I’m guessing that’s because www.badgerbadgerbadger.com was registered in 2003 but Google says the video is older than that. Of course, it also says that it was mentioned on YouTube 8 years before the site was created.
Was Craig Shergoldnot an Internet Meme? Wikipedia puts it at 1989, and I think I encountered it about then.
I remember that as being passed around mostly by word of mouth or snail mail. Fax machines were not that common then. However, it still got passed around on the Internet as it became accessible to more people.
Regarding spam, we got on the Internet in 1989 and were regulars on several Usenet Newsgroups. I remember very well the massive stink Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel caused with their “Green Card” spam, the first commercial spam. That was on April 12, 1994. Oh the days when a spam could cause outrage.
(Full link because…iPod Touch)
I remember hearing about the dancing baby but never watched it. Our system wasn’t up to it even I had been interested, which I wasn’t.
This wasn’t really a widespread Internet meme, but one newsgroup I was a regular in was alt.religion.scientology, because it was a blast reading former members talk shit about the cult and post Soooper Sekret documents in the newsgroup. When the idiots in the cult found out about it, the brainiacs tried to “rmgroup” the newsgroup. That was a way to get rid of a newsgroup and was only used in extreme cases. It was the most wonderful thing they could have done, because it caused a huge backlash from system administrators who’d never gave a thought about $cientology before. Word spread about the attempted censorship, more people became aware, it got press, it got more press, word spread more, it got really ugly for the cult very quickly. If they’d just ignored the newsgroup the readership would have stayed limited to former members and people like me, long-time $cientology critics. More people found out just how sick the cult was thanks to the rmgroup. It was a glorious thing to watch.
I think the earliest Internet meme I can remember is Mouse Balls, around 1989 (through an email humor list at my company).
The earliest Web meme I remember seeing is Ate My Balls.
I showed up on USENET just in time to see the Clarence Thomas IV ‘Global Alert’ spam on every newgroup.
Also: “Hello, my name is David Rhodes…”
I remember “Dancing Baby”. After that it was “all your base”.
Not that my memory is all that reliable…
Off the top of my head, Mahir Çağrı. If you don’t remember him, he’s basically Turkish Borat. Looking up the dates, looks like the stupid baby and Hampsterdance are older, so I remember those.
Oh, also the retarded “Ate My Balls” thing. I can’t remember any text memes when we used Gopher.
The first one I remember was a black and white (well, black and either orange or green, depending upon which way you flipped the switch) of the crawling desk lamp. I may have received that over RIME though, does that count?
I cant find the exact one, but it must have been a build-file from this:
Luxo Jr. - Wikipedia.
I’m gonna guesstimate 1989. ( -ish.)
Do smilies or 1337 count as memes? If not, then probably the dancing baby for me.
Probably the dancing baby.
But the cookie recipe was definitely Xerox circuit material - I saw that one in the late '80s (although it wasn’t Nieman Marcus - may have been Mrs Fields or Famous Amos at that point).
The Spirit of Christmas, which eventually became South Park
Oh, man. I remember this one. It was all over the newsgroups. I wanted to stab their eyeballs out (in a purely metaphorical way).
In my case it was probably “All Your Base”, which made sense to me since I was of the generation that had grown up playing 8/16-bit consoles and had seen my share of iffy translations as a result.
I also remember getting the Nieman Marcus Cookie Recipe pretty early on in my internetting and thinking “Who is Nieman Marcus and why do I care about their recipe for baked goods?”
Google date search is a bit rubbish. There used to be a great, easy to use “advanced search” on Google Groups that let you search Usenet posts by date. But, like most useful things Google used to do, it’s been mucked about with and broken.
You can still kind of do a search by date, and I get the first major spike in “badger badger badger” postings appearing around September 10, 2003
Oddly there are a few results from 1999, but on closer inspection they don;t appear to be related to the Weebl’s Stuff meme.
Darpanet is really gonna take off.
Wikipedia says Badger Badger was published on September 2, 2003, so that fits with the Google results. It also fits with my recollection. (They did a football-themed one for Euro 2004, while the meme was still fairly fresh.) It certainly wasn’t a very early meme.
that was the earliest internet meme: making stuff up.
what memes made it when to other popular media, maybe besides local news.
dancing baby appeared on Ally McBeal in 98.
I saw on a Trivial Pursuit card last night that the first spam was sent on ARPANET in 1978. It was about new computers.