‘Going Viral’ wasn’t a term yet and ‘Meme’ didn’t yet mean what it does today, but as someone who was a nerdy teen in the geocities era, this is the first thing I remember that started on the internet and reached a truly mass audience.
Can anyone think of any earlier example of an internet meme going viral?
Hamster dance.
Hampsterdance is from -98, dancing baby is -96.
Back when meme transmission was “hey, did you get that e-mail? I’ll forward it to you the next time I log on”
Back when your grandma would print out an email chain letter and bring it to your house.
When I got this back in the day the subject line was something like:
Fw: Fw: Re: Fw: Fw: ad infinitum
This was from a time when people would send actual video files to random people over email and they would open it with no concern about viruses.
This feels a bit anachronistic. Email attachment size limitations were strict in the 90s, bandwidth was limited, and video codecs sucked. I don’t have strong memories of people forwarding realplayer videos. I don’t consider gifs and flash to be video, maybe that’s it?
Doesn’t matter what format the file was in, people did not question opening attachments back then. And computers did very little to protect against malicious emails.
Those were the golden days of infecting people with Sub7. No antivirus, no firewalls. I’d get someone on AOL instant messenger by social engineering them to try out my “screensaver”, then pull their AIM login and buddy list, hit up someone from their buddy list, rinse and repeat.
Imminent Death of the Net emails used to be a thing.
Badger Badger was 2003, and it was the first thing I saw escape the confines of internet nerd-dom and go viral in office spaces. Dancing Baby was mid-90’s, so several years earlier, but I never saw it referenced out of the community of the terminally online. Heck, the web was still in it’s infancy in the mid-90’s.
It was on Ally McBeal and then in other mainstream media for years. It was the origin of the term “viral video”.
Dancing baby made the news and I think it was even in a movie or two.
The trumpeting skull was later?
Created in '99, went viral in 2011.
what is this from like the 1900s?
Yes!
yes
My kid was playing the game Mafia the other day and mentioned the final scene took place in 1851. I was like “are you sure it was 1851 and not 1951?” He was like, “yeah, I think you’re right.”
So yeah, kids legitimately and unironically confuse the 1800s with 1900s now. So we got that going for us.
Interesting fact, this baby was everywhere because it came with 3D Studio Max. It was included as a demo model alongside a cartoony ogre and a velociraptor.
The animation was also included to demo their Character Studio animation and motion capture capabilities.
So Ally McBeal just used a pre made animation and acted like they made it?
I read 2 articles on its creation and different animators were mentioned in each story. The only consensus I saw between the articles was that John Chadwick combined the baby model, animation and music together. The baby model was purchased to be used in 3DSMax, so they could have made it for Ally Mcbeal then sold the model
Hey, I forgot all about 3D Studio Max! I used a pirated copy of that to create a 3D logo for my friend’s business.
Welcome!
Serious Ally McBeal vibes.
You are the only person in the comments so far to mention where this baby “originally came from” is in where it got the widest audience at the time. I didn’t even watch Ally McBeal but I knew at as “the dancing baby from Ally McBeal” forever.
What ever happened to that lady?
Being married to Harrison Ford and doing all the cool shit that comes along with that.
Oh dang! I didn’t know that. I don’t really follow celebrity news or anything, but that seems like something I should have known.
I loved the shit out of that show and that was my immediate thought. I need to “acquire” this show again. The physical copies I had are long gone.
The playstation can produce mind-boggling effects
playstation? Try 2600
IDK if anyone remembers this, or if it’s my brain making things up, but I swear the first place I saw this was a late night TV ad for “animated ringtones” you could buy for your phone and one of them was this dancing baby
Yes pretty sure I remember that too
Isn’t this from like 10 years ago, when the internet memes started? (I’m not going to listen to anyone telling me is longer, so don’t bother :-P)
Older than that. It was trending in 1997.
1997 was 30 years ago
SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!
OW, MY BACK!
I was terrified of this baby as a kid! Fucking creepy ass baby with that creepy ass intro to hooked on a feeling.
I suddenly feel the urge to rent a video tape
That ones so old I saw it first on a CD ROM
Definitely prehistoric. I remember this from the early days of the www.
I remember a screensaver that was several of those that could dance to certain midis you could put in a folder and came with a Mortal Kombat tune by default.
Another thing that little baby reminds me is one video, same model, where he’s drunkenly walking forward while pissing.
Let me guess… neal.fun’s Internet Artifacts?? You too, huh!
the resulting animation was first discarded for being too “disturbing.”
Ah, what an innocent time.
