
YTMND is down for temporary maintenance - fredley
https://www.resetera.com/threads/looks-like-mid-00s-meme-factory-ytmnd-has-shut-down-for-good.116990/
======
ndiscussion
No it's not? I've been on YTMND for over 10 years so this was very sad and
nostalgic for me.

But I went to ytmnd.com and it was giving some PHP database errors.

And now they have a status message:

> rip db

>YTMND is down for temporary maintenance. This gives us time to optimize the
database, free up unused space, deploy new features, and generally just break
stuff. This should not take very long, so feel free to stick around and chat
or go away. If you have any trouble accessing the site, or concerns about the
direction in which your life is heading, feel free to send an email to support
@ ytmnd.com (and expect to be ignored).

edit: It seems this is all very poor reporting. Gizmodo, et al have jumped on
the story. YTMND has shut down!

All based on some speculation on a forum because the site was down for a
while?

~~~
Zetaphor
Seems you're the only person that tried actually going to the website, where
this message is prominently displayed.

~~~
ihuman
When this was originally posted, there was no message; the page just didn't
load.

------
v64
RIP. This whole phenomenon was wildly popular with my friend group back in the
day. In 2001, the original yourethemannowdog.com went down for a bit and I put
up a mirror at a similar domain. It started gaining in popularity, prompting
YTMND creator Max Goldberg to send me a realistic looking but ultimately fake
email from a supposed law firm threatening me with a cease and desist
(unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of this email). We all had a good
laugh about that, and the original site was back up soon after. I never
would've guessed it would blow up as a meme the way it did.

Edit: It turns out I had the year of the cease and desist wrong; it was 2002.
I'm amused that evidence[1] still exists[2] of my small contribution to this
meme.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/CYRMvup.png](https://i.imgur.com/CYRMvup.png)

[2] [https://www.avsforum.com/forum/44-movies-concerts-music-
disc...](https://www.avsforum.com/forum/44-movies-concerts-music-
discussion/193395-favorite-movie-lines-ever-4.html)

------
ctvo
I hope someone accurately attributes SomethingAwful.com to these early iconic
internet memories.

Image macros, the lowest form of comedy on SA, became memes and is still the
lowest form of comedy.

~~~
ProAm
Does SA predate 4chan?

~~~
jnosCo
4chan was born of a banned SA user.

~~~
v64
This is a great interview[1] about Something Awful featuring creator Rich
"Lowtax" Kyanka. The Something Awful forums had a board called Fuck You and
Die, which was a predecessor to 4chan's /b/. YTMND's lineage to SA is
acknowledged here as well.

If you used to post on the SA forums, you'll probably get a load of nostalgia
hearing this again[2]

(this was the background music of the board where deleted threads went to die)

[1] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-
die-a...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzg4yw/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-
history-of-something-awful)

[2] [https://youtu.be/9_NqFgYJWn8?t=204](https://youtu.be/9_NqFgYJWn8?t=204)

------
jbattle
YTMND was the first time the notion of memes (in the dawkins sense of the
word) made literal sense to me. There were a somewhat limited number of
themes/motifs -> memes that you'd see combined and recombined. Some were more
pervasive than others. Most of them spread with little to no relation to their
original meaning/purpose/context. It was interesting to watch the meta level
of the thing

------
mlmartin
Nothing makes this less sad. Not even Doom music.

~~~
asdfman123
Wanted: someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke.

~~~
wyldfire
This thread contains references to a film called "Safety Not Guaranteed" [1].
;)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_Not_Guaranteed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_Not_Guaranteed)

~~~
mediocrejoker
Thanks.

I wonder whether the original comment about "doom music" is also a reference
to the film? I had never heard of it.

~~~
PickledJesus
It's the other way around, the film is based on a classified ad, which many
years earlier was a YTMND meme/fad. NEDM is also a classic YTMND meme.
[https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/NEDM](https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/NEDM)

It has a complicated origin, but a lot of YTMND was organic and weird like
that.

------
bkq
It's a shame this has happened. I wonder to what extent this has been
archived, I've taken a quick glance at it on archive.org, and it seems the
main page has been well archived but I'd be sceptical if any of the "deeper"
pages so speak were archived.

It makes me wonder what will happen with similar online communities as time
drags on, and makes me sort of concerned for them too and the content that
could be lost due to their disappearance.

With the web going forward, it seems as if similar memetic communities will
primarily exist on platforms such as reddit, and possibly tumblr?

~~~
pjc50
[https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1128517332064772098](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1128517332064772098)
:

"YOU'RE THE ARCHIVE NOW, DOG: Archive Team took a full copy of You're The Man
Now Dog (YTMND) last year - should be playable in Wayback Machine now or
soonish."

~~~
nerdponx
Bless them, I should donate a little extra just for this.

~~~
RL_Quine
Remember Archive Team is not Archive.org.

~~~
cwkoss
Who is Archive Team?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Who_We_Are](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Who_We_Are)

[https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Frequently_Asked...](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Frequently_Asked_Questions)

------
djsumdog
It's as if millions of memes suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly
silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

~~~
ukyrgf
Yesterday, driving back to work from my lunch break, I thought to myself "What
was that old site with the acronym? ytm-something? You're the man now dog?
What the hell was that site?"

I was never a user, don't enjoy memes at all, but for some reason they were in
my head yesterday.

------
fredley
Who else remembers the first time they saw Blue Ball Machine?

~~~
elpool2
I do! The blue ball machine started when someone on SA posted a template gif
which other people used to make their own tile of the machine. You just had to
make sure the balls entered and exited in the same spot. I made the one where
the ball gets frozen in ice. Then all the tiles were combined into a single
gif. I remember being disappointed when the version that went viral only
included half of the tiles that people submitted.

------
Waterluvian
If you're looking for a short injection of YTMND nostalgia:

We Didn't Start This Website: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-DMIf-
WZYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-DMIf-WZYU)

------
tombert
Goodnight, sweet prince.

YTMND was a bit before my time, but I can appreciate it's place in early "meme
culture". At least Something Awful is still around.

------
jccalhoun
Sad. Back in 2000-2002 I was in grad school and I have fond memories of
setting the home page on the shared imacs to YTMND with the volume turned all
the way up and hearing it go off when someone would open up the browser.

------
kickscondor
This is crazy - was just browsing through the site a bit last week. I just
finished a project[1] partially inspired by YMNTD and spent some time...
getting inspired. A lot of the pages didn’t seem to have working audio -
perhaps modern browsers don’t allow what YMNTD required. (It seems that
gifsound.com has also had to adapt over time - you have to click a few times
to get it to play, to work around autoplay restrictions.) I didn’t check, but
I imagine the site didn’t work at all on iOS.

[1]
[https://www.kickscondor.com/slaptrash/](https://www.kickscondor.com/slaptrash/)

------
qntty
Wow, strong nostalgia. I haven't thought about that site since about 2006.
What a strange and beautiful thing it was. I still never felt like I really
understood it.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
You're the past now, dog?

------
CocaKoala
Here's my YTMND story.

My freshman year of college, 06/07, my roommate spent a boatload of time on
his laptop at his desk; he'd sleep in, skip class, and stay up late, spending
all his time on his laptop. I peeked over his shoulder a few times, and he was
just browsing YTMND constantly.

Anyways, at the end of the year in the start of finals week, somebody started
knocking on our door at like 7am or something, some time that's ungodly early
for a college student. As soon as I stumble over and open up the door,
somebody says, "This is the FBI, we have a warrant to search your room" while
naming my roommate.

Turns out it wasn't a prank, the actual FBI was raiding my dorm room to find
my roommate. They took me into a lounge "to ask some questions" and I was too
young to have fully developed my "don't talk to the cops" senses, so I went
along with it. They asked me a bunch of questions about my roommate (what
classes is he taking, what's his major, what are his hobbies, how does he
spend his time) and when they asked about his hobbies I had to say "well, he
mostly spends a lot of time browsing You The Man Now Dog online".

The fbi, of course, asks for clarification. I don't know if you've ever had to
explain the idea behind YTMND to the FBI when you're a 19 year old college
student at 730 am on a wednesday during finals week, but let me tell you: it's
not fun.

"It's a website where people make other websites that feature a tiled image
background, a looping sound clip, and some kind of word art over everything."

They look at each other, shrug, and continue with the questions until we get
to "Have you ever seen your roommate do anything inappropriate near a child",
which is probably the closest i've gotten to an actual record-scratch moment
in real life. I explain that i've never seen my roommate outside of our dorm
room, let alone off the college campus, and there just aren't that many kids
around. After that, they conclude the questioning and let me know that they
believe there's evidence of federal crimes on my roommate's laptop.

So we go back to the room, the other agents have finished confiscating his
laptop, it's around 745am, and my roommate rolls over and goes back to sleep.
So I'm like, "dude, do you want to explain to me why the fbi felt the need to
come to our room at 7 in the morning and take away your laptop?"

He says, "Oh, I was posting links to child pornography on YTMND and so now
they think there's child porn on my laptop."

I say, "Did it ever occur to you that that was a really fucking stupid idea?"

He goes, "yeah well I know that NOW", in the most incredulous tone of voice,
like he couldn't believe the FBI agents didn't understand that he was doing
this as a joke and not out of an earnest love for CP.

Later that day he called his parents and left without packing up his stuff,
and I never heard from him again; he did not continue to matriculate and I
have no idea how his whole saga wrapped up.

But now it's impossible for me to think of YTMND without a) wondering what the
fuck my roommate was thinking and b) remembering the time I had to explain the
idea of stupid internet memes to federal agents.

~~~
bartread
> I don't know if you've ever had to explain the idea behind YTMND to the FBI
> when you're a 19 year old college student at 730 am on a wednesday during
> finals week, but let me tell you: it's not fun.

Almost weeping with laughter. I can't say I've ever had that specific
experience but I've certainly dealt with clients where it's felt a lot like I
imagine that would feel.

------
hnaccy
Can you believe it you've already finished C, think you can do Matlab?

~~~
imjustsaying
think you can do matlab? you can't even do C

------
vortico
You'll Always Be The Man Forever Dog

------
AdmiralAsshat
(Refresh to sync)

------
ginko
I only checked out again ytmnd a couple of days ago and left after I saw that
all pages required flash. (Was that always the case? I thought it only
required basic HTML)

~~~
starky
Myself as well. Something reminded me of the Jean Luc Picard song and it
popped up in my search results which sent me checking out a few old ones.

~~~
cwkoss
cap tain jean luc picard u s s en ter prise

------
gre
PTKFGS too?

~~~
smcl
Don’t forget YesYes and Typing Noises

~~~
ardy42
I always liked Mario Teaches Punch the Keys For God Sake:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20060603154932/marioteachesptkfg...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060603154932/marioteachesptkfgs.ytmnd.com/)

------
seeker61
We are all prisoners of time

------
NeoBasilisk
Very sad. It's impossible to explain to someone what YTMND was like in 2004 if
they didn't experience it themselves.

------
grimgrin
[http://shrinp.com/RIP](http://shrinp.com/RIP)

------
chuckgreenman
At least leekspin.com continues!

------
davedx
Us old school WoW WSG veterans will miss catchthatdruid.ytmnd.com :/

------
yc-kraln
Well, there goes my tiny bit of internet fame. (hint: 22/7)

------
nebulous1
I wonder did they try to hand it all off to archive.org first

------
bramen
You will be missed, old friend.

------
ianseyer
you were the man then, dog

------
rexarex
ZaZaZaZaZaZaZaZaZaZaZaZaZA

------
excalibur
Noooooooo.jpg

~~~
imjustsaying
.gif

------
MikeWazowski
R.I.P

------
pastor_elm
Don't see why you would need a whole site to do what you can run off an
instagram account

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Hint: Instagram didn't exist in 2001

~~~
vectorEQ
and it wouldn't have if it weren't for these types of sites!

