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[-] hglman@lemmy.ml 147 points 1 year ago

Rick roll is hardly early internet.

Source, im old

[-] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 54 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but goatse isn't very wholesome. Let the kid believe :P

[-] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

You're the man now dog?

Dancing baby?

Hell there were viral things before Google existed.

[-] Xtallll 10 points 1 year ago

Goatse is the definition of some hole, tub girl on the other hand...

[-] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

No, but it is hole-some.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Star wars kid, daft punk hands, daft punk girls, ninja kid there are tons of earlier internet memes.

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[-] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I second this comment. I am old too. 🤣

[-] Pandantic@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago

I think all your base is pretty wholesome :3

I mean, TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG!! 🥰

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[-] lowleveldata@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] PithyPolynym@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Knew what "a research" was linking to, but I clicked it anyway.

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[-] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 95 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] FarFarAway@startrek.website 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[-] folkrav@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Nyan Cat

That's quite recent still tho

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Re: peanut butter jelly time - my 8 year old picked it up somewhere along the way and is one of his favorite songs now.

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[-] bhmnscmm@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

I mean there were even fax machine "memes". Checkout Faxlore if you weren't around at the time.

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[-] dandroid@dandroid.app 12 points 1 year ago

I miss the days of looping flash videos. The Badger Song, The Llama Song, Magical Trevor, etc. Those defined my childhood.

[-] TimoBRL@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers mushroom mushroom

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[-] idkwhatimdoing@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

For sure dancing baby. Was shared as an attachment on emails even before YouTube was a thing

[-] keefshape@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Nuhuh.

True early internet meme was pics from Madonna's coffee table book. Iykyk.

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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.

[-] Drgon@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

It's better than when a link could bring you to meatspin, lemon party, or Goatse

[-] key@lemmy.keychat.org 3 points 1 year ago

Don't forget tubgirl!

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[-] coaxil@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Consummate V's!!!!!

[-] Mishmash2000@lemmy.nz 25 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

Memes back then were under construction gifs.

[-] GreenMario@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

I remember when they depreciated tables for use in styling, and everybody was freaking out because how could you make a pretty website without them?

We didn't know back then how spoiled we would be with CSS.

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[-] vashti@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago

Usenet was absolutely swarming with memes. They were text-based rather than image-based but they were definitely memes.

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[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Pacers31Colts18@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

Dancing baby is the early internet meme.

[-] Today@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I hate that baby!

[-] ChlorineAddict@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

My spoon is too big

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

That was not early internet.

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Donebrach@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Clent@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Trail@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I thought that was a monty python bit?

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"You wouldn't get this from any other guy" is less wholesome and more incel, TBF.

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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
433 points (100.0% liked)

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