Me too
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The short phrase "me too" became an internet cultural phenomenon during the early and mid 1990s on Usenet, a massive distributed discussion system.[1]
Background
Typically, the trigger for a "me too" post on Usenet came when one user would post a message to a group requesting information that would ordinarily be considered very interesting to multiple participants in the group.[2] This inevitably led to multiple follow-up posts by other users consisting simply of "me too".[3][4]At times this sort of "information begging" reached ridiculous levels, with dozens of "me too" posts tacked on to a particularly juicy original request. Although not exclusive to them, AOL users were particularly infamous for this sort of post, having gained access to the Usenet network during this period, flooding it with a new population of less net-literate (and probably younger) users.
The "me too" phenomenon seems to have largely died out, probably due to the growth of the World Wide Web, search engines and peer to peer networks, which made much more information (including music and software) available and easy to obtain without help, and to the decline in popular usage of Usenet.[original research?]
Even while in popular use, the "me too" post was the object of ridicule by many experienced internet users.[citation needed]
Examples
A joke related to "me too" involves treating the second word as the number two, indicating how many people so far agree with the statement made. Follow-ups may include "me three", "me four", and so on.[citation needed]
An example ridiculing stereotypical AOL users that can still occasionally be found on Usenet goes: <AOL> me too </AOL>.[5] This example references SGML tags which are supposed to add to the in-joke as most AOL users (and other newbies) will presumably not know what SGML tags are and how they work, and so will not get the joke.
The short phrase "Me too" is recently used as a completely non-related answer to a question or even as a random expression. Using this phrase in this regard is thought to have started in Ontario, Canada, but use of it has grown rapidly.
In the song "It's All About the Pentiums", "Weird Al" Yankovic refers to "posting 'me too' like some braindead AOLer."
Notes and references
- ^ Dern, Daniel (1994). The Internet Guide for New Users. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070165114.
- ^ For example the question, "Hey guys, know where I can get some porn/warez?" in a group devoted to these or similar topics.
- ^ Edwards, Margaret (2001). The Internet for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals. Springer. ISBN 0387952365.
- ^ Ackermann, Ernest (1994). Using Unix. Que. ISBN 1565296192.
- ^ Raymond, Eric S. AOL! in Jargon File. Accessed on October 5, 2007.