DICTIONARY/TOPICS/Classic memes

Classic memes

Page 4 of 4

🏷 Topic challenge · Classic memes edition

Have you seen it? Classic memes only.

This is not the main game. Only Classic memes records come up, and the desk hands out its own titles and badges, from Born After 2010 to Was There When It Happened. Your main-game file is left alone.

Start the Classic memes challenge ▶Records open on their real pages. Answer on each one.

Badges on offer5Five classics · you remember Flash10Ten classics · press F25Twenty-five classics · certified 2007

All Alive Dying Dead Undead Fossil

A–Z Newest Oldest Shortest life Longest life Most entries

☠ Deadinterj.✎ 3

A single word stamped on a picture of something going wrong. Ran an entire blog empire and was finished when television presenters began saying epic fail with a straight face.

▸ 2003peak 2008†2011

● Aliven.✎ 2

If it exists, there is pornography of it. Stated as a joke, upheld as a law, never once falsified.

▸ 2003peak 2008still up

A verb for video calling, bought for $8.5 billion and starved for fourteen years in favour of Teams. Died in May 2025; nobody under thirty noticed.

▸ 2003peak 2010†2025

▲ Fossiln.✎ 3

The End of the World

A 2003 Flash cartoon in which world leaders trade nuclear strikes in ninety seconds — 'WTF mate?', 'I am le tired', 'fire ze missiles' — passed around on Albino Blacksheep and Newgrounds before video sites existed. The record's entry for the last great cartoon of the pre-YouTube internet.

▸ 2003peak 2005†2010

Toontown Online

A cartoon world where children fought robots with cream pies. Closed by Disney in September 2013; fans had rebuilt it, without permission, by the following month.

▸ 2003peak 2006†2013

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

Too long; didn't read, first as an insult, then as a courtesy summary. The rare term that reversed its manners without changing its letters.

▸ 2003peak 2012still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

A teenager swinging a golf-ball retriever like a lightsaber, leaked without his consent. The first viral victim; the lawsuit and the profile pieces are the reason this dictionary has an ethics page.

▸ 2002peak 2003†2005

☠ Deadn.✎ 6

A person who grew up online and therefore understood it. Killed when the natives turned out not to know what a file was.

▸ 2001peak 2010†2015

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

A button that took you to a random good page. Every feed since has been StumbleUpon without the button, the randomness or the good page.

▸ 2001peak 2008†2018

● Aliven.✎ 1

The moderator's power of removal, as a tool. The only weapon in this record that the people it is used on also find funny.

▸ 2000peak 2008still up

● Alivev.✎ 4

Ruining other players' fun within the rules. The distinction between griefing and playing was the first content-moderation problem, and it has not been solved.

▸ 2000peak 2009still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 1

A pixel hotel where teenagers stood in rooms and talked. Blocked the pool in a famous raid, blocked chat in a famous panic, and is still, remarkably, checking guests in.

▸ 2000peak 2006still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 1

A hyperlinked encyclopedia of nodes written by users, two years before Wikipedia. Lost on relevance and won on prose, which is not the metric that counts.

▸ 1999peak 2002†2010

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Collaborative editing of stories before they were posted, and a community that took the queue more seriously than the front page. Died slowly over a decade with fewer and fewer people in the queue.

▸ 1999peak 2002†2016

☠ Deadn.✎ 6

A Turkish accordion player with a home page and the greeting 'I KISS YOU!!!!!'. The first person to become famous online without agreeing to it.

▸ 1999peak 1999†2000

Five dollars to join, one post a day, and the best comment section on the internet. Fading with the ad revenue, and kept alive by the people in it paying again.

▸ 1999peak 2007still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

A blog with eProps, where every teenager wrote a diary in public and nobody's parents knew. Asked its users for $60,000 to stay alive and did not quite get it.

▸ 1999peak 2005†2013

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

A newcomer, spelt with contempt. Still typed by people who were newbies when it was coined, which is the definition of dying.

▸ 1999peak 2006still up

▲ Fossilphr.✎ 6

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

A mistranslated line from a forgotten shoot-'em-up, and the first thing the entire web laughed at simultaneously. The proof of concept for everything else in this dictionary.

▸ 1998peak 2001†2004

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Volunteers categorising the entire web by hand, for nineteen years, in a hierarchy nobody browsed. The last human-curated map of the whole territory.

▸ 1998peak 2002†2017

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Demotivational Poster

A black border, a photo, a caption, a subtitle that undermined it. The meme format that came with a template you could print, and did.

▸ 1998peak 2007†2012

Overwhelming an opponent with many cheap units, early. A tactic, then a metaphor, then a Google search trick, which is where words go to be embalmed.

▸ 1998peak 2003†2012

↺ Undeadn.✎ 7

It really whipped the llama's ass. Killed by AOL in 2013, bought by a Belgian company nobody had heard of and relaunched with a skins archive intact, which is the correct priority.

▸ 1997peak 2002†2013

☠ Deadphr.✎ 6

Best Viewed at 800x600

A warning that the page had been designed for exactly one monitor. Responsive design did not fix this so much as make the apology automatic.

▸ 1996peak 1999†2006

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Forum Signature

A block of quotes, banners and a Naruto GIF under every post you made. The last place on the web where you decorated your own words.

▸ 1996peak 2006†2012

The sound of someone wanting you. The first push notification, and the last one anybody was pleased to hear.

▸ 1996peak 1999†2010

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

MIDI Background Music

A tinny synthesised song that started when the page loaded and could not be stopped. The reason a generation still flinches at autoplay.

▸ 1996peak 1999†2004

Building a page out of nested spreadsheet cells because there was nothing else. Every designer over forty can still feel the colspan in their hands.

▸ 1996peak 2001†2008

☠ Deadinterj.✎ 5

A cheer, with zeroes. Word of the Year in 2007 and never typed sincerely again after the press release.

▸ 1996peak 2007†2008

A word you typed instead of a URL, printed at the bottom of every advert. Died when it became clear the whole web was the keyword.

▸ 1995peak 1999†2006

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

The first search engine that indexed the whole web, and the first to be beaten by a cleaner one. Lived for a further fifteen years as a redirect.

▸ 1995peak 1998†2013

▲ Fossiln.✎ 2

A company whose product was its URL. Died in the spring of 2000 taking a sock puppet and roughly five trillion dollars with it.

▸ 1995peak 1999†2001

↺ Undeadn.✎ 3

An odometer at the bottom of the page announcing you were visitor number 000412. Most were wrong; all were honest about caring.

▸ 1995peak 1998†2005

● Aliven.✎ 5

Making more bad arguments than can be answered in the time. Coined about a creationist and now a description of every reply thread.

▸ 1994peak 2016still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

A free trial disc that arrived in every magazine, cereal box and letterbox on Earth. At one point roughly half the CDs manufactured worldwide had AOL's logo on them.

▸ 1993peak 1998†2006

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Information Superhighway

A metaphor for the internet used exclusively by people who had not been on it. Died the moment enough of them had.

▸ 1993peak 1995†1998

▲ Fossiln.✎ 3

The idea that there were manners online and that they could be taught. Filed as a fossil because both premises have been disproved.

▸ 1993peak 1996†2008

▲ Fossilphr.✎ 5

You've Got Mail

An announcement that someone had written to you, spoken aloud by the computer. Became a romantic comedy, then a punchline, then a ringtone for people over sixty.

▸ 1993peak 1998†2006

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Dial-up Handshake

The shriek two modems made agreeing to talk. The only sound in this dictionary that everyone over thirty-five can perform from memory.

▸ 1992peak 1999†2008

● Aliven.✎ 1

Any criticism of someone's spelling will itself contain a spelling error. Named with the error included, which is the only way it could be.

▸ 1992peak 2005still up

☠ Deadv.✎ 2

Surfing the Web

Moving from page to page for the pleasure of it. Died as a phrase when there stopped being anywhere to go, and as an activity shortly afterwards.

▸ 1992peak 1998†2010

Someone posting to provoke a response. Started as a fishing metaphor for a specific joke and has since been extended to cover roughly half of all human behaviour.

▸ 1992peak 2010still up

Menus of text nested in menus of text, one year older than the web and considerably tidier. Lost the moment someone put a picture on a page.

▸ 1991peak 1993†1995

Somewhere else that you went when you logged on. Died when there stopped being a here to leave from.

▸ 1990peak 1996†2008