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Life has classics of many kinds. There’s classic literature, classic rock, and older films are considered classics. But the meme-riddled internet moves pretty quickly, and many of the internet’s original viral sensations have sunk into near obscurity. Hence, much of the nascent Interweb’s original hilarity is entirely unknown to a younger generation. But it isn’t all Hampster Dance and Three Wolf Moon. Welcome back to my segment, Internet Classics. Homestar Runner is a major internet rabbit-hole.
If you’ve never heard of Homestar Runner, you either weren’t online in the early 2000s, or else you just plain missed out. It was easily the best entry in the flash cartoon genre that was popular on the early internet. Its nonsensical and surreal cartoons were full of absurd references and hilarious callbacks. Prepare for a deep-dive.
The Homestar Runner website began as a flash cartoon site run by Mike and Matt Chapman (previously) also known as The Brothers Chaps. Its primary feature quickly became “Strong Bad Emails,” or SBEmails. The site’s cast of characters included the Brothers Strong: Strong Bad, Strong Mad, and Strong Sad. Each week, Strong Bad would answer an email from a fan, usually making fun of the emailer’s punctuation and spelling. Nearly twenty years ago, I watched the emails rabidly, consuming each as soon as it was released. Today’s YouTube…
