Old internet humor has not aged well
"Had to be there at the time" really does describe a lot of old internet humor.
Internet humor has always been weird because it's completely different compared to what a professional comedian does.
When you watch a professional comedian's act, even if it's something old, you can still get a good laugh out of it. An exmaple of this is Buddy Hackett Live and Uncensored from 1983. Sure, that was made almost 40 years ago at the time I write this in 2021, but those are jokes that work because you can follow along with what's going on.
Then there's internet humor. A lot of it revolves around whatever is popular at the time, tech and games for the most part.
An example of this is College Saga:
In order to find this funny, you have to know what video game it's parodying. If you don't, then the humor is totally lost.
Another is Star Wars Kid:
This was a massively popular video, but for anybody that watches it today, all they see is a kid haphazardly swinging a pole around. It's just a little funny at best.
And here's one just with an image:
There's so much stuff you have to know in advance just to understand this.
- You have to know it's from Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show that ended its run in 1994 (close to 30 years ago as of 2021).
- You have to know it's the character Captain Jean-Luc Picard from that show.
- You have to know that the image is supposed to represent frustration out of annoyance, and not just being tired.
You even have to know when someone types *facepalm*, they're referencing the above image.
Ridiculous.
I try, but don't always succeed, not to use internet humor or slang in what I write here, because I know there's little chance anybody in the future would understand what it even means.