Mr. Kottke’s post about early web art got me prevaricating off down memory lane. I posted a big list in his comments (which I will post below this). But, what came rushing back after I posted my comment was Bob the Anal Fissure. Of all the horribly gross and funny things that showed up on the web in the “early” days of the my experience with it (1995). I remember sitting there at work, trying to stifle giggles as I talked to people on the phone and tried to fix their horrible 9600/2400 modems. Not for the faint of heart.

And the original list:

• All those “X Ate My Balls” sites
• Birdhouse.org and all those great early art pieces.
• Art.net – one of the first online galleries that I ever saw. It blew me away.
• Netscape 3.0 Beta 3 (I think) that allowed you to have animated gifs as your background. I personally crashed dozens of browsers with my original site (‘lo those many years ago).
• The SGI Cool Zone in Netscape 2.0.
• All those cool things that didn’t last – VRML 1.0, Virtual Places and The Hub (one of the first 3D avatar chat systems).
• AOL 2.5 with its horrible web browser (booklink), but with the buddy list, which revolutionized IM.
• GNN – Global Network Navigator was a site (think early Yahoo) that was once more popular than Yahoo.
• Webcrawler

Go create your Captain Underpants name at GeekGrrl. I couldn’t resist, and I am proud to report that my Underpants-generated name is Squeezit Applekisser. I couldn’t be happier. Max’s is Skipper Applekisser, and Jen’s is Zippy Applekisser, and her maiden name is Applepants.