Internet time machine / 2001

2001, kept in the archive.

Backdrop

The Internet in 2001

Screenshot of Wikipedia’s homepage from March 2001.

Year reference

Wikipedia’s early homepage

Collaborative knowledge was still an experiment.

Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • Wikipedia launched, making collaborative knowledge a daily web habit rather than a radical experiment.
  • Broadband was spreading slowly, but the web still rewarded sites people returned to on purpose: Flash cartoons, forums, and fan communities.
Read Wikipedia’s history

Archive order

Archive picks

01

Strong Bad Email video preview

Web post · Flash web series

Strong Bad Email

A masked wrestler checked email on a fake computer and accidentally built one of the web’s great comedy universes.

flashweb serieshomestar runner
Archive score97

02

Creator-uploaded Newgrounds artwork for Neil Cicierega’s Hyakugojyuuichi!!

Video · Animutation and Flash collage comedy

Hyakugojyuuichi!!

A frantic Flash collage turned a Japanese Pokémon ending into an intentionally nonsensical new kind of web joke.

flashanimationanimutation
Archive score91

03

Neurotically Yours video preview

Web post · Adult webcomic and animated comedy

Neurotically Yours

A goth writer and her permanently aggravated squirrel turned a personal webcomic into a long-running online complaint department.

webcomicflashfoamy
Archive score89