You’re the Man Now Dog, a pioneer in the internet meme space, has shut down.
The online community at YTMND.com allowed users to upload an image or a GIF and pair it with audio for hilarious results. Traffic to the website, however, dried up years ago with the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In 2016, site creator Max Goldberg said YTMND would likely shut down soon due to declining ad revenue and his ill health.
“It seems like the internet has moved on,” Goldberg told Gizmodo at the time.
The site dates back to 2001 when Goldberg paired a looping audio clip of Sean Connery uttering the line “You’re the man now, dog!” with some text and placed it all on a webpage, Yourethemannowdog.com.
In 2004, Goldberg expanded on that with a site that let users pair images with audio, so they could create clips and post them online. The end result was YTMND, which by 2006 was reportedly amassing 4 million visitors a month and 120,000 contributors. By 2012, it had almost a million pages devoted to user-created memes. But it couldn’t compete with the rise of social media and the smartphone.
What prompted Goldberg to finally pull the plug on the site in recent days isn’t clear. He and the site didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. However, all the pages have been saved on the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine. So you’ll still be able to enjoy all the site’s content for nostalgia’s sake.
Source: Internet Meme Pioneer YTMND Shuts Down | News & Opinion | PCMag.com
A real real shame
Robin Edgar
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