7 ms·

I Was Internet-Famous

155 points by kawera 11y ago

dmd 11y ago
I was Usenet-infamous in 1993 (I ended up in the NET.LEGENDS file at age 14). It led to my first great job and my second (current) marriage.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Oh hey I remember seeing you in AFC...
clamprecht 11y ago
I wanted to see the Numa Numa Romanian guy's story.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  I wanted to see Star Wars Kid too.
  - elinchrome 11y ago
    That one is heartbreaking http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/10-years-later-the-star-wars-kid-speaks-out/ http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/10-years-later-the-star-w...
    - mirimir 11y ago
      Yes. But he seems to be doing well now, turning the shame into good works. That's admirable. Kinda like old Luke :)
- fierycatnet 11y ago
  That was actually pretty big in Europe before he went viral on YouTube.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
a1k0n 11y ago
Tay Zonday's response is hilarious. "It is hard to create Derrida’s fracture in the repetition of power structures when the loins of civil society log every person’s digital utterance."
- munificent 11y ago
  Hilarious? I thought it was fantastically thoughtful, insightful and witty.
  - a1k0n 11y ago
    It is all of those things. The language is just a bit overwrought.
    - munificent 11y ago
      My own writing style, for better or worse, tends to hover around a sixth-grade reading level, but I love experiencing authors who have distinct voices, and I especially appreciate ones who have the courage to break out all of the five dollar words and obscure metaphors. In our anti-intellectual culture, doing that really risks mockery (case in point), but I think sophisticated, complex writing can illuminate in ways other styles can't, and it's just a fun obstacle course for the reader's language center.
      - mkinitcpio 11y ago
        >anti-intellectual culture I agree- I really wish there wasn't such a stigma against, as you phrased it, "five-dollar words". I love reading older writing because (maybe without the internet and things like /r/iamverysmart?) they seem drastically less afraid to say exactly what they want to, in the way they want to. There's also an anachronistic charm to them I guess, but I think the word-choice-freedom is still a big factor.
        asddubs 11y ago
        to be fair, a good portion of /r/iamverysmart is not just about using fancy words, but also about misusing them or using them to present yourself as better/smarter than other people
kelukelugames 11y ago
I fumble for words when talking to family and friends. Can't imagine the mistakes I'd make on national TV.
mynameishere 11y ago
I wonder what happened to the "don't tase me" guy who apparently intersected with the "leave Britney alone" guy. http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/10/06/ http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/10/06/
- mirimir 11y ago
  http://www.theandrewmeyer.com/ http://www.theandrewmeyer.com/ Thanks to Andrew, I discovered Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse :)
riebschlager 11y ago
Does anyone else wonder if the concept of "internet famousness" has a finite shelf life? At least at the level that these people experienced? The internet engine seems to be cranking through memes faster and faster. Sure, a video might get several million views, but the very next week, those millions of people are already on to the next thing. It just seems to me like our collective memory is getting shorter and shorter and the fallout from internet famousness might start shrinking, if it hasn't already.
- cba9 11y ago
  I don't see any evidence that the cycle has gotten faster. There were plenty of mayfly wonders on YouTube years and years ago, and the Internet had its memes well before. It doesn't look much different to me over the past decade, (Have aggregators like Fark, YTMD, SomethingAwful, 4chan, really sped up? The list is so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena If we looked at knowyourmeme.com's lists and the Google search histories, I don't think we would see much of a speedup. Memes would still be born and die on similar timescales.)
- a3n 11y ago
  The Internet just means that more people actually get their 15 minutes.
chippy 11y ago
In my day being Internet Famous was having your a quote in bash.org
- dghughes 11y ago
  Or when all the planets aligned you actually got to post an article on slashdot (I never did).
  - michaelcampbell 11y ago
    I was "published" in a perl book; a screenshot of the #perl efnet IRC channel was used in the "other resources" section, and something I'd said was part of that. The money that rolled in after that, ....hoooo, boy! Yeah, I'm still working for a living.
    - nevster 11y ago
      I remember at one point there was a "White Pages" published which listed every email address on the internet. Such fame. So wow. My other brush with fame was having my site posted on slashdot and later on digg. http://www.deadharddrive.com/ http://www.deadharddrive.com/ It was definitely exciting and an eye-opener to some of the experiences these people must go through - the positive and the negative.
      - nevster 11y ago
        Huh - published by Seth Godin http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-The-Internet-White-Pages-1994/dp/1568843003 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-The-Internet-White-Pages-1994/...
roadbeats 11y ago
I remember my father talking about Internet Mahir when I was kid. We were so curious how a random guy from our hometown became so famous, and got the key of the internet. Internet Mahir contributed to my life that way. My father began buying magazines about computers, those magazines would give lots of CDs that we hold and ask "what do they do with this?". Then my father went to Istanbul for funeral of my uncle, and came back with a desk, designed for computers. We didn't have a computer but there was the desk. A few years later, we bought a computer, and internet connection to our home. First website we visited was "ikissyou.com" and then I was trying to make one for me and my brother. Thanks to Internet Mahir, I have a job now.
danso 11y ago
This brought up so many memories...funny to think of how many of our lives' funniest moments are what we saw on YouTube. A few other memes I thought of worth including: - re Bloomberg's sign-language interpreter, the interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hCdtUxnOG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hCdtUxnOG8 - Aleksey Vayner, who posted a video resume titled, "Impossible is Nothing", and then later committed suicide: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/aleksey-vayner-death-video http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/aleksey-vayner-death-video - Guy Goma, who was at the BBC to interview for an IT job, but was mistaken for another guy (with the name "Guy") who was scheduled to give a tech pundit interview, and so had to improvise answers relating to an Apple pundit dispute. He ended up not getting the IT job but got a bit famous anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ - This was one of the first times when YouTube, as a platform, really blew me away: this mystery guitarist who rocked out to Pachelbel's Canon: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725826 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725826 - One more music-famous-meme: the drummer is at the wrong gig...always brings a huge laugh to me, and got this guy some nice gigs, including an appearance on The Office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E
- comrh 11y ago
  It's also kind of dark to learn the stories behind / life after these. It really ruins a lot people's lives.
- grubles 11y ago
  The wrong-drummer-guy killed it! He made the other band members look out of place.
Animats 11y ago
Never heard of any of those people.
- gnrme 11y ago
  It's probably a good thing to have made it this far without hearing about these people.
mirimir 11y ago
I also wonder about all the rickroll stuff. The stuff that most of us don't mention in public. Mostly it was anonymous. Some probably featured actors. But there were some seriously messed up people.
sarciszewski 11y ago
I really hope I never become internet famous, for better or worse. :\
- mwhuang2 11y ago
  It just seems like trouble. I like to keep a low profile and minimize the drama in my life.
tasdev 11y ago
I was close friends with an "internet celebrity" ca. 06-07, when she became huge on YouTube. She did get millions of views (I believe; she was on of the earliest to monetise YouTube), ended up pulling everything off after being hacked and abused at her home address. I haven't spoken to her in years but I remember the affect the depraved stuff aome people do - call pizza for delivery, leave things in mailboxes, hack the computer and steal private files, stalking.... It's just crazy.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >I haven't spoken to her in years but I remember the affect the depraved stuff aome people do - call pizza for delivery, leave things in mailboxes, hack the computer and steal private files, stalking.... It's just crazy. I think this teaches us that there are two categories of people in large-ish quantities: 1) Lots of imbalanced people out there. 2) Lots of teenagers whose parents didn't instill social skills into them.
  - tasdev 11y ago
    Completely agree on both parts. The people targeting her were socially inept from what she could work out but really creepy all the same. She had a computer in her room and parents with little understanding of technology.
6stringmerc 11y ago
Pretty interesting to see quite a few that South Park ended up using in their bit about "Internet Money" from a while ago. I really enjoyed their take on the subject. Hell, even Garfunkel and Oates turned their little gimmick (Pregnant Women Are Smug) into an actual career in entertainment so the article kind of misses at least one, and probably more. My closest actual relation was with a member of The Gregory Brothers who did Auto Tune the News, which was viral, but also kind of a business card for potential future work. I never understood the logic behind www.Zombo.com other than to be a marker in the sand for mocking internet culture. Glad to see it's still functioning. THE INFINITE IS POSSIBLE AT ZOMBO COM!
edpichler 11y ago
Interesting that most of these videos didn't get viral here in Brazil.

155 points by kawera 11y ago

dmd 11y ago

I was Usenet-infamous in 1993 (I ended up in the NET.LEGENDS file at age 14). It led to my first great job and my second (current) marriage.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Oh hey I remember seeing you in AFC...

clamprecht 11y ago

I wanted to see the Numa Numa Romanian guy's story.

lotharbot 11y ago
I wanted to see Star Wars Kid too.
- elinchrome 11y ago
  That one is heartbreaking http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/10-years-later-the-star-wars-kid-speaks-out/ http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/10-years-later-the-star-w...
  - mirimir 11y ago
    Yes. But he seems to be doing well now, turning the shame into good works. That's admirable. Kinda like old Luke :)
fierycatnet 11y ago
That was actually pretty big in Europe before he went viral on YouTube.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

a1k0n 11y ago

Tay Zonday's response is hilarious. "It is hard to create Derrida’s fracture in the repetition of power structures when the loins of civil society log every person’s digital utterance."

munificent 11y ago
Hilarious? I thought it was fantastically thoughtful, insightful and witty.
- a1k0n 11y ago
  It is all of those things. The language is just a bit overwrought.
  - munificent 11y ago
    My own writing style, for better or worse, tends to hover around a sixth-grade reading level, but I love experiencing authors who have distinct voices, and I especially appreciate ones who have the courage to break out all of the five dollar words and obscure metaphors. In our anti-intellectual culture, doing that really risks mockery (case in point), but I think sophisticated, complex writing can illuminate in ways other styles can't, and it's just a fun obstacle course for the reader's language center.
    - mkinitcpio 11y ago
      >anti-intellectual culture I agree- I really wish there wasn't such a stigma against, as you phrased it, "five-dollar words". I love reading older writing because (maybe without the internet and things like /r/iamverysmart?) they seem drastically less afraid to say exactly what they want to, in the way they want to. There's also an anachronistic charm to them I guess, but I think the word-choice-freedom is still a big factor.
      - asddubs 11y ago
        to be fair, a good portion of /r/iamverysmart is not just about using fancy words, but also about misusing them or using them to present yourself as better/smarter than other people

kelukelugames 11y ago

I fumble for words when talking to family and friends. Can't imagine the mistakes I'd make on national TV.

mynameishere 11y ago

I wonder what happened to the "don't tase me" guy who apparently intersected with the "leave Britney alone" guy. http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/10/06/ http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/10/06/

mirimir 11y ago
http://www.theandrewmeyer.com/ http://www.theandrewmeyer.com/ Thanks to Andrew, I discovered Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse :)

riebschlager 11y ago

Does anyone else wonder if the concept of "internet famousness" has a finite shelf life? At least at the level that these people experienced? The internet engine seems to be cranking through memes faster and faster. Sure, a video might get several million views, but the very next week, those millions of people are already on to the next thing. It just seems to me like our collective memory is getting shorter and shorter and the fallout from internet famousness might start shrinking, if it hasn't already.

cba9 11y ago
I don't see any evidence that the cycle has gotten faster. There were plenty of mayfly wonders on YouTube years and years ago, and the Internet had its memes well before. It doesn't look much different to me over the past decade, (Have aggregators like Fark, YTMD, SomethingAwful, 4chan, really sped up? The list is so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena If we looked at knowyourmeme.com's lists and the Google search histories, I don't think we would see much of a speedup. Memes would still be born and die on similar timescales.)
a3n 11y ago
The Internet just means that more people actually get their 15 minutes.

chippy 11y ago

In my day being Internet Famous was having your a quote in bash.org

dghughes 11y ago
Or when all the planets aligned you actually got to post an article on slashdot (I never did).
- michaelcampbell 11y ago
  I was "published" in a perl book; a screenshot of the #perl efnet IRC channel was used in the "other resources" section, and something I'd said was part of that. The money that rolled in after that, ....hoooo, boy! Yeah, I'm still working for a living.
  - nevster 11y ago
    I remember at one point there was a "White Pages" published which listed every email address on the internet. Such fame. So wow. My other brush with fame was having my site posted on slashdot and later on digg. http://www.deadharddrive.com/ http://www.deadharddrive.com/ It was definitely exciting and an eye-opener to some of the experiences these people must go through - the positive and the negative.
    - nevster 11y ago
      Huh - published by Seth Godin http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-The-Internet-White-Pages-1994/dp/1568843003 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-The-Internet-White-Pages-1994/...

roadbeats 11y ago

I remember my father talking about Internet Mahir when I was kid. We were so curious how a random guy from our hometown became so famous, and got the key of the internet. Internet Mahir contributed to my life that way. My father began buying magazines about computers, those magazines would give lots of CDs that we hold and ask "what do they do with this?". Then my father went to Istanbul for funeral of my uncle, and came back with a desk, designed for computers. We didn't have a computer but there was the desk. A few years later, we bought a computer, and internet connection to our home. First website we visited was "ikissyou.com" and then I was trying to make one for me and my brother. Thanks to Internet Mahir, I have a job now.

danso 11y ago

This brought up so many memories...funny to think of how many of our lives' funniest moments are what we saw on YouTube. A few other memes I thought of worth including: - re Bloomberg's sign-language interpreter, the interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hCdtUxnOG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hCdtUxnOG8 - Aleksey Vayner, who posted a video resume titled, "Impossible is Nothing", and then later committed suicide: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/aleksey-vayner-death-video http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/aleksey-vayner-death-video - Guy Goma, who was at the BBC to interview for an IT job, but was mistaken for another guy (with the name "Guy") who was scheduled to give a tech pundit interview, and so had to improvise answers relating to an Apple pundit dispute. He ended up not getting the IT job but got a bit famous anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ - This was one of the first times when YouTube, as a platform, really blew me away: this mystery guitarist who rocked out to Pachelbel's Canon: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725826 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725826 - One more music-famous-meme: the drummer is at the wrong gig...always brings a huge laugh to me, and got this guy some nice gigs, including an appearance on The Office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E

comrh 11y ago
It's also kind of dark to learn the stories behind / life after these. It really ruins a lot people's lives.
grubles 11y ago
The wrong-drummer-guy killed it! He made the other band members look out of place.

Animats 11y ago

Never heard of any of those people.

gnrme 11y ago
It's probably a good thing to have made it this far without hearing about these people.

mirimir 11y ago

I also wonder about all the rickroll stuff. The stuff that most of us don't mention in public. Mostly it was anonymous. Some probably featured actors. But there were some seriously messed up people.

sarciszewski 11y ago

I really hope I never become internet famous, for better or worse. :\

mwhuang2 11y ago
It just seems like trouble. I like to keep a low profile and minimize the drama in my life.

tasdev 11y ago

I was close friends with an "internet celebrity" ca. 06-07, when she became huge on YouTube. She did get millions of views (I believe; she was on of the earliest to monetise YouTube), ended up pulling everything off after being hacked and abused at her home address. I haven't spoken to her in years but I remember the affect the depraved stuff aome people do - call pizza for delivery, leave things in mailboxes, hack the computer and steal private files, stalking.... It's just crazy.

coldtea 11y ago
>I haven't spoken to her in years but I remember the affect the depraved stuff aome people do - call pizza for delivery, leave things in mailboxes, hack the computer and steal private files, stalking.... It's just crazy. I think this teaches us that there are two categories of people in large-ish quantities: 1) Lots of imbalanced people out there. 2) Lots of teenagers whose parents didn't instill social skills into them.
- tasdev 11y ago
  Completely agree on both parts. The people targeting her were socially inept from what she could work out but really creepy all the same. She had a computer in her room and parents with little understanding of technology.

6stringmerc 11y ago

Pretty interesting to see quite a few that South Park ended up using in their bit about "Internet Money" from a while ago. I really enjoyed their take on the subject. Hell, even Garfunkel and Oates turned their little gimmick (Pregnant Women Are Smug) into an actual career in entertainment so the article kind of misses at least one, and probably more. My closest actual relation was with a member of The Gregory Brothers who did Auto Tune the News, which was viral, but also kind of a business card for potential future work. I never understood the logic behind www.Zombo.com other than to be a marker in the sand for mocking internet culture. Glad to see it's still functioning. THE INFINITE IS POSSIBLE AT ZOMBO COM!

edpichler 11y ago

Interesting that most of these videos didn't get viral here in Brazil.