One of my favorite examples of Internet snark goes back at least a decade. Amazingly, the page continues to exist today. (I was going to say “thrive,” but that’s an overstatement, because it doesn’t do anything but sit there. To coin a phrase: It do what it do.)
The page is ostensibly a real physics experiment by a college student who was fed up with BS experiments performed with substandard equipment that yielded BS results. (As someone who had his share of college chemistry labs, I can relate. College chemistry lab results are a crock of BS.)
Anyway, the student wrote up his results, as well as his candid opinion of those results. The write-up proved highly amusing. It was funny 12 years ago when I was doing college chemistry, and it’s funny now.
It’s funny enough that the caption reading “Check this shit out” has become something of a standing inside joke between myself and my coworkers. You may notice that it’s the default photo caption on IDWID.
Another amusing page that continues to exist in its original form well over a decade after it was put online is the Pop-Tart blow-torch experiment, circa 1994. It’s nice to know that the owners of these pages understand the value of keeping them online. They’re reminders of the early days of the graphical Web before it became commercial and mainstream and all that jazz.
What funny Internet phenomena do you remember from the mid-1990s? Are any of them still online? Participate in the comments section below.
I remember ‘All your base are belong to us!’ and might still have a copy around here somewhere.
All Your Base: Absolutely! That could be a separate blog topic altogether. We still, to this day, quote “What happen?” and reply, “Someone set up us the bomb.”
As a side note, that’s a little too recent to qualify as mid-90s persistence.
The site still exists, though:
This has got to be one of my faves from the 90s. At least, it looks like it’s from the 90s. This is actually a real TECHNICAL SCHOOL in San Diego (and to my knowledge, it’s still in existence). Where do I sign up?!
http://www.associatedtechcollege.com/Home_Pagex.html
This one’s a little obscure, maybe less-so for the UIUC folks:
Rob’s Multimedia Lab
http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/legacy/rml.html
Actually, the site isn’t there anymore, but the tribute page bears striking similarity.
RML was high in “wow” factor back in the day when we were first discovering high speed internet in the dorms.
This may also have sentimental value:
http://www.gamers.org/dhs/helpdocs/inetdoom.html
Ahh, iFrag… Later replaced by Kali, and written right on our college campus by Jay Cotton (so close that we could even call him when the server went down - although he didn’t like that very much).
As far as I’m concerned, iFrag was the pinnacle of PC gaming. I was never a “gamer” before or after, but for that year or two when Doom II was huge, I was a temporary gamer.
Hmm, 1990s-era web pages. Let’s see if I can find any of the ones I remember anymore.
Well, I see that Fun with Grapes (and of course a microwave) is still there. And of course, the how to make a talking toaster page. (I almost made one of those. I’m not sure I should be admitting that though…)
Oh, and we can’t forget sparkler bombs. Those are always a good treat around the fourth of July. Unless, of course, you get any easy-light sparklers in the bundle — then it goes off rather sooner than expected. There were singed eyebrows all around that year. (Note to self: re-inspecting the sparklers is always a good idea. Just because you think the sparkler supplier did, doesn’t mean they actually did.)
I’m trying to remember more, but I can’t at the moment…
There’s just no beating this. If only the Voyager writers had taken a few minutes to read it…
Now go write some TNG reviews so my twitching will stop
Dang blog tag formatting.
ah yes ifrag. I stopped playing games because they became too complex. The Playstation especially had way too many buttons and combos that I needed to learn for each game. After playing a friend’s Nintendo Wii, I’m glad Nintendo got a clue and simplified gaming while still keeping them fun. We played Wii Sports for days without being bored. I can’t wait for a DDR type game that incorporates arm motion into the steps. :]