YTMND was an early "web 2.0" site that let anybody create a page pairing an image or GIF with a looping sound file and vote on their favorites. By 2006, it had become a mecca for user-generated web humor, a forerunner of Vine and an incubator for weird-ass memes back when "memes" were largely lolcat photos. As YouTube and social media took over the web, it faded into irrelevance. Now, one year after closing new account creation, the site has disappeared from the web entirely.
Know Your Meme
TVTropes
2006 Wired account: A Brief History of YTMND
2016 Gizmodo retrospective: Who Killed YTMND?
Archived (poorly) by the Library of Congress
It's also been archived by Archive Team (tweet), though no word on when/if it will be made publicly accessible.
Some of the top sites of all time (YouTube links where possible, Archive.org otherwise):
New Talent on 60 Minutes
Paris Hilton Doesn't Change Facial Expressions (KYM page)
Blue Ball Machine (KYM page)
Batman Ualuealuealeuale
The Pi Song
What is love?
The Un-Funny Truth About Scientology
Safety Not Guaranteed (later a major motion picture!)
Cosby Bebop
HOLY SHIT IT'S A DINOSAUR
What you see when you die (catonakeyboardinspace)
lol, internet
Some of my personal favorite pages:
Free Cow!
2001: A Baby Odyssey
Stupid Sexy Flanders
Darth Vader gets his Christmas wish
Stephen Hawking's Time Machine
Text-to-speech generator fails at life
MacGyver saves the cast of Lost
Buttering Obama
Artemis
Anybody else here a YTMND veteran? Share your favorite sites!
UPDATE 3/16: I happened upon Max Goldberg's Reddit account last night, and apparently the shutdown was entirely unplanned. As in, he wasn't even aware it was offline until somebody sent him a news article about it several days afterward. He also PM'd me his thinking when asked:
Also, he's since updated the site with this message:
Know Your Meme
TVTropes
2006 Wired account: A Brief History of YTMND
2016 Gizmodo retrospective: Who Killed YTMND?
Archived (poorly) by the Library of Congress
It's also been archived by Archive Team (tweet), though no word on when/if it will be made publicly accessible.
Some of the top sites of all time (YouTube links where possible, Archive.org otherwise):
New Talent on 60 Minutes
Paris Hilton Doesn't Change Facial Expressions (KYM page)
Blue Ball Machine (KYM page)
Batman Ualuealuealeuale
The Pi Song
What is love?
The Un-Funny Truth About Scientology
Safety Not Guaranteed (later a major motion picture!)
Cosby Bebop
HOLY SHIT IT'S A DINOSAUR
What you see when you die (catonakeyboardinspace)
lol, internet
Some of my personal favorite pages:
Free Cow!
2001: A Baby Odyssey
Stupid Sexy Flanders
Darth Vader gets his Christmas wish
Stephen Hawking's Time Machine
Text-to-speech generator fails at life
MacGyver saves the cast of Lost
Buttering Obama
Artemis
Anybody else here a YTMND veteran? Share your favorite sites!
UPDATE 3/16: I happened upon Max Goldberg's Reddit account last night, and apparently the shutdown was entirely unplanned. As in, he wasn't even aware it was offline until somebody sent him a news article about it several days afterward. He also PM'd me his thinking when asked:
It was unintentional but also maybe it's just time. I haven't worked on it seriously in almost a decade which left it vulnerable. I sort of want to make it a read-only archive and update it to not rely on flash. I haven't made any decisions what to do yet though.
FWIW, I suggested it might be better to keep it offline and rely on the various archives to preserve it, because at this point the only real "community" still active there were alt-right edgelords and mentally unstable people unhealthily obsessed with obscure internal drama.Also, he's since updated the site with this message:
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