How YTMND Taught Me How To Write

Why "posting" is the only thing that matters on the internet, and in the arts

YTMND, also known as “You’re The Man Now Dog,” is a website that allows the user to create digital collage art and a webpage hosting it. The collage art, known as a “YTMND,” consists of the image, sound, and text. The image could be static or an animated .gif, the sound can be .wav or .mp3, and the text is optional, where it can be placed on the top, middle, or bottom. The first YTMND was “You’re The Man Now Dog,” and originally was published as a .com website, and soon after, as a .ytmnd link as well.

Way before the word “meme” was ever commonplace, the YTMND community used the word “fad” to describe artistic trends within collage art.

I have contributed to over 500 YTMNDs and published over 3,000 comments under the name “pilleater” for YTMND.com. I am also the mastermind behind the “Mr.Krabs” face-place “fad.” I was the first user to ever publish the first Mr.Krabs YTMND and the first to spam it against Moon Man as a rival fad.

The purpose of YTMND was for users to create their personal humor websites, just like what the founder Max Goldberg did with “www.dustindiamond.com” or “www.getyourassbacktomars.com.”

This interest came from novelty, “self-contained” websites like “www.hamsterdance.com.” Hamster Dance worked on a Windows 95 computer, the page featured animated .gifs, and the sound looped continuously. Goldberg wanted to give this power to the user without the hassle of buying a domain name and the hassle of buying data, and hosting fees. The “.ytmnd” became the new standard for art websites from 2004 to 2016. YTMND helped pioneer the concept of “meme” humor on the internet, “shitposting” as an activity, absurdist humor, and nostalgic tripping as an art. Unlike Newgrounds, which required the skill of animating in Flash, YTMND allowed the user to simply upload a picture and sound they liked, and claim the art as their own, as Marcel Duchamp did with his work, “Fountain.”

What does art become when we own and reinterpret something and call it ours?

The act of “posting” can be defined as “a piece of writing, image, or other item of content published online, typically on a blog or on social media.” (Oxford Languages, 2023)

What this implies is that “consent” is the supposed “value” of the “post” in question. As I have written before, Internet art can exist outside the realm of “content,” and exist in the implosion of “dark data,” where data is produced to fill up the endless void of the internet. This history can be traced to the Amiga “demoscene” and the interest in computer programming. “Content” is a skewed understanding of value and its purpose. Art is not “content” either. To assume all data, and even art, on the internet is “content” is a ludicrous statement. Not once did anyone on YTMND suggest their sites were “content” meant to be eaten and disposed of. That is why it is worthwhile to discuss the act of writing and how YTMND, in many ways, is now the written prose of the 21st century.

My first YTMND ever was posted on December 7th, 2008. It was called “Nintendo Toys,” and it was just a slideshow of Nintendo toys, I liked, with the theme of The Price is Right. A user by the name of “HerbSewell,” wrote this the same day about my YTMND:

“This is probably one of the most pointless YTMNDs I've ever come across.”

Another user, hdofu, replied, “You've been here a year now, get yourself together, there are plenty of more pointless and quite insane ytmnds.”

HerbSewell replied,

“Exactly, insane. This has nothing, just a montage of toys. It's not even stupid enough to be dryly humorous.”

Oddly enough, my recent long and sincere criticism of Danny Wolfers was dubbed as “insane” by a user named “Phylopn” in 2023. I could ignore it and move along, but it begs the question of why a normie in 2008 would call my harmless and interesting work “insane” then, as my intellectual and calm work in 2023 is still “insane” today.

The difference in the past is that I was illiterate, young, and 17, and was making art based upon my feelings to express, and presented to others who I thought would benefit from such esoteric knowledge I knew. This “value” in question has none because HerbSwell and hdofu don’t respect a teenager’s love for the interesting, as there is still someone who calls my Danny Wolfers’ criticism “insane,” 14 years later! What is “value” then, if both the illiterate and literate are shunned, shamed, and ridiculed in an environment that hunts after the innocent?

We could argue and say these subjects are idiotic and consumer slaves, but it begs the question of how many of them surface on the internet and in society. What kind of society forces us to create “content” that will be shot down anyway at the whims of these morons? Therefore, the concept of “dark data,” and data having no value, is ironically, of more “value” than what people look for. What is the point of creation if the value is subjective? It should be an act of virtue to produce without value and meaning, as data is the only thing left that expresses anything on the internet.

By directing what a YTMND is, we realized that there is no “content” in question, and rather, it is the expression and language about something. We can say that YTMND sites are a language, and what matters is how we speak it and how we communicate more complex ideas with YTMNDs. However, can a YTMND be that intricate?

The Chinese language over the English language has a peculiar understanding of memorization because it relies on Chinese readers to memorize characters and icons related to a person, place, or thing. In English, we contrast many words of different origins together, in a forward line of thought, of adjectives and conjunctions, till we describe the complex which cannot be done through a single picture. The Chinese language relies on singular pictures to get across the complex, while the English language relies on plural processes for the complex. We can say that YTMND sites, and the presentation of pictures and symbols, act like the Chinese language.

In 1985 and 87, philosopher Vilém Flusser noticed this technological influence upon our language of the future, and contemplated these thoughts in two volumes: Into the Universe of Technical Images and Does Writing Have a Future? In essence, writing cannot have a future if it relies on other technological means, like YTMND websites or YouTube videos, to compound complex thoughts with the ease of pressing a button and watching a picture play. No longer do people have to learn to read or write when the new “reading” in question is looking at pictures, and the new “writing” in question is “posting,” or “curating” pictures online. Technology has created a new language based upon symbols, and in its Umberto Eco style interest in semiotics. There is a sign, which has the signified and the signifier. The Chinese language and YTMND sites tend to “signify,” while the English language and the complex tend to be the “signifier.”

In René Magritte’s painting, “La Trahison des Images,” we see a painting of a pipe, and not a real pipe itself. “This is not a pipe!” It is a painting of a pipe!

And when we see YTMNDs, we see technical images from our flickering computer screens. These are not real people or things, but cartoons and caricatures of things that exist outside the internet! And yet, in the last 30 years, we rely so much on the internet for our social circles, our “social media,” and “connections” we could make, “IRL,” (in real life) if we were just consumers and become an active avatar on the internet.

YTMNDs are “posts,” like anything else in the digital world. Only data can exist on the internet, and the action of “posting” feeds into its ever-expanding universe. What is art then, if all of our expressions boil down to data, which can be fed into an idiotic mass of people, that “consent” to such a virtual prison? As society declines, people become decadent. Technology may accelerate, but it is used not to benefit the welfare of people, but as an insidious device to socially control people, and to make sure they never leave the farm, always being a specter of a spectator, of faked lived experiences, and stories around consumption and “knowing” someone or something without any real bonds.

When I was a teenager using YTMND, I knew I could change the platform for good. I knew when I signed up on December 7th, 2008, that I could become a “famous” YTMND user, and people would like my sites just like everyone else. I could be “the YTMND guy” and get big by posting internet collage art. There was nothing like it back then, and still to this day, it holds up as revolutionary technology around internet collage art. I believe I created a powerful impact on YTMND. Although I am recognized in small niche circles, from the Moon crew and Mr.Krabs aficionados, I have left a lasting influence on YTMND culture and site creation. Users like HerbSewell and hdofu will scoff at my lasting power because they are both engulfed in envy and jealousy and in straight-up denial that I changed the platform, whether they admit it or not. That I believe is still the mentality of Athe merican people today, and their vile and arrogant nature around consumption of the self.

Today, a children's book can be manufactured with the use of artificial intelligence. AI can construct and create images suited for a children's book, and all the artist has to do is place the pictures on the recto side of the book and write whatever on the verso. At this point, is a children’s book author an artist? He no longer contributes the paintings or the cartoons that go with the text and relies on a machine to do it for him. It is safe to say that the children’s book artist has become a writer, or a “novelist,” working with the English language, and what could be done through signs. Marcel Duchamp predicted that the future of AI and the arts would rely on a type of managerialism rather than any type of physical, blue-collar effort to produce the work. Curation becomes key to expression, and like on YTMND sites, we take what we want, and we call it our own.

Unfortunately, this futuristic discipline has its limits. We as people start to rely on shortcuts, on lazy excuses of non-expression, and let others automate things for us. We become more stupid and more profoundly dumb when we rely on others to paint an expression for us. Hence, we start to get niche ideologies, “readymade” aesthetics, and a fictional “imagined community” that will always be there for us, when we demand it, like a McDonald’s cheeseburger. The individual, and outsider, under automation, is shunned as “a nobody,” and is further dehumanized as not existing. We have a right to work on ourselves (like a bodybuilder who works in the gym), and by learning how to read, write, and speak, we can argue, create, or whatever art we like. This is important because there are so many forms of intellectual thought that are currently shunned and ignored, simply because there are no existing semantics, counter-arguments, or expressions available to the public.

Realize that YTMND sites, and “graphic novels,” cannot express greater thoughts than the signified image. Like the creation of hieroglyphics or runes, we end up realizing that the English language itself is the continuation of the expressive image of the signified, but through processes and inventions, we created a better language to fulfill the creative and intellectual desires found in Finnigans Wake. It is not possible to do a “graphic novel” of Finnigans Wake, as the language in the text supersedes the collage of drawn images to make coherent sense. The English language provides an advanced, profound intellectual complexity that a painting or drawing can ever match. The English language, in a way, like the Chinese language, creates miniature paintings out of every single word. When they say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” they also mean “a word is worth a thousand pictures!” We have come to realize that the writer is also a painter, and the novel itself is the ultimate art form.

The YTMND “site” is just a post with a simple message. But the digital “letter” is a post with a complex message!

When I write another “blog post,” I am writing a public “letter” to everyone literate enough to read and decode what I wrote. The YTMND site is for simpletons who let the visuals “read” for them. The letter retains the power because the reader has to put in the effort to read and do the work. I realized that the YTMND site and the letter are the same thing: a post on the internet. Writing letters is more gratifying than posting YTMNDs, as the letter can have an influential power upon the reader, and describe an expression of an intellectual idea that aesthetics cannot convey.

It matters whether the reader can read the letter or not. I couldn’t read letters back when I was 17. 14 years later, after trial and error and learning many skills to increase my intelligence, I can finally describe, write, read, and speak of the things I wish to tell the world. Unfortunately, people like HerbSewell, hdofu, and Phylopn are illiterate slaves who still react to the outside world as “insane.” They refuse to leave Plato’s cave and are in love with the phantoms on the wall.

When we write letters, we have more power than any vague YouTube video or silly cartoon has over us. Writing letters is exactly like creating a YTMND in 2023. The only issue is that I wish I had written 500 letters in the 1000 to 2000 word count range and made an impact on literate people who would transform the reality around them.

We need to write more letters. This letter, or this web page hosting this letter, is like any other YTMND site you can view. It might not have pictures, funny music, or explosive slogans, yet the letter does consist of a language that you can decode, and see 1,000 pictures from.

I write in the same tradition as a demoscener makes visuals for an Amiga 500, or a musician “writes” a .mod music file for Protracker. Consider my writing and publishing letters as a continuation of this tradition and the advocacy of producing dark data against everything else.

The letter is a “self-contained” program of its own, ready to be executed by the reader.

-pe

8-7-2023