I remember my first viral video. The year was 2001 and I was a fresh-faced teenager with my first high-speed Internet connection. Someone showed me a Flash animation featuring 1980s Japanese video game images repurposed into a techno music montage. Or something. I’m not really sure. I didn’t understand “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” then and I don’t understand it now, but I can’t deny its Internet significance. All I remember is that people wouldn’t stop saying “Someone set up us the bomb” for at least a week.
Since then, I have become thoroughly entrenched in Internet pop culture . There was the Star Wars Kid ; Homestar Runner and Tom Cruise’s Scientology video . When a friend refused to stop singing “Peanut Butter Jelly Time,” I didn’t speak to her for three days because whenever I did she would sing it, and the song would get stuck in my head. But that was in 2002, and I haven’t seen the video since. That is, until now.
Advertising copywriter Greg Rutter has compiled everything great about the Internet and put it on one web page. Youshouldhaveseenthis.com is a list of 99 videos and websites that any self-respecting Internet addict needs to see — and probably already has.
So if you have a lot of free time, here are the best things the Internet has to offer:
• Number of animal videos: 11
• Number of animal videos that should come with a warning because they’re too adorable and will make you cry at work: 1
• People who injure themselves: 6
• People who injure other people: 3
• Children who will grow to resent their parents for putting embarrassing footage of them on the Internet: 9
• Things that are funny because they’re from the 80s: 6
• Home shopping TV screw-ups: 2
• Sports videos: 2
• Acts of bad journalism: 9
• Reminders that OK Go are better at making music videos than they are at making music: 1
• Inaccurate portrayals of American history: 1
• Fat people: 4
• Angry Germans: 2
• Transvestite midgets: 1
• Videos longer than 5 minutes: 5
• Videos shorter than 30 seconds: 12
• Celebrity videos: 7
• Wedding videos: 2
• Videos of people dancing: 9
• Ads for an office product that seems oddly sexual: 1
• Performances inspired by Star Wars: 3
• Freaky Tom Cruise moments: 2
• Things from Japan: 4
• People with too much time on their hands: 37
• Grown men who may never know the love of a woman: 12
• Bonus NSFW links hidden at the bottom of the page that should not be viewed in public, or even at all: 4
• Number of links I clicked on at work anyway: 4
• Level of awkwardness when my boss walked by: high to very high
That’s it. You’ve now seen everything that’s on the Internet. There’s nothing left to do now except check Facebook.
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