Since beginning my career as an internet writer, I’ve operated mostly as a ‘gurnalist’ – that is to say, I do the minimum research for the maximum vibe. It’s part of the reason I break my bussy on the newsletter for free rather than do pieces for traditional media outlets. Too much liability. Not enough personal context. In keeping with this anti-journalistic-integrity approach, tonight’s newsletter will forgo citations in favour of smooth-brain ideas. Enjoy hun!
The older I get, the more fascinated I am by internet culture and the places I inhabit online.
And while it’s definitely a consequence of spending an inordinate amount of time logged on, it’s part of a larger pattern. It’s been 16 years since Facebook went public – the social media platform that did what MySpace couldn’t by capturing every generation and convincing indie Millenials to trade their embedded Grizzly Bear music boxes for ‘pokes’ and ‘it’s complicated’ relationship statuses.
In that time, we’ve seen the first generation grow into, and grow out of, the internet. I’m talking about Millenials – the latest generation to ‘do adulting’ and to (reluctantly) pass the keys over to Gen Z.
I say reluctantly because the transition period occurred under our noses during one of the most traumatic events of the century – the pandemicussy. While Millennials were baking sourdough on Instagram, Gen Z was evolving on TikTok, graduating from Charli D’Amelio-style dances to hyper-meta comedy videos with new editing styles created on even newer iPhones (I’d also call the 2021/2022 cohort of Gen Z internet users Generation .5, given their preference for forehead enlarging fisheye smartphone selfies). (How good is the term ‘smartphone’ – Flex calls me an undercover Boomer and it’s giving.)
Anyway! Tonight I want to retrace the last decade and a half in internet comedy. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, mostly because I’ve fallen out of love with creating videos. It’s very fucking disturbing to say the least, given it’s been my favourite pastime since taping over all my parents’ home videos with selfies.
I can’t decide where my malaise has come from – whether it’s a consequence of getting older, getting better mentally, or needing a holiday (hopefully witnessing David Guetta in the flesh in Ibiza next month will re-energise my dormant Dickie).
Whatever it is, I want to get to the bottom of it.
So, please join me in staring down into the cavernous anus of internet content – investigating what content was before ‘content’ was a word that described anything beyond things in boxes and/or a general state of equilibrium.
A quick caveat before I categorise each era of the internet – I don’t think you have to be in the youngest generation to be a creator and it’s never too late to start. I know plenty of Millenials whose style is decidedly Gen Z, and vice versa. (Tim Robinson’s show ‘I Think You Need To Leave’ on Netflix is a great example of Gen Z-adjacent comedy by a 41-year-old man.)
Let’s go girls!
2000 - 2003
It’s 2003. Britney is not a girl, not yet a woman. Cathy Freeman is a national treasure, Ian Thorpe a once-in-a-generation merman. And I’m 7 years old, running around my parents’ bedroom like a rabid chihuahua because my Dad’s just unboxed his very first camera phone.
This was technologically unbelievable. Camcorders had been cutting edge only a few years before and digital cameras were at their peak. To have a mobile phone with a digital camera in it was giving Spy Kids.
This was the first giant step towards modern self-made media as we know it. Computers had webcams and you could send pictures via email, but having a device that could make calls and take pictures was wild in a way that’s hard to grasp now.
Meanwhile, Funniest Home Videos was at its peak and a new form of entertainment was emerging – Big Brother. Both programs (Boomer Froomes is back) were ‘user generated’ and ‘real’ in a way scripted shows couldn’t be.
Suddenly, being funny and yourself was a thing. The power of self-publishing wasn’t yet in the subjects’ hands – and it wouldn’t be for a while – but the foundations for the cult of personality and relatability had been laid.
My first foray into capturing a funny moment on a cameraphone involved my cousin, David. He was a teenage daredevil who’d do things like come to my school and sneak into the principal’s office to call for ‘Poocinda’ over the loudspeaker.
Mongrel vibes. Anyway, the first-ever video I recorded was of him climbing up a skinny tree and getting to the top just before it snapped. He fell, as if in slow motion, into the creek below and it was legit one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed. It was made even funnier by the simple fact that it was recorded. I raced home to show Mum and Dad, high off my first taste of capturing something with an audience in mind.
YouTube didn’t exist yet, so the only way to rewatch the video was to steal Dad’s phone and risk getting verbally slayed. Luckily, funny websites filled the void. I had two favourites at the time. The first was obviously ratemypoo.com. The other was funnyjunk.com – the destination for just that. Some videos would appear here, like Star Wars Kid (2002) – but loading was often not worth it.
(also – the kid in this video ended up suing the other kids that uploaded it. They settled out of court and he used the money to go to law school. The full story is wild!)
2003 - 2012
Ahh yes! The beginning of the end.
This era was like the industrial revolution but for nerds.
First came MySpace Tom, the enigmatic entrepreneur and default ‘Top Friend’ with a ubiquitous DP that was surely taken on a Nokia. Our humble 2003 king.
MySpace took blogging to the masses. Self-expression came mostly from saturated selfies (taking pictures of yourself was not normal before MySpace, I swear ‘selfie’ was barely in our vocabulary) and customisable coded pages. Music was a big part of MySpace, with upstart artists like Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys and Nicki Minaj gaining traction on the platform.
Then YouTube yeeted forth in 2005 with its first-ever upload, ‘Me at the zoo’.
This video wasn’t viral. The concept of ‘viral’ hadn’t been properly established yet – previously, the popularity of a ‘meme’ or something funny was contained to things that weren’t very quantifiable, like email chains or uploads on multiple humour sites. I’d say the concept of virality was created, in part, by YouTube itself.
The first example was Evolution of Dance.
This changed the fkn world in 2006, I swear. It was so novel. The idea of a grown man dancing like that was Yikes Manifest, in the best way possible. The fact that so many people saw it added to its mystique.
Then came Shoes.
Created by Liam Kyle Sullivan, Shoes was one of many viral skits and original songs that have stood the test of time. I believe he invented wearing a shit wig and impersonating a ‘vapid’ woman-brat on the internet, a trend that will never die so long as the patriarchy persists. Kelly was a biatch, but also a true slay.
I’d credit Weird Al Yankovich with popularising (aka, MTV-ing) the parody song genre. When his music was at its peak, it was truly original – it was pre-internet when the avenues for mainstream comedy were limited, and what we saw was mostly decided by executives. That’s not to say the chosen selection wasn’t quality (SNL in America and Big Girl’s Blouse in Australia), it was just different. And left-of-centre non-actors and performers didn’t have much of a look in.
YouTube changed that, and clever seasoned players hopped aboard. The Lonely Island repackaged parody – by being hot – and thrust into a new era with fouler lyrics and themes. ‘Eat It’ was replaced by ‘Jizz In My Pants’ and other spicy originals that have (mostly) avoided retrospective cancellation.
But speaking of! When I was looking back at my personal favourites of that era, the most striking quality of almost all of their videos was their casual ‘isms’ – be it racism, sexism, ableism or general punch-downism.
These videos fascinate me because they’re time capsules for the widely held beliefs and standards of that time. These days when I look back at the derogatory things I did and said during my school days, I feel shame and confusion. How did I think this was ok? And while the videos are no excuse for ‘ism’ behaviour, they’re a partial explanation – our media (traditional and online) blatantly made fun of minority groups.
My final throwback belongs to a woman whose ode to the best day of the week cemented her place in the early ‘epic fail’ internet zeitgeist – it’s Rebecca Black with ‘Friday’.
I actually can’t with this. This broke the internet in half and took Black with it.
Reflecting, you can absolutely tell this song was released the same year as Justin Bieber’s Baby. The track itself was a bop but the lyrics were insane (fun, fun, think about fun), the autotune was shameless and the use of green screen was like Tim & Eric but not a joke. I think the real reason it infuriated people was how catchy it was. To hate Rebecca Black was to hate oneself and to hate her parents for being minted enough to drop thousands on a full-scale production.
Like Star Wars Kid, the level of bullying and abuse that was piled on Rebecca Black (a 13-year-old) was heinous. She clearly has a sense of humour, because she survived it – and even went on to release a hyper-pop reimagining of the song in 2021.
2012 - NOW
In a deeply unfortunate turn of events, I’ve run out of newsletter space right before reaching the bit where the internet really started shidding itself.
Next time, I’ll contrast these pop culture moments with ones from 2012 onwards. Has online abuse worsened? Has our attention span really been compromised, or were movies too long already? Has our sense of humour become homogenised (POV humour) or fractured (incomprehensible TikTok trending sounds)? And I’ll ask the all-important question – have we hit the ‘internet comedy’ ceiling?
Until then – Oppa Gangman Style.
Froomes