Homage to Strong Bad | Hacker News Reader

Homage to Strong Bad

verydistantlands.substack.com

53 pointsearthboundkid22 comments

>> The internet of that era [2000-2007], when Homestar was at its peak, was an era of compartmentalization. Corners of the internet were much robust, and more walled off from other corners. Indeed, perhaps it was that every walled-offness that made them so robust, that providing a sense of being in on the joke when others weren’t. That’s what Homestar was, above all else; a joke that a select few got, and everyone else didn’t.

There's a lot to be said for compartmentalization, because it permits diversification.

If there were 100 different clones of Meta, each with approximately equal user counts, the world would be a better place. And a more interesting one.

Most detrimental effects are a consquence of everything-reach platforms.

I use, on average, 5 HSR quotes per day. Even now in 2023.

Teen! Girl! Squad! Cheerleader! So and so! What's her face! The ugly one!

"My blood hurts" and "wave of babies" are phrases I still say with some regularity

"Possums..."

MSG-ed!

"Garbage disposal, what a way to go! Garbage disposal- meet so and so."

Still stuck in my head to this day

>But they were able to maintain control over their creation, in artistic and financial terms, because they refused to let it too big. They didn’t sign a network deal. They didn’t syndicate a comic strip. They cultivated a cottage industry, and made certain not to get any bigger.

What spin, basically they became irrelevant because instead of growing, they died.

But there was still... TROOGDOOOORRRRRRR

TROOGDOOOORRRRRRRTROOGDOOOORRRRRRR

That is okay though. They had a good run, and they are burned into the memories of many fans from that era. Not everything needs to grow forever. Some things grow for a minute, then die, leaving the world a better place in their passing.

Or they burninate the country side, whatever. :)

+1 for not selling out

Call it like it is. You can be Instagram rich, because you scaled and sold your company to a heartless corporation... or you can not.

Both life choices, and no sense lauding the latter over the former just because it lets Systrom and Krieger have fuck-you yatch money, while Meta continues screwing up the world.

I mean, Trogdor got a video game on XBOX Live Arcade. That was about as big as you could make it without going full Hollywood, and that was ok.

Only FRIENDS and the like ever had anything get more than 5 million views. Now that's trivial. So it doesn't mean anything.

"Became irrelevant"?

They made a decent living for a number of years off of their creations, without having to sell the rights to some mega-conglomerate and without ending up in the kind of sudden-celebrity death spiral you see all too often.

They're still producing Homestar Runner content today, though at a much slower pace (I presume it no longer pays the bills on its own).

If your only metric of "success" is becoming a massive celebrity and being a household name for the rest of time, then I think you've got both a very skewed idea of what is possible for 99.999% of people, and, in all likelihood, a very frustrating future ahead of you.

Paying the bills lifetime.

"You shanked my jengaship."

"We're playing Connect 4."

So many memories. I always wondered what happened to them. Did they ever make a TV show?

Not that I'm aware of, but they did have a videogame

The most recent thing i saw was Strong Bad doing let's plays on ancient games, including modding them on the fly, which was highly entertaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvscxQN1JlA&list=PLSFI7mabpY...

Not a Homestar Runner show, but they were heavily involved with Yo Gabba Gabba.

I love making my kids watch that so they get a proper musical education.

Matt Chapman has a day job as animator/writer at Disney (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1480095/). I'm not sure what Mike Chapman is up to. They still manage to put out H*R content every so often. Usually it's just a yearly Halloween costume montage, but there have been a few small games like Marzipan Beef Reverser and the recent Dangeresque point and click adventure remaster that released a few weeks ago.

Pom Pom and Strong Bad are totally going out!

This prompted me to finally get round to making The System Is Down my PagerDuty ringtone.

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