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Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

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Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#201

Post by selfhoster11 »

themagician wrote: post #94

Pre-YouTube internet largely didn't exist anymore. Flash is gone and one-by-one the old sites fall with no usable archive. A lot of the old culture is just GONE. It is now myth or legend. The stories only exist verbally. Stile, Encyclopedia Dramatica, LiveJournal, Geocities. Much of the culture content from the early internet is just gone.

I think you're a touch overestimating the degree to which everything is lost. The Internet Archive has some coverage (though admittedly, not all), and the Flashpoint Project has decent coverage of Flash games and animation. It's not as dire, IMO. A large part of the culture has been saved, enough to give people who put in some effort to access it, a gist of what it was like.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#202

Post by nonameiguess »

Springtime wrote: post #191
malingo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still remember seeing the first episode of Æon Flux on late night MTV when I was 13. Good stuff

Aeon Flux is wonderful. About 20 years ago Peter Chung curated his favorite episodes for some animation festivals. Pity it never was released on Blu-Ray from what I can find via the Blu-Ray.com forums.

Guessing you mean you want a hard copy, but it's on Paramount+ at least if you want to watch it.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#203

Post by phendrenad2 »

macNchz wrote: post #17

I recently heard about Skibidi Toilet being the latest sensation among teenagers and had a very old person "what is wrong with kids today" moment when I watched some, before remembering that 20 years ago my friends and I were all watching Salad Fingers, Sick Animation, Homestar Runner and other dumb flash cartoons on albinoblacksheep.com.

The badger song is pretty random

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#206

Post by sureglymop »

sidlls wrote: post #56
macNchz wrote: post #17

I recently heard about Skibidi Toilet being the latest sensation among teenagers and had a very old person "what is wrong with kids today" moment when I watched some, before remembering that 20 years ago my friends and I were all watching Salad Fingers, Sick Animation, Homestar Runner and other dumb flash cartoons on albinoblacksheep.com.

I think there's definitely a qualitative difference, though. Salad fingers, at least, had better quality "stories", and the weirdness was less "basic." Skibidi Toilet is an excellent representation of the hyper-ADHD-ification of kids due to rapid-fire content consumption brought on by newer social media platforms.

Why did you have to mention ADHD? It has nothing to do with ADHD... As someone honestly struggling with severe ADHD for years, it's as if you told a disabled person that the latest new movie is not a great watch because it makes whoever watches it disabled.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#208

Post by gary_0 »

saurik wrote: post #42
jihadjihad wrote: post #13

Outside of YouTube, the dawn of "weird web" for me is Homestar Runner [0], and Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected [1]. 0: https://homestarrunner.com/main 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSb-nV8l2QY

I was at UCSB when Don did Rejected and the idea of it having much of anything to do with the Internet is mind-contorting... he didn't use any computers to film it and I see it premiered in person at ComicCon. But like, AFAIK, we had all gotten to see it in the theatre, as part of some campus-level film showing; though I think he later got to be on our Arts and Lectures circuit, and I feel like it was shown at the ca…

In the late 90's my dad got dialup and a brand-new e-mail address, and someone forwarded him a GIF of Don Hertzfeldt's Ah L'Amour. So this was happening before Rejected even came out.

By the time I was in college in 2003, Don Hertzfeldt animations were all over the Internet (usually in truncated, uncredited form).

Don's new series, World of Tomorrow, is really great, btw, and a wonderful maturation and evolution of the animation style I saw in that GIF in 1998.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#209

Post by fennecbutt »

Such a shame that this era of the Internet is dead. Now everyone and their mum is on the net and things like TT have only worsened the quality of content. It's just a huge pool of reposted content, clout seeking, compliment seeking bs all with an annoying robotic voice over it (at least some of the YouTube bots have started using 11L I guess).

Sure, now the Internet is much like humanity itself, the average person likes football and celebrities like the kardashians, trashy shows like love island. But I really do miss the Internet back when it was uncool and geeky.

The Internet's been turned into TV.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#210

Post by nerdponx »

macNchz wrote: post #17

I recently heard about Skibidi Toilet being the latest sensation among teenagers and had a very old person "what is wrong with kids today" moment when I watched some, before remembering that 20 years ago my friends and I were all watching Salad Fingers, Sick Animation, Homestar Runner and other dumb flash cartoons on albinoblacksheep.com.

If anything, I had a feeling of pride and nostalgia with Skibidi Toilet. It's a long and proud tradition of total nonsense somehow turning out to be funny.

What's different today is that it's actually popular. Whereas none of the other kids at school knew about Neil Cicierega or Arfenhouse.

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