YTMND

Yourethemannowdog.com, the original YTMND site.

YTMND, an acronym for "You're The Man Now, Dog!", is a website community that centers around the creation of YTMNDs, which are pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file. YTMND is also the general term used to describe any such site.

Origin

The first YTMND was created in 2001 by Max Goldberg at his yourethemannowdog.com website. It consists of a repeated photo of actor Sean Connery and, in large zooming text, "YOURE [sic] THE / MAN NOW / DOG.COM". A recording of Connery saying "You're the man now, dog!" from the film Finding Forrester repeats continuously. The site had originally contained the text "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG DOT COM" written with Figlet.[1]

Goldberg's new creation inspired others to make similar sites with other movie and television quotes. At first Goldberg maintained a list and mirror of these sites but the list started to get very large. In 2004, rather than continuing to maintain the list, Goldberg created ytmnd.com. His site lets anyone become a member and create their own YTMND by uploading a sound file, uploading a graphic file and optionally entering text to display. Very quickly the site caught on in popularity and became an Internet phenomenon when major weblogs began linking to the now infamous "Captain Picard Tribute". (see external links). Goldberg's site received further publicity when The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about the phenomenon and discussed several of the more popular YTMND creations.

History

According to an interview with Max Goldberg, he purchased the domain name yourethemannowdog.com after seeing the commercial for Finding Forrester. He didn't know what to do with it, so he created the YTMND image and sound loop as a placeholder. For two years, he never promoted the site, but others found it through search engines and were moved to create variations of it. In April 2004, Goldberg created YTMND.com as a database and web hosting center for them, and it took off as a fad.[2]

When YTMND first opened, newly created YTMNDs were unmoderated and therefore a certain portion of them were highly offensive. The site also featured forums but on October 14th, 2004, Max Goldberg, without any warning, inexplicably shut down the YTMND Forums and banned the chief users, citing tension between himself and the website's host—though they have since reopened. The site as a whole was temporarily closed in December 2004, with Goldberg forwarding the site to the original yourethemannowdog.com without notice.

It was open again for a short while in January 2005, and in late March 2005 Goldberg reopened the site with a number of new features including the moderation of YTMNDs. In October 2005 a stricter moderation system went into effect which deleted many YTMNDs and added user age verification (through a new site called ytmnsfw.com) before displaying any offensive or unmoderated YTMNDs. On November 26th 2005, as part of Max's campaign to update the look and functionality of ytmnd, YTMND radio was started.

On November 25, 2005 YTMND relaunched on new servers, sporting an entirely redesigned layout [3]. Updates included user names in the URL, as opposed to numbers which had previously been the norm; faster caching and new content boxes, with the promise of more features to come soon.

Fads and memes

For more information about YTMND fads and memes please see the list of YTMND fads article.

The content of YTMND remains one of the most definitive examples of memes and memetics on the Internet. The format of the original YTMND has obviously become self-replicating in nature, and fads in the subject matter of YTMND's are fairly rampant. As memetic "mutations" occur, new influences come in, intertextuality builds and some YTMNDs become phenomenally popular, after which other members come up with ways to create alternate "spins" on this YTMND, after which more "spins" are formed. Many of these fads had previously or have since spread to the Web as a whole. By this point, the topic of the original YTMND could be—and usually is—considered a great fad.

External links

Warning: The following websites may contain images of violence, shock images or otherwise offensive material.

• YTMND
• YTMNSFW companion site for offensive YTMNDs
• YTMND forums
• Yourethemannowdog.com, the "original" YTMND site
• YTMND Radio
• First image on www.yourethemannowdog.com
• Example of a YTMND - The Asiacopter, previously the most viewed YTMND.
• Animated YTMND - A example of an animated YTMND
• [4] - MySpace Suicide, the current Most Viewed YTMND.
• YTMND the screensaver - Windows screensaver using live YTMND data
• The Picard Song - One of the most popular YTMNDs.