# What's the first internet "fad" you remember? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 28, 2007, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088 "2007-11-28T21:40:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/41 "2007-11-29T02:58:03Z")
Kibo. ---
**Author:** ![Auntbeast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Auntbeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Auntbeast)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/42 "2007-11-29T03:12:41Z")
/smacks you around with a large trout. I started out on BBS’s. Trade Wars baby! ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/43 "2007-11-29T03:20:44Z")
[QUOTE=mobo85] Mr. T Ate My Balls and its countless spinoffs. [/QUOTE] Me too. Also endless longer and longer variations on ROTFL. (“ROTFLMAOPMPASTC!”) That was sooo 1997. \*rolling on the floor laughing my ass off, peeing my pants, and scaring the cat. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/44 "2007-11-29T03:24:53Z")
[QUOTE=Auntbeast] /smacks you around with a large trout. I started out on BBS’s. Trade Wars baby! [/QUOTE] I remember the salmon of correction from GEnie. And the fish puns. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/45 "2007-11-29T03:28:36Z")
Oh, sure, the bbses, but that didn’t have the fads as such. I mean, we’d get the latest zines, but… ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/46 "2007-11-29T03:39:51Z")
On the Internet internet, it was the Hamster Dance and that awful dancing baby. On the BBSes, it was making really basic ASCII art sigs. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/47 "2007-11-29T04:08:57Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] Emoticons are surprisingly old. I used to use irc on the old Cleveland freenet back in like 1994 and I remember being confused as to why people typed colon-right paranthesis until someone explained it to me. [/QUOTE] Older still. The smiley-face emoticons go back to [at least 1982](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon#History): > [@](#): > > The creator of the original ASCII emoticons 🙂 and :(, with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman; the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44), was considered lost for a long time. It was however recovered twenty years later by Jeff Baird, from old backup tapes. ---
**Author:** ![Lucky\_13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucky_13/32/13209_2.png) [@Lucky\_13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucky_13)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/48 "2007-11-29T04:19:45Z")
Wow, someone beat me to mentioning Mahir. I remember there was something called “Jared, Butcher of Song,” which was basically an animated guy singing (badly) a Guatemalan folk song. I never actually had a chance to see it, though; I only saw it mentioned in the newspaper once. I’ve been curious about it ever since. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/49 "2007-11-29T04:45:20Z")
[Hampster Dance](http://www.hampsterdance.com/) , of course. (You guys are spelling it wrong.) 😉 And also, [Jared: Butcher of Song](http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/index.cfm?categoryID=1461&itemID=25782) Sonofabitch! That’s what I get for trying to find Jared before posting. ---
**Author:** ![HelloKitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecccb3/32.png) [@HelloKitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelloKitty)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/50 "2007-11-29T04:51:57Z")
I bought my first computer in 1995 for the sole purpose of going on AOL chat rooms! It was so exciting to talk to random people from all over the world! Getting together to “watch” TV shows like ER, Oscar telecasts, sporting events…it was great fun for awhile. Also when AOL instant messenger came out, all my friends and I thought…how perfect, we can talk to each other online for free and not pay long distance charges!! Of course this was before the days of cellphones, if you can imagine that! (1997…) ---
**Author:** ![Surbey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@Surbey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surbey)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/51 "2007-11-29T06:30:33Z")
I’ve been on the internet since for atleast 14 years now and the first real big fad I remember was Xpages. Everyone and their mother had one of these drop down, fill in the blank, XPAGE. It was amazing. ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/52 "2007-11-29T06:38:38Z")
I bought my first Mac in 1993 and was pointed to Usenet for porn. With my 14.4 modem! Using NCSA Mosaic, we also went to the Delft University (Netherlands) FTP site, which had a ton of softcore porn pictures. I remember the site was overloaded quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![ForumBot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ee59a6/32.png) [@ForumBot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForumBot)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/53 "2007-11-29T07:00:51Z")
**It’s peanut butter jelly time! peanut butter jelly time!** now where you at where you at there you go there you go peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat ---
**Author:** ![pasunejen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/58956e/32.png) [@pasunejen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pasunejen)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/54 "2007-11-29T15:49:21Z")
Chiming in on those dumb “[Insert name here] Ate My Balls” sites. And hamster dance. The song is now stuck in my head. (24, first on the web sometime in the mid-90s, I guess.) ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/55 "2007-11-29T16:24:40Z")
The Usenet Oracle. I remember sending questions and answers shortly after I had gotten email back in 1990. BTW, all of you all… Stay off my lawn!! ---
**Author:** ![LionelHutz405](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lionelhutz405/32/536_2.png) [@LionelHutz405](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LionelHutz405)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/56 "2007-11-29T16:32:05Z")
[QUOTE=pinkfreud] The earliest fad that I recall is from the 300-baud BBS days of the late 1970s through early 1980s: [ASCII Art](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art). I remember how tickled I was when I printed out a text file on my dot-matrix printer, and it turned out to be a huge picture of [Snoopy](http://www.chris.com/ASCII/art/html/snoopy.html). [/QUOTE] The first one I ever saw was a nude picture of Loni Anderson. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/57 "2007-11-29T16:37:08Z")
[QUOTE=Drain Bead] Ate My Balls was probably the first crazy meme that I remember. A couple of years later, but more imprinted on my brain, are NAPSTER BAD! and that Mahir “I kiss you!” guy. [/QUOTE] I came in to mention Mahir. How weird was that? A buddy of mine works for cafepress; Mahir mechandise helped put them on the map. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/58 "2007-11-29T16:50:42Z")
I’d have to say looking up URLs before browsers became the norm. “OOOOH this is the PANTAGON!” Me and my friends thought we were doing something really secret and anarchic. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/59 "2007-11-29T20:26:45Z")
I’m not sure it counts as a fad, but the first thing I remember everyone getting really flipped-out over was [Mosaic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)). ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2007, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088/60 "2007-11-30T02:22:06Z")
Hamster Dance was the first fad that I can remember “being a part of.” (I can remember the existence of the Dancing Baby, but I never bothered to watch it- it seemed dumb.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-first-internet-fad-you-remember/428088.md?page=4)