ViralWorld

Early web, before YouTube

Before anybody could upload a video, things spread as files, forwards and Flash.

Everything before there was one place to upload a video. It ends with 2004 because the first video went up on YouTube in April 2005. The edges are soft: nothing changed on the first of January. The six eras are this archive’s own way of dividing the years, not an agreed history.

Where people were
Usenet, email, bulletin boards, personal home pages, and then Flash portals and forums with their own in-jokes.
What it looked like
Text that got forwarded, animated GIFs, Flash cartoons and songs, and web pages that were themselves the joke.
How a thing spread
By hand. Somebody emailed it to you or linked it from a forum signature. Nothing counted how many people had seen it, so fame was measured in servers falling over.
What stayed
The emoticon, the animated GIF, the image with a caption, and the habit of naming the rules of online argument.

Defining momentsWhat shows it

The End of the World
Start with this one

The End of the World

You might remember it as Wee tar dee, End of Ze World

A Flash animation quoted for years afterwards by people who never knew its title.

The ones people still talk aboutRemember these?

Remembered, and worth knowingAlso from these years

More that people namedAnd the rest of the chapter

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