Hamster DanceHamster Dancehttp://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/page50.index.html

The Hampster Dance or Hampsterdance is one of the earliest examples of an internet meme. Created by Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte for a simple Geocities page, the dance featuring rows of animated hamsters and other rodents dancing in various ways to a sped-up sample from the Disney song “Whistle Stop” by Roger Miller.

Deidre LaCarte, who was competing with her best friend and sister to see who could generate the most traffic, designed The Hampster Dance in August 1998 as a homage to her pet hamster, named Hampton Hamster. Using four simple animated GIFs of hamsters and other rodents, repeated dozens of times each, and a loop of background music embedded in the HTML, at the time a fairly new browser feature, she named the site Hampton’s Hampster House and had Hampton declare his intent to become a “web star”.

Until January 1999, only 800 visits were recorded (about 4 per day), but without warning, that jumped to 15,000 per day. The Web site spread by e-mail, early blogs, and bumper stickers, and was eventually even featured in a television commercial for Internet Service Provider Earthlink. The continued popularity of the site led LaCarte to a professional redesign, and the addition of an online store for t-shirts and CDs of “Hampster” music.

In Canada The “Official” Hampster Dance Song was released as a single. The video was declared worst or cheesiest video of the year by MuchMusic in the one-hour special Fromage 2001.