So I decided to try and pull together a “greatest hits” list that would honor recognize some of the greatest most ridiculous moments in Web history. My criteria are “fluid,” at best, and this list is in no way scientific. Mainly, I just asked a bunch of people for suggestions and then ranked them according to what I like to call “enlightened whim.” In general, though, these sites are about silliness and people with wayyyy too much time on their hands. Some have unintended educational value, I suppose, and others are less about whimsy than out-and-out, near-pathological, knee-buckling weirdness.

Enjoy.

1. Hampster Dance
Arguably the first of the Web’s great “WTF?” memes. Hampton and his hoofin’ buddies ground a lot of offices to an absolute standstill, and it spread around the Web like nothing any of us had ever seen before. Crashed the host server and spawned spin-offs left and right. Wonderful stuff….

2. Pingvin
A yeti with a club lays a Barry Bonds on a masochistic penguin. I’d give anything to know exactly how much corporate productivity was lost to this one game alone.

3. All Your Base Are Belong to Us
What you say? This artifact of bad English to Japanese to English video game translation (at least that’s what I think this was about) changed the way we talked around the office for the better part of two weeks.

4. Star Wars Kid
The ultimate display of passionate nerdiness in Net history. How could this kid, the embodiment of Star Wars maladjustment, have possibly known what he was setting himself up for? But as hard as you laugh, there’s also something really endearing about the purity of whatever the hell it is he thinks he’s doing. Hopefully they got him into a witness protection program or something.

5. weebls-stuff.com
Not a single moment, but a producer of moments. Badgers was the breakout toon, and the Badgers LotR spoof couldn’t have been more timely. And can somebody explain Kenya to me?

6. RatherGood.com
Viking Kittens, Punk Rock Chinchillas, Naughty Hedgehogs, etc., all of which spawned a mainstream payday for the guys, as they were invited to produce a Quizno’s commercial (which remains one of the strangest things ever to air on network TV).

7. We Love the Iraqi Information Minister
Maybe I’m biased, because I actually contributed to this one. Another one of those “spread like wildfire” and “crashed the servers” things – it made a legit global celebrity of the ultimate PR mouthpiece, a man who could say anything with a straight face.

8. Jennicam (formerly at jennicam.org)
Jennifer Ringley, the fleshy, middling attractive undergrad exhibitionist showed the world the power of the webcam. She showed the world a lot of other things, too.

9. Dancing Baby
Ally McBeal made this one famous, and it has to date spawned hundreds of spin-offs, movies, applications, etc. I don’t get it. Never did. Of course, that’s part of its greatness, huh?

10. Mullets Galore
Business in front, party in the back. The 25/75. Hockey Hair. The Canadian Passport. And so on. The most amazing mullet I ever saw was a guy in Denver – a “little person,” I believe is the proper term – whose immaculately groomed and waxed 2½-foot mullet nearly dragged the ground. Wish I had a picture of him to send in.

11. My Trailer Park Page
In recent years the word “wrong” has come to mean something that’s disturbing, distressing, or appalling. Often it’s wrong because it’s true, and it usually refers to something we know we shouldn’t laugh at but can’t help ourselves. I believe this Web site is where this sense of the word first came into being. Put simply, it is one of the wrongest things on the Web.

12. Homestarrunner.com
I still haven’t gotten my head around this toon-n-games site yet, but the techies seem to love it. For sheer loss of productivity, fikshun says nothing at his place of work (which I won’t name, but you’d know them if I told you) touches it.

13. Mahir Cagri, The “I Kiss You” Guy
Enthusiastic Turkish loser who just loves too much. Is that about right?

14.Weeeeee! (Gonads and Strife)
Ummm. Yeah. I don’t even begin to know how to explain this one. But for that “knee-buckling” thing I mention in the intro you can’t beat it. Beat it? Hell, I’d be afraid to get close enough to take a swing…..

15. Ellen Feiss Apple Commercial
This slightly spacy teen who lost her paper to a carnivorous PC captured the hearts of Mac geeks everywhere. The ad allegedly ran on actual television, although I never saw it.

Honorable (?) Mention, in no particular order

Great Mobile Homes of Mississippi
I was never entirely sure if this was humor or anthropology.

Gerbil in a Microwave and Frog in a Blender
Do you have what it takes to give these smack-talkers what they deserve? The interactive toons that put Joe Cartoon on the map.

Jib Jab: This Land Will Surely Vote for Me
Election fun for the whole family.

Pixyland.org
See “wrong” above. This was just disturbing.

Bush or Chimp
Offered without comment.

Dubya, the Movie
This, I swear, John Kerry should have used as a campaign ad. They splice together scenes from Don Knotts movies in a way that entertains as much as it informs.

The Terrible Secret of Space
From the same people who brought us All Your Base, I think, and every bit as “non-linear.”

Subservient Chicken
Interactive site that lets you order a guy in a chicken suit around. Disturbing? Uh-huh – supersized.

33 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Post Your Picture on the Internet
Just gets funnier and funnier as you scroll down….

Alek’s Christmas Lights Webcam Hoax
People logging in from all over the planet thinking they were turning the guy’s Christmas lights on and off, major news coverage, helicopters overhead – now that’s a hoax!

The Hall of Douchebags
This is the crowd that introduced us the term “brick-wall band.” The running captions are fall-out-of-the-chair funny.

Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time
If ever a genre of musicians was begging for a send-up, this is it.

eNormicom
How to develop a brand for your dot-com start-up – I think a few companies thought this was a legit how-to site.

Fat Guy Dance
Thank the gods it’s a toon.

Walk the Drunk
A recent entry in the “time-wasting games” category.

Web Economy Bullshit Generator
One that was a little too close to reality for comfort.

Feline Reactions to Bearded Men
Fake scientists with too much time on their hands.

Strawberry Pop-Tart Blowtorches
There has to be an easier way.

Tombstone Generator
I already have mine picked out.

Get Your War On
Sarcastic political humor.

The Postmodernism Generator
For those of us who have actually read lots of postmodernist scholarship, this was more painful than funny. For the rest of you it will mostly be incomprehensible jibberish. Actually, that’s what it was for me, now that I think about it. The paid resulted from the fact that I was required to know it for the test.

K’Pinky & the Brain
Pinky & the Brain, Klingon-style.

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