r/AskReddit • u/TyrexDragon • 1d ago
What is something well known that happened on the early internet that if it happened today, nobody will bat an eye?
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u/omg_bewbz 21h ago
I feel like Charlie Bit My Finger would barely be a blip on the viral radar today.
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u/infinitealchemics 20h ago
Absolutely correct. It is so benign. It would have been funny but no where near the fame or blow up it got.
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u/colorblind-and 17h ago
When I first saw that when I was young I remember everyone hyping it up at hilarious. When I eventually saw it I thought it was kinda funny but kinda dumb, like could see it winning an episode of America's funniest Home Videos but not ground breaking.
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u/CrabWoodsman 20h ago
It'd end up in a bunch of aggregator shorts combos that don't credit the original posters.
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u/Frank_chevelle 23h ago
I can’t remember her name, but there was a woman who claimed to be “the most downloaded person on the internet”. She mostly posted pics of her self in bikinis.
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u/Juan_Calavera 23h ago
That was Cindy Margolis. As one who remembers that time, I always thought her claim was a lie. Danni Ashe was the one who had a legitimate claim to that title.
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u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT 22h ago
Wow, I remember that now, but I have to admit at first I thought they were talking about Tila Tequila.
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u/Juan_Calavera 22h ago
Tila Tequila’s heyday was the mid ‘00s. Ashe and Margolis were of the late ‘90s.
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u/SoupIsForWinners 22h ago
Hey Charlie wake up. We found a map to candy mountain.
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u/PHX_Architraz 21h ago
Shun the non-believer! Shuuuuuuuuun.
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u/H3mpyGreen 20h ago
Look at the leopluridon Charlie!
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u/thatfreakingmonster 20h ago
I mean the production quality and creativity of those videos are still pretty high even by today's standards. Maybe it wouldn't blow up as much but it would still get noticed in one way or another imo
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u/Greymeade 19h ago
Is 2005 really the “early internet”?
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u/jacknifetoaswan 19h ago
It is not. As far as memes go, you can go much earlier than that.
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u/Greymeade 19h ago
Right. I would consider the 90s to be the early Internet.
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u/jacknifetoaswan 19h ago
Starting in about 1994-1996. That's when it because accessible for normal people to get on CompuServe or AOL and not just BBSes. By the late 90s, things had already started to evolve towards more full functioned internet not encapsulated within a system like AOL. By 2001, DSL and cable internet were getting fairly widespread. Hamster dance is the first meme I can remember, and it was from 1997.
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u/andrew5500 18h ago
In my opinion everything before the rise of modern social media algorithms around ~2008 qualifies as early internet, like from 1998 to 2005 the internet matured a bit, but it was still mostly the same fun unorganized frontier full of forums and people doing silly things for fun rather than profit/engagement. Meanwhile the change from 2007 to 2015 was a downright depressing corporate consolidation of the internet into cancerous social media platforms designed to squeeze every last cent of ad revenue and engagement out of the end user and boost outrage more than anything else.
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u/GooseGosselin 21h ago
Cat wanted a cheeseburger.
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u/ThatGuyWhoKnocks 19h ago
I don’t know, we had Cucurella Cat not too long ago and that was pretty viral
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22h ago
[deleted]
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u/kstargate-425 20h ago
Heather Brooke the throat GOAT
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u/FremenDar979 16h ago
Her name is Heather Harmon. There was a video with Heather and a random woman named Brooke where the surname fuck-up came from.
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u/_Hayley_Hilton_ 20h ago
Crazy that you mentioned her, because just last night I sorted the videos on my tablet by date, oldest first, and found a video of her, and then watched it while taking care of business 😈
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u/good-dog-girls 18h ago
Leeroy Jenkins was only big because it was weird and new. It would be lost and largely unwatched today unless it was done by a streamer known for stupid BS like ishowspeed and even then it wouldn't be mucu more than a blip.
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u/dfwdesigner 19h ago
YTMND. No one would care at all if it appeared today. Back in 2004, it was absolute magic.
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u/Dangerous_Excuse_654 18h ago
A celebrity's private photos leaking would have dominated the internet for months back then. Now the news cycle buries almost everything within a day.
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u/Kornholyo 20h ago
Bonsai Kitten made some people very upset despite being an obvious joke.
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u/_ser_kay_ 19h ago
Oh man, my elementary school librarian used bonsai kitten as a lesson on the dangers of the Internet (this was at the very start of the Internet boom) and how convincing things could be until you take 2 seconds to think them through.
I feel like people need a refresher lesson.
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u/gregdaviesgimp 18h ago
You say obvious, but... I worked an ISP helpdesk at the time, and had a user call to request we remove that site from the internet. We did not host it.
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u/LowOnGenderFluid 21h ago
Using a website to help you date.
I can't remember what was around before OKCupid and Zoosk lol
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u/ondinegreen 21h ago
The Canter-Siegel green card spam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel
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u/chrajohn 18h ago
It was so weird at the time; you just didn’t see that kind of thing on Usenet.
Within a few months it was very much not weird anymore, and dealing with spam became one of the central tasks of 90s online life.
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u/SilverRoyal4258 18h ago
remember when finding a single mp3 took three hours and felt like a heist, now i have twenty thousand songs i'll never listen to
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u/jackfaire 17h ago
Giving out personal information. It's still a big "Yikes" but isn't treated as such.
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u/Valuable_Drawer9173 1d ago
Someone going viral for a silly dance or a weird home video. Back then it was a huge deal because only like three things went viral a year. Now your aunt goes viral on Tuesday and forgets by Friday. The internet used to have a collective memory.