this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
884 points (99.6% liked)

Not The Onion

21526 readers
1552 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] limelight79@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

When this was still big, a friend of mine said he saw it and really liked it. I casually said, "Be sure to watch it all the way through!"

I don't know what prompted me to say that.

A few weeks later, we were talking, and he suddenly said, "Oh, BY THE WAY....I tried to watch Badger Badger Badger all the way through..." He said watched for "a while" before he caught on.

If I tried to plan a practical joke, it would never go as well as that one did.

I sent an article about this to him. He laughed.

[–] stephen01king@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why is this comment such a deja vu?

[–] limelight79@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

Reread it until you figure it out!

[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

I was there at the very beginning. I watched the rise of today. From playing Oregon Trail on a teletype computer head in a dingy basement, trying to learn Basic, writing batch files, compiling kernels, and rpm hell.

The Badgers were amazing and mesmerizing and are truly worthy of preservation.

[–] GardenGeek@europe.pub 111 points 2 days ago

Finally some good fucking news!

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 105 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 95 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I got my friend with that one back in the day. It was Flash so much harder to detect a loop than a video. I told him the ending was hilarious and he managed about 20 minutes of badger badger badger badger badger until he figured it out.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (4 children)

And on the opposite end there was the Demented Cartoon Movie, which was half an hour of nonsense and non-sequitors in an age where most animations were a few minutes long at most. Flash movies didn't have a progress bar at the bottom, so anyone you sent it to was stuck watching the whole thing hoping it would please end already.

It's physically painful to watch today. My fellow Millennials act like Gen Z invented brain rot while ignoring that we grew up with this.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (3 children)

We're approaching some of the old memes now, the Genesis Memes...

But if you want to brush away even more layers of digital sediment and excavate a truly ancient fossil, there's All your base are belong to us.

[–] Balinares@pawb.social 8 points 1 day ago

All Your Base is the granddaddy of Internet memes and yet I can't help feeling that its specific subgenre was sublimated a bit later on, with this, the legend, the joyful, the unforgettable: Yatta!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] belunos@lemmus.org 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I clicked the post hoping to see the original. I did not. I'm so disappointed in you

Yep

My disappointment is immense, and my day is ruined

[–] rodneylives@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago (3 children)

What really should be preserved is the entirety of Homestar Runner.

[–] lyrial@anarchist.nexus 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It probably has been by someone since it is all on YouTube now, and I think they have revived the site to most of the old functionality (I could be wrong, I'd need to be on PC to really check). The things that YouTube can't preserve is the stuff like the mouse over Easter eggs etc.

[–] insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

HSR is the easiest example of rasterizing Flash content being a bad idea, because there is just so much content. Even just the Sbemails compilation (1-200) is 10 hours, and for a DVD-quality video (480p) that's almost double the size of the HSR collection that I have (2000-2009 from archive org).

The site does work via Ruffle (even the menus, though some links seem broken) and they still make new ones (sbemail-210-robots, backtoawebsite) with Flash versions. There is also an old.homestarrunner so you could probably run this with a browser that still runs Flash, lacking one I'm not sure the exact URL to do so via standalone or even if the links will properly work there.

Local is still probably best, though still a mess with so many SWFs.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I mean, really, most of Weebl's stuff should be preserved: Amazing Horse, Magical Trevor, Crabs, Telephone Dog ("Hello, this is dog!"), Russian Dancing Men, a ton of others I've forgot.

[–] CritFail@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

See the friendly lions, only in Kenya!

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] PixellatedDave@feddit.uk 33 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ah but everyone loves magical Trevor.

[–] kirishoru@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

it’s cause the tricks that he does are ever so clever.

[–] DigDoug@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Look at him now, disappearing a cow

[–] ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Where is the cow? Hidden right now?

[–] BloodMuffin@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

taking his bow, it's magical Trevor

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Everyone has seen that trick was clever

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] anothermember@feddit.uk 40 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Have they preserved where the sound gets increasingly out of sync with the video the longer you watch it? Because most archived versions don't have this.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

Flash's terrible audio syncing makes it hilarious that the most popular indie rhythm game was built on one of Flash's direct successors.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] daannii@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I remember this cat video I liked.

🎶 Cat , I'm a kitty cat, and I dance dance dance. And I dance dance dance. 🎵

And I wanted to make it my ring tone. Back when phones were just starting to let you have custom tones.

And I sent the creator an email and asked if I could have a mp3. And he responded and sent it and I was like.

"Omg. This famous guy who made this video with like 10,000 views talked to me!"

I remember bragging to my friends that this famous video creator talked to me online.

Simpler times.

Now it's 24 million views On YouTube. I'm pretty sure I messaged them on black sheep or some other video site that was popular around 2006.

https://youtu.be/SaA_cs4WZHM

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Core memory unlocked. Back at my first job we would prank each other by queueing that song on the lobby speakers whenever the current cashier wasn't looking. That and the cat flushing a toilet song.

Good times, thanks for the nostalgia trip!

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I literally bragged breathlessly about exchanging a few words with the klingon actor from the new star trek (he's a nice fellow) to my wife. Honestly, the way I lit up I wonder if that's what made her want to watch SNW then TNG, like back to back

She enjoyed SNW but TNG she is fucking loving. Her crush on riker is almost as bad as mine

I had an anthropology tutor who is a renowned Trekkie

She is mentioned by name

There was a discussion about gender fluidity and she was so happy when the example of Dax came up as an example of falling for a person can remain while their body changes

That was almost thirty years ago, but I still remember her

[–] LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

12 badgers doing calisthenics while a mushroom and snake occasionally appear on screen, known as “Badger Badger Badger” or “The Badger Song.”

Somehow that description just doesn't do it for me. Im not sure what would, but its not this.

[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

But that's kind of all it is? It's pretty brain-dead IMO.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

wish badgers were as amazing as my horse.

[–] espentan@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Did it taste just like raisins?

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 days ago

Sweet lemonade, mmm sweet lemonade!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Imagine some future PugJesus type excavating our memes from the archives and reposting this 1000 years from now. 🧐️

[–] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Aliens learn to shitpost when they start going through what humanity left behind.

Man may be temporary, but shitposts are eternal

[–] BucketBong@p.hobo.social 11 points 2 days ago

I mixed this into a full length song and got my mate who was the DJ at the school social to play it in full, place went fucking off!

[–] 4grams@awful.systems 21 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Now they need to preserve salad fingers. I’m still creeped out by it and so should future generations.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] hemmes@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They have an interview with the father of the "Charlie but my finger again!" kids, so they're adding some good historical context to it all, too.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 15 points 2 days ago

Chances are pretty good that it and Mr Weebl's other animations are preserved in their original format (i.e. Flash SWF files) at the free Flashpoint Archive project.

At least some of the old Jib-Jab stuff should be there also, which were some very amusing political parodies and such.

load more comments
view more: next ›