Some of these you may have already seen, some you may have not...[via time] 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 "Somebody set up us the bomb" for at least a week.
Since then, I have become thoroughly entrenched in Internet pop culture. (I'm pretty sure that half my workday is spent exchanging YouTube videos with co-workers, but don't tell anyone.) There was the Star Wars Kid (2002); Homestar Runner (which I saw in 2003-04); and Tom Cruise's Scientology video (2008). 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. (See the 50 best websites of 2008.)
Advertising copywriter Greg Rutter has compiled everything great about the Internet and put that 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:
• Animal videos: 11• 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 screwups: 2
• Sports videos: 2
• Acts of bad journalism: 9
• Reminder that OK Go is better at making music videos than it is at making music: 1
• Inaccurate portrayal of American history: 1
• Fat people: 4
• Angry Germans: 2
• Transvestite midget: 1
• Videos longer than five minutes: 5
• Videos shorter than 30 seconds: 12
• Celebrity videos: 7
• Wedding videos: 2
• Videos of people dancing: 9
• Ad 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 except check Facebook.
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