4chan

There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens

A site with no accounts and no archive, where threads die and are gone. Rickrolling, lolcats, rage comics, Pepe and a great deal of what the rest of the web later called memes started or passed through it.