I get some real "tears in rain" feelings when I think about all the forums and chat rooms I was in, all the time spent with those people and how those little moments and injokes are gone.
There are memes completely lost to time. For every Hampster Dance or Dancing Baby, there are hundreds of old memes that now exist only in the memories of those who participated in those forums.
There was a much, much smaller userbase and generally less streamlined (or less anti-streamlined, monetized) systems, but it was there.
They also generally had their own self-contained cultures, and their own memes that never left that website.
I get some real "tears in rain" feelings when I think about all the forums and chat rooms I was in, all the time spent with those people and how those little moments and injokes are gone.
There are memes completely lost to time. For every Hampster Dance or Dancing Baby, there are hundreds of old memes that now exist only in the memories of those who participated in those forums.