Is there a fundamental internet meme that has had such a major impact that it would have notable repercussions if it had somehow disappeared?
Is there a fundamental internet meme that has had such a major impact that it would have notable repercussions if it had somehow disappeared?
Probably something banal circa 2000 - a viral hit that shifted how people experience and share comedy. Peanut Butter Jelly Time or Badger Badger Mushroom, maybe. A stupid lolrandom tween magnet without much there. The result wouldn’t be some predictable drastic shift, but a delayed uptake in the proliferation of Flash, or AlbinoBlackSheep, or Newgrounds.
No, I got it - You’re The Man Now, Dog. That stupid movie-trailer quote turned into a stupid looping-sound-bite website, which was massively influential once it opened to letting anyone upload a WAV / GIF pair (browsers did not support MP3 or video at the time) and throw in some gigantic text with a zoom effect. It was a very early site for the modern sense of “memes” as in forced variations on a theme - text on an image, nowadays, or mashing a few images together. And the whole thing was predicated on one ridiculous looping sound file over a picture of Sean Connery.
Aaand then that stupid website became a locus for white supremacist and alt-right propaganda. Using the moon-headed character from McDonald’s 1980s Mac Tonight ads. None of this is a joke.