💾 Archived View for altesq.net › ~lelkins › posts › internet-nostalgia.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 03:16:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
ay mates, lelkins here. this might be a pretty short post. i keep remembering memes that used to be the biggest things on the internet. like current ones that just fizzled out fast like ronaldinho soccer 64, megalovania (this one is still kind of popular), so many examples that i can't put them in (and cause i actually forgot most of them. reason why later). and more common in my head are ones that i used to see as a kid from the era of "fads", like hotel mario edits where every noun is replaced with a random clip, "the king has a new computer", one youtube poop where mario and luigi fight eachother in a pokemon battle and mario charges a pinesol bottle and luigi just uses za warudo from jojo. the internet was wild and quality always differed.
youtube poops were either well made like the "hotel mario 2 gears of toasters" video from like 2009 or very poor quality in terms of production like "the king has a new computer" where stuff's made in mspaint and there's barely any coherent story or something. same thing with the entirety of youtube at the time, actually the internet as a whole, stuff were either made by professionals or people who are just passionate at making something but don't know how to do it or don't have the tools. there were no rules on how to make a good video or fad. even if it's bad, it's just endearing.
nowadays, memes are churned out constantly, when i get to taste the comedic in one, three more take its place and the meme i already tried savoring is now considered "dead". you cannot have a memorable meme nowadays because they get thrown away constantly, which is the reason why there weren't many examples of modern memes that i suddenly remembered. ronaldinho soccer 64 was the first meme at the time of my birthday and i loved megalovania remixes. and now there's a genre of meme where it's just weird content and then funny character of the week shows up to attack you for watching said weird content. metal gear rising revengeance became one of those and i liked the "raiden punches armstrong" meme because the song was cool. like "oh no the armstrong senate man is punching you because yo uwatch the unsavory!! go to jail of weird!" gave me a bad taste in my mouth. there are extremely high quality memes now like cars 2 drip where there's literal cgi and whatever doge video shows up now. if that quality appeared on youtube back in 2009 i would've shit my pants and barfed out my spadinner.
also not related to memes, but i suddenly remembered stuff like numa numa, over 9000 remix, i'm a kitty cat and the mean kitty song. the creators of those viral videos made nfts of those particular videos when they were the hip new thing of like two years ago. the mean kitty song guy became a metaverse cryptobro or something and over 9000 remix used to have "this meme is now an nft" in the description but it got removed. it's weird to see all of these videos i grew up with just becoming one of those things that are now universally hated. numa numa dance's creator (not the o-zone band) gary brolsma had to make the nft to afford healthcare for his family which is a shame cause capitalism doesn't let people live proper lives so they have to resort to stuff like nfts that ruin the planet and artists daily (even if they almost fizzled down) just to make ends meet. there are many more ancient relics that became nfts like charlie bit my finger that was removed from youtube in favor of having it as an nft and nyan cat just becoming one of those things too.
there's an obvious reason to this new trend of short-lived memes and that's the modern day attention span degrading by the day due to short formed content in the style of t*ktok. with the obvious advancements to technology like better editing tools and more powerful computers, we just ended up in a day and age where memes just get thrown away so much. i can't even pinpoint the perfect era of the internet, it's the 2000s till 2012 maximum. 2016 is basically like the 90s where it's all raunchy and edgy for no reason and nowadays the internet is monopolized and made to only promote the top dogs that use teams of animators and artists just to make a meme every day based on the current meal deal week special that the internet decided. that's what memes are nowadays. they are like rubber gloves. they are like those free samples i dunno.
i know i am really incoherent for all of this but that's just how my brain works. "hey, remember [THING FROM THE 2000s]? man was it fun. let's check it out and see how they doin' now" and then "ah fuck, cryptobro.". also i now just suddenly remembered of "la caida de edgar", an ancient meme from mexico. youtube was somehow so weird it ended up giving you videos from other countries without searching, now you just get videos from the united states and stuff. oh and algorithms, when back then it's all random you go from mario vs luigi to a weird ass sonic animation to a touhou video i couldn't understand and then to optical illusion paper dragon and then to a random video from south america. it was a wild ride and i wish we can have all of that nowadays.
bye mates!