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YTMND

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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 Jew Maxberg 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 in ASCII art.

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). However, on November 6, 2005, another YTMND known as "Batman: ualuealuealeuale" took Picard Song's reigning title as most viewed YTMND with just over 1,370,000 views.

History

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.

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 fad.

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