inspired by an old Internet video dated back to the late 70s. They did a research on that if you're interested.
  
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  Knew what "a research" was linking to, but I clicked it anyway.
  
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  I got an ad before the video, ffs. My day is ruined.
  
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  Ope, link preview coming in clutch.
  
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  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  1
- Why, when I saw my first decapitation video I was merely a boy!
  
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2007 wasn’t early internet lol.

Early internet’s most famous meme was probably either hamster dance or dancing baby. All Your Base wasn’t long after.

91
- I mean there were even fax machine "memes". Checkout Faxlore if you weren't around at the time.
  
  14
  
  Thank you, I had forgotten some of the memes and jokes from that era.
  
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- But I'm le tired...
  
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  Okay, have a nap.
  
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  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/kCpjgl2baLs
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  3
  
  even this is pretty late-stage flash content. We must go deeper.
  
  2
- That toaster cat shitting rainbows
  
  Edit or the beep beep frog with the schlong
  
  Edit edit: guess that last one was a whole video...not a meme
  
  Edit edit edit: how do we feel about peanut butter jelly time?
  
  And edit edit edit edit...omg stupid rainbow cat just looked old enough for me to mis remember...its not old at all
  
  12
  
  Nyan Cat
  
  That's quite recent still tho
  
  12
  
  Re: peanut butter jelly time - my 8 year old picked it up somewhere along the way and is one of his favorite songs now.
  
  12
- I miss the days of looping flash videos. The Badger Song, The Llama Song, Magical Trevor, etc. Those defined my childhood.
  
  12
  
  Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers mushroom mushroom
  
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  Here's a llama, there's a llama and another little llama
  
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- For sure dancing baby. Was shared as an attachment on emails even before YouTube was a thing
  
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- Nuhuh.
  
  True early internet meme was pics from Madonna's coffee table book. Iykyk.
  
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- Permanently Deleted
  
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- Ron Livingston playing piano as a cat.
  
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  He was imitating this video which went viral before his.
  
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- Chawly bit may
  
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Like many other commenters, I wouldn't consider rickrolling to be "early internet." First of all it's a mutation of the duckroll meme, and dates as late as 2007. Trogdor predates rickrolling by 5 years.

But, I do have to say, I appreciate the rickroll as the internet's official prank. Tricking someone into watching a slightly cheesy but inoffensive music video to an actually pretty good song about being a faithful lover is pretty okay.

47
- Consummate V's!!!!!
  
  9
- It's better than when a link could bring you to meatspin, lemon party, or Goatse
  
  9
  
  Don't forget tubgirl!
  
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  "HEY EVERYBODY I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN."
  
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  Two girls one cup. That would be a horrible prank.
  
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Youtube isn't the early internet friend.

34
- I still remember the first time someone told me about YouTube. I thought they were saying U2, the bad, and was really confused.
  
  Fuck I'm old.
  
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- Going off the comments, did we all just get trolled hard?
  
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Permanently Deleted

28
- An early meme in a more modern format is this one.
  
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- Permanently Deleted
  
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Just for a bit of context I was "surfing the internet" in 1994 via Gopher, an early alternative to the web as we know it now and I used it primarily to find and download apps stored on computers connected to the internet.

In 1995 I was using the Mosaic browser and later Netscape to surf the World Wide Web mostly via webrings that were individual webpages that had links to other wepages of similar content linked to them.

I don't recall and am not aware of anything that would resemble a meme from that time? This is a year or so before Dancing Baby which is usually considered the first viral video and even then that was originally shared via email forwards.

25
- Memes back then were under construction gifs.
  
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  Geocities circa 94-96. The first place anyone could have a little webpage.
  
  We didn't even have CSS then! We had to build our pages in a cave with a box of HTML tags for scraps. You could do some sick shit with some fancy nested TABLE tags tho.
  
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  That green wireframe rotating skull and crossbones. That was everywhere
  
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- Usenet was absolutely swarming with memes. They were text-based rather than image-based but they were definitely memes.
  
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- As an Aussie being introduced to internet via a dial up connection using SLIP to AARNET at the start of the 90s. And yep gopher, waiting 15 mins to see a pic of Elle McPherson, and wondering how I survived for so long in the archaic world of BBS’s.
  
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This is the moment to mention that Rick Astley still makes music and just released a new song, it's called Never gonna stop. I'm not kidding, also, it's a banger.

18
- Rick Astley is an amazing vocalist, for real. I've heard some of his more recent stuff, and it's very good.
  
  With that being said, I'm still not clicking that link
  
  6
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=FON2SycdqaM&
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  5
Dancing baby is the early internet meme.

13
- I hate that baby!
  
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My spoon is too big

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Lol dude what the fuck? That is not early Internet. That's a good decade and a half past early Internet.

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That was not early internet.

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Hah. "early internet." Just like how Video Games' first foray into existence was in 2003 with Knights of the Old Republic. Before then, nothing existed.

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I remember a different internet. I thought the most viral stuff was a guy shoving a glass jar into his ass which then broke. And we all nervously laughed as he pulled glass out of his now pissing bloody sphincter. Or two girls puking and shitting into a cup which they drink. Or cake farts. Lemon parties. Goatse. Or just ddos random sites something something fire some space lazer ion cannon thing occupy!

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- Or meat spinning
  
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What about the memes that South Park made fun of years ago?

Star Wars kid

Dramatic look gopher

Tron guy

Etc.

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Memes are as old as humanity, so Internet memes are as old as the Internet, starting ca. 1993.

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- Yep. Really comes down to how you want to define "internet meme" -- memes do not need a visual.
  
  One of the oldest memes I can think of is the term spam. It dates back to Usenet.
  
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  I thought that was a monty python bit?
  
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