ViralWorld

1994·Early web, before YouTube·informative

Godwin's law

You might remember it as Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies

This one never had a single recording. What is known is below.

This Moment began as a post on social media, not as a video upload. Originally published on usenet.

  • SourceNot an upload originally
  • MediaNot held by ViralWorld

The first internet proverb, written deliberately to change how people argued, and it worked.

The story

What this was

Mike Godwin's formulation, from Usenet in 1990 and published in Wired in 1994: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. It was not an observation he found funny. He wrote it as a deliberate counter-meme, intended to make people notice the reflex and stop, because he thought the comparisons trivialised the Holocaust.

It first appeared in 1994, during early web, before YouTube.

It is the earliest piece of internet folk wisdom to survive intact into general use, and one of very few memes with a documented purpose and a documented author. It also demonstrates the limits of the thing: the proverb became a way to win arguments by citing it, which was very nearly the opposite of what it was for.

Godwin has spent thirty years correcting people about what his law does and does not say, including publicly reserving the right to make Nazi comparisons where they are warranted. In 2021 Harvard researchers tested the claim against Reddit and found the phenomenon does not occur at any statistically meaningful rate — a rare case of an internet proverb being empirically checked and not surviving.

The same internet

Early web, before YouTube

More like this

Related

Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.

What we know

Where it came from

There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment began as a post on social media, not as a video upload. Originally published on usenet.

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

What happens
Mike Godwin's formulation, from Usenet in 1990 and published in Wired in 1994: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. It was not an observation he found funny. He wrote it as a deliberate counter-meme, intended to make people notice the reflex and stop, because he thought the comparisons trivialised the Holocaust.
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