Terrifying mid-2000s gaming webcomics are revived on Twitter

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In: Webcomics

Video game-themed webcomics of the mid-2000s were, for the most part, very bad, but there were so much of them. Collectively, they seemed to champion the propositions that women are incomprehensible aliens within and that a person’s preference for game console makes any difference. Their heroes were often thin stand-ins for the writers, their dialogue was often very poor, and their portrayals of relationships were unrealistic. It would be great to bury this shameful chapter of the internet, but we can’t, because Twitter just dug it up. Now everyone is looking back at the dripping heaps of online comic trash they enjoyed just 10 years ago.

The unsealing of webcomics bad time capsule started with this very popular tweet from @ABigBagOfKeys, who wrote: “[in this thread] publish the greatest mid-2000s video game webcomic you can find.

Her own example is a “Girlz n Games” strip that leans heavily on the game’s overused “cake is a lie” punchline. Gate. If references to video games don’t make sense to you, just consider quoting “the cake is a lie” as the gaming equivalent of wearing a Napoleon Dynamite “Vote for Pedro” t-shirt. He overstayed his welcome in exactly the same way.

The tweet has been shared thousands of times, and the thread now has at least 50 shining examples of the mid-2k gaming comic aesthetic. Most of them had bigger problems than just a dated reference or two. The characters spent a lot of time insulting each other in ways that were more embarrassing than creative or amusing:

They also spent a lot of time objectifying women. Especially their breasts:

https://twitter.com/FleshPile/status/879553936725856256

https://twitter.com/bmore_concetta/status/879958765600198656

And by defending their favorite consoles or attacking competing systems:

https://twitter.com/strongfish69/status/879886554260426752

They also spent a lot of time attacking Conservative lawyer Jack Thompson, the anti-gambling bogeyman of the day. In the end, it proved no threat to a multi-billion dollar industry, but the creators of webcomics still insisted on passionately defending their hobby.

Many people on the comics feed shared the same sentiment: why did someone reappear these comics? It’s an uncomfortable look at a culture that hasn’t quite progressed over the past decade as one would hope.

https://twitter.com/max_read/status/879471676878180352

https://twitter.com/MadFellowsGames/status/879761470019469313

Well, it’s been, uh… fun? …to revisit this unfortunate phase in Internet history. Now let’s get to the showers.

*First published: June 29, 2017, 6:00 a.m. CDT

Jay Hathaway

Jay Hathaway is a former senior writer specializing in internet memes and weird online culture. Previously, he was news editor for the Daily Dot, was an editor at Gawker, and edited the classic websites Urlesque and Download Squad. Her work has also appeared on nymag.com, suicidegirls.com and the Morning News.

Jay Hathaway