Strong weird

Today: Sam Thielman, a reporter, critic, essayist, and editor, and graphic novel columnist for the New York Times.

Issue No. 134

Everybody! Everybody!
Sam Thielman

Everybody! Everybody!

by Sam Thielman

Welcome to The Lost Internet, a month-long series in which the members of Flaming Hydra revisit internet marvels of the past. 

“We can't believe that many people want to wear T-shirts with our dumb animal characters on them,” Homestar Runner’s Matt Chapman told WIRED in 2003. Back then, internet users in the U.S. numbered about 66 million, and Chapman casually told WIRED that “a few million” of them were visiting HomestarRunner.com each month. Not coincidentally, a disproportionately large number of those 66 million were college students in dorms kitted out for the first time with high-speed data connections; at some point it occurred to us that pirating Ben Folds and watching porn were but two of the internet’s potential use cases, and here were Matt Chapman and his brother Mike (the Brothers Chaps, as they call themselves) with the third: a series of absurdist cartoons they made using a now-defunct multimedia platform called Flash. 

It’s hard to explain the generational importance of Homestar Runner without sounding insane. What’s it about? Not sure. What is Homestar, exactly? How does he type emails without hands? Or arms? What is that little Pikachu-looking thing called The Cheat? Why is he called The Cheat? Why is Strong Bad, the series’ kindasorta villain, wearing a luchador mask and boxing gloves? Is his accent…Mexican?

The story takes place in a sort of children’s-picture-book world (Free Country, USA) where a series of nonsensical but highly specific characters try to befriend, one-up, and pester one another. Where do you get it? HomestarRunner.com, still, after twenty-four years. Where you always got it.

What makes it so influential?