Hampster dance. Deedadeeee dadee dadeeda, deeeee da dilideeee !
This is a very good question. In my own case I didn’t have internet access until we got our LAN at work in the mid 90’s, and I have no evidence on this computer of anything before 2002. We got home internet in late 1995 or early 1996 with our first PC (we had had a Commodore 64 or two for a decade or longer).
The first website I can remember that shared videos was (and is) http://www.ebaumsworld.com/ (see eBaum's World - Wikipedia for wiki’s version of its history) but I’m sure there were others that may still be active which date from that same timeframe (whenever that was! 
). I’m very close to certain it was up and running before I left work in 2000, but I’m beginning to have my doubts!
Dancing baby, ham(p)ster dance and others that have been mentioned are familiar to me from early on. I first became aware of http://knowyourmeme.com/ at least a year after it went up. I thought Elspeth Jane Rountree was a fox and the others were fun as well – (see Know Your Meme - Wikipedia for more stuff). The Rocketboom period was when I’m talking about.
Nothing to do with memes as such, but a big deal at the time I got a PC at work was to acquire Windows 95 themes. I was especially fond of the Blade Runner one, but I must have had at least 20 of them over time.
Email at work was pretty loose in terms of having to keep things relating to the business and there were quite a few of us who pushed the limits of what would have been acceptable if we were being watched closely. I never knew one way or the other but I’m hoping we weren’t spied on too much because some of the things we had to say about management would have burned their ears! No matter what the Big Brother gang may have been doing, we swapped all manner of links and attachments of weird shit from the web, and I had many megabytes of things I thought were worth hanging onto. All gone by now, of course.
Whatever I may still have in the way of evidence of early internet activities is on hard drives of two dead computers, and I have no desire to bring them back to life. So I’m hoping to find some hearsay evidence to support what’s left of my memory.
By the way, thanks for all the help, y’all!
Wasn’t there someone in the early 90s who replied to every single posting with a tirade about Turkish vs. Armenian issues?
Serdar Argic! Around 1994. I remember him fondly from my Usenet days.
I suppose that mailing around punch cards or tickertape for these thingswon’t count. I first saw one in 1972. High school computer teachers were swapping them. Other people, too, no doubt, but that’s how I ran across them.
Yes. I even got Christmas cards like that. Saw quite a bit of smut that way, too. Can’t remember any Christmas smut, though.
While I remember him…“fondly” is not the word I would use.
My first e-mail address was on the same machine as Kibo, @world.std.com.
Yes. “badgers” was originally a Flash animation (not video) posted on Weebl’s Stuff. See the date on this page:
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/?order=&offset=510
Dancing baby for me.
Oh good lord, I’d forgotten all about him.
“Badger Badger” was by Weebl and Bob, but came after our own obsession here with “When come back, bring pie.” The Harry Potter parody of “Badger Badger” (Ooh, a Snape!) was most likely influenced by the 2002 release of the Chamber of Secrets movie.
Before I read the thread I tried to recall the earliest memes, and all I could think of was All Our Base, the Star Wars kid, and the Numa Numa guy. I’d totally forgotten about the Dancing Baby, but I wasn’t victim of that meme so much as aware of it by osmosis.
I guess the earliest for me of what’s been listed so far was the “Bert Is Evil” image. But I have a feeling there was something else. Maybe the Kournikova virus? (nope, that was 2001)
Thanks for those mentions! Numa Numa is a standout in my memory now that I remember it. But I guess I’m being compelled to admit that all my meme “memories” come after I left work in 2000. I could have sworn (and would have in open court) that I gained all my familiarity with those things by goofing off at work and surfing the web instead of contributing to the success of the business. So far, I have no solid evidence that those things that were earliest for me came any earlier than 2000. I must recalibrate my brain cells. How does one do such a thing?
I’d have to say Mahir (“I kiss you!”) - I was in college, so between 1999-2001.
It’s fondly for me because I thought it was funny how he would respond to anything with the word “Turkey” in it. Which meant that around Thanksgiving time, we’d be treated to Armenian vs. Turkish rants in response to turkey recipes.
You know, I saw almost everything everyone here has mentioned, but the first thing I saw where it sort of clicked with me that “the meme-ness of this is completely internet-enabled” was the lolcats thing several years ago. Before that, I just thought of funny videos as an extension of watching clip shows on TV. With lolcats, I realized there’s a new thing happening.
Late to the party, I know, but hey, I was busy.
I had much the same reaction about the time the word “meme” was being tossed around like “trope” and such. Viral videos and glurge and some spam were common enough to be almost nauseating, but some of those early things stood out from the rest as almost unique in their intent.
“Viral” is the worst. You can’t say something is rapidly spreading right when you post it! Seems presumptive and maybe arrogant, too. Imagine the James Bond villain announcing how his virus will destroy London, and then feeling down when the missile gets defused.
I can’t help but feel that anytime a journalist has to write a “story” about how “video clip X has gone viral”, their soul must die that much more. “New thing is popular” isn’t newsworthy. It just isn’t.
