{"id":6994,"date":"2018-12-29T18:48:01","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T18:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=6994"},"modified":"2018-12-29T18:48:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T18:48:01","slug":"the-oral-history-of-the-hampsterdance-the-twisted-true-story-of-one-of-the-worlds-first-memes-cbc-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=6994","title":{"rendered":"The oral history of the Hampsterdance: The twisted true story of one of the world&#8217;s first memes | CBC Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/arts\/the-oral-history-of-the-hampsterdance-the-twisted-true-story-of-one-of-the-world-s-first-memes-1.4958325\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/hamsterdance.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Th CBC has a nice (and long) oral history about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/arts\/the-oral-history-of-the-hampsterdance-the-twisted-true-story-of-one-of-the-world-s-first-memes-1.4958325\">Hampsterdance: The twisted true story of one of the world&#8217;s first memes<\/a>. Deidre LaCarte created the original site on Geocities in 1998 as a challenge and it took off. As the CBC puts it, it was the original meme to take off. You can see the <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/19991128125537\/http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/Heartland\/Bluffs\/4157\/hampdance.html\">original here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It becomes clear as one reads on that none of the assets of the site were original; they were all clipart or music taken from elsewhere. Nonetheless LaCarte and others were able to make some money on the success of the site.<\/p>\n<p>I personally think the first viral internet meme was the Mrs. Fields (or Neiman Marcus) cookie recipe story that circulated by email. It was an urban legend about being billed $250 for a recipe by a Mrs. Fields store and then sharing that recipe. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snopes.com\/fact-check\/neiman-marcus-cookies\/\">Snopes this legend has quite a history<\/a> going back to a 1948 cookbook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Th CBC has a nice (and long) oral history about Hampsterdance: The twisted true story of one of the world&#8217;s first memes. Deidre LaCarte created the original site on Geocities in 1998 as a challenge and it took off. As the CBC puts it, it was the original meme to take off. You can see &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=6994\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The oral history of the Hampsterdance: The twisted true story of one of the world&#8217;s first memes | CBC Arts<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-internet-culture-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6996,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6994\/revisions\/6996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}