I tried to explain to a post-millennial what HSR was, and I told her: It was like a menu page for a streaming video website, but fun! Imagine clicking on a show in Netflix, and the entire show itself was just one long dynamic menu screen with clickable menu buttons coming and going throughout the episode. She said: Whoa... It almost seems like we kinda took a step backwards as the Internet evolved. We're gonna be okay you guys. This next generation has some good heads on their shoulders. 🥲

And what's really amazing was that all this content the Brother's Chaps put up for our entertainment was entirely FREE. No ads, no popups, no subscriptions, no patreon, no shameless plugs or sponsors, they rolled up their sleeves and cranked out cartoons, games, music, videos, the whole shebang for anyone anywhere in the world to enjoy absolutely FREE. To this day their work was entirely funded by sales of merchandise on the HR store, which you can still visit and buy stuff from, they've even partnered with FanGamer to release vinyl records like "Strong Bad Sings!" and cool plushies and even made an entire Trogdor Board game for the family fun times.

The proper words to describe what this era of the internet was like don't exist. Every day was a new adventure and I could not wait to jump online and see what I would discover. Now it's become like opening the fridge to find something to eat. Every now and then I find something great like this video. But most of the time it's the same old stuff.

"A free piece of white-collar malware that moonlighted as an animation tool" summarizes the entirety of late-90s Internet everything.

Whenever I make some Homestarrunner joke, my kids just look at me in bewilderment. Then I pull up the reference on KZfaq to show them - and they just look at me in bewilderment. “I’m sad that I’m flying.”

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is still the pinnacle of Telltale Games and no one can or ever will convince me otherwise.

Everyone loved the Homestar Runner. He was a great athlete.

Fun fact- if you downloaded sbemails to an iPod (the original, bulky type that used the dial to navigate without a touchscreen) they had a unique little animation for the beginning and end of that as well! If I remember, it involved SB being "claustrophobic" and headbutting the screen to get out, making a "shattered screen" effect. It was amazing.

Another way they rewarded repeated viewer engagement was with their borderline insane commitment to making the most obscure references to their previous content. Other shows and content were doing this but they really took it to an intensely microscopic level.

When certain friends and I are together, we basically slip into our Homestar-ian dialect of English. The cartoons age incredibly well and the humor is almost entirely impossible to replicate. Some days are just "watch Homestar for hours again" days, because I never ever get sick of them. Pure goddamn magic.

Homestar Runner was ahead of its time, and dare I say, peak internet content.

I found an old DVD of Strong Bad’s 50 Best Sbmails in the dollar bin the other day, and buddy, I picked it up SO FAST

I'm 22, and my first exposure to Homestar Runner was my Latin teacher in high school using the Trogdor episode to teach us about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

I appreciated how dial-up friendly the site was. For the big Halloween toons, they put simple games on the loading page so you could play a game while the video loaded. Also, the content itself was brilliant and hilarious.

Strongbad emails were what got me through middle/high school.

This was very well done. Too many times when I see retrospectives on Homestar Runner, it's either by people who weren't fans who don't understand how to talk about it, or by people who were huge fans who don't know how to explain why we should care about it, but I think you nailed the spirit of being a fan of a weird talking animal cartoon and still being presentable to regular people. Thanks for explaining why we all loved the easter eggs so much because finding out about them was when I really went from liking H*R to REALLY loving it back in the day.

The whole reason why Flash can do so much more than typical video animation, is because Flash isn't really a video player. It's great for making animated videos, but at its heart, Flash is basically a video game engine lite. Hence why there were so many Flash games in the years following Homestar Runner, (a lot of them remarkably high quality, considering they were usually straight up freeware.)

This took me back to a time when the internet was still a fun, magical place of discovery. It was something you purposely sat down to do, before wireless connection existed in our pockets. Man, those were good days.

It makes me sad that a generation is growing up without knowing what we gave up in interactive art when Flash died :/

Only a few years into Homestar runner I tried to find everything on the site. 7or 8 dedicated hours later, I didn't even get close. No reason to quit trying though. The amount of material is astoundingly large. Out of all the "flashes" in the pan from back then, this was engaging for many years. Seeing some of these easter eggs I didn't know about is very bittersweet since we can't interact quite the same anymore.

I was born when Homestar Runner began to fall. I recently discovered it this year. I have been saved from the pit of not knowing Strong Bad, Homestar or Teen girl squad. I love homestar runner.

That Beast Wars joke was a deep and personal attack on me specifically and I appreciated it

oh man, Homestar Runner was such a huge influence on me! Some of my silly animations I made years later were inspired by Homestar's universe. And I totally agree about how the easter eggs and bonus content made the show one-of-a-kind, you'd never see a TV show doing anything remotely as intricate. Also, come to think of it, I remember wasting countless hours playing Stinkoman 20X6 in middle school...

You perfectly captured the style and tone of sbemails in your intro skit. Man, I miss homestarrunner.

Good old homestar runner. Along with foamy the squirrel, Eskimo Bob, and Potter puppet pals t'was a big part of my youth. Thanks for the trip down memory lane 😁

You know what, I DID find the 100'th email hidden video back in the day. I felt immensely satisfied at the time. Very cool. I had totally forgotten about it too until your video.

I miss that era, things were so much more fun in the wild west before the corporate take over of the internet.

truly stunned to realize PQ was done on Stone Mountain. a 2004 me living 15 minutes from there would have melted with the knowledge.

So what you're saying is, browsers cutting flash support was a massive mistake that we might never rectify. Or something like that.

I remember noticing the “sbemailahundred” in the url (well after the release) and changed it to 100 on a whim.

Also my favorite gag of all time has to be in SBemail a hundred (or was it 150?) Where they put the site in... WIDE SCREEN! Left side brooowww. Right side brooow- wait, what are you doing there? Oh I'm always here, just standing in the black. Oh... Guess I need to start turning my head to the right more. (All these years later, and I think I mostly remembered that bit correctly!)

It's worth mentioning that Homestar Runner is not just a thing of the past, as one would assume from this video--it's still up and still putting up new content! Just... not nearly nearly as often as it used to, is alls.

"Highly specific microgeneration" and "it has seeped into the way you speak" are so alarmingly accurate. It's such a fond part of my adolescence, but I have no idea how to share it with anyone who didn't also grow up with it. It was a special pocket of the internet. And it's surprisingly been able to maintain its charm in recent videos, but that charm is only noticed by people who grew up with it. I have no clue what a first reaction from Gen Z to Homestar Runner would be like.

Lucky Yates has the most interesting career. At the same time he shot Peasants Quest he was also a regular on Good Eats.

As someone who was a regular on the homstar runner wiki and its connected forum throughout the peak years of its popularity, I can also attest that a lot of the Easter eggs the Brothers Chaps left in their videos were literally for the wiki editors. They knew that these fans would delve into everything concerning these videos, and even admitted to sometimes using it themselves to look up one-off characters and running gags.

absolutely how dare you remind me of "the end of the world" and send me into a spiral of saying "BUT I'M LE TIRED..." for another decade of my life

yooo homestar runnerrr. my college-age babysitter showed this to me when i was super little and i was OBSESSED with it

I worked an overnight job at a bank's data processing center, all alone in a server room for 10 hours straight. Homestar Runner kept me sane in my downtime. I really suffered at that job with loneliness and depression, and the site helped me get through it. I was legitimately saddened when it dawned on me the impending death of Flash would mean HR would cease to work, but I'm glad to see it's accessible again (even if some of the deeper Easter eggs no longer function). Thanks for the retrospective! You've got a new subscriber, buddy! ;)

I had a huge website made of flash with all kinds of animations and interactivity but I was a struggling street artist and couldn't afford to renew my hosting so it's all been gone for many years

Not gonna lie. I was tearing up by the end of this. This was my childhood.

Back then, part of the fun of Homestar was you felt very accomplished when you found some Easter egg because there wasn’t much info online unless you knew where to look for help. I spent hours on the site finding as many of them as I could. Long live Homestarrunner.

Back in the day, I remember in the first couple years of our marriage, my wife got me a Strong Bad t-shirt and sticker pack for Christmas one year. Still one of the best presents I ever got. She even transferred the windshield decal of strongbad to the new car when the old one kicked the bucket. So, I just wanted to say, I loved this video. Thanks.

YESSSSS THANK U Albino Black Sheep was so good but no one I talk to these days even seemed to know about it!!! “The Llama Song” was peak humor for 11 year old me.

Absolutely nailed the pacing of the first 40 seconds.

"flagrant system error" still kills me to this day.

I had to stay an extra semester in college as a part time student, so all my friends had graduated and I had to live in a rented attic room. I spent most of my free time clicking the "random" button on HSR and watching whatever came up. I still have most of the emails memorized.

Pure Nostalgia right here. I remember watching these religiously with my girlfriend at the time and hunting for Easter eggs. The System is Down still pops into my head occasionally. Of course bobbing around rhythmically singing Doo do do do DOO, The System is Down, The System is Down causes everyone to stare at you as if you've finally snapped.

The world record holder for Slay the Spire consecutive win streaks got his handle from Coach Z. It was a wonderful phenomena that will live as long as those of us who remember it. Always happy to see it getting the recognition it deserves!

Brings me back to the days of the free Internet. There's something about the challenges and limitations of the early Internet that really brought out a greater sense of inspiration than having everything laid out and spelled out for you.

GenX rep here. I was working in a DSL sport call center from 2004 to 2008, and we had an open internet policy while working. We all discovered this stuff together and loved it so much. You just brought back the feels, watching this with my 15 y.o. artist of a son. You nearly made me cry nostalgia tears 3 times and inspired him as an artist. Two new subs and thanks for the beautiful, heartwarming video ❤️

This is an amazing retrospective, and now I want to be 12 years old again 😭 And you're right, I quote Homestar Runner almost every day, even without realizing it. "Baleeted", "I can do it 9 times", and "great jorb" are some of the most comment utterances, but there are countess others (off the top of my head: "Pomp-REER!", "Oh man I HATE this guy", "stooooore", "IIIII CAAAAAAN'T SPEEEEEEELL YOOOOOOOU!", "Doo-hoo-doo-hoo-doo!", "I'ma go shower up", "I'm buying you a pizza", and simply the word "burninate")

Let us never forget the Easter Egg rabbit hole that led to Strong Sad's personal blog, which itself is a masterpiece of writing and humor. Homestar Runner is amazing because it is both very much a product of its time but also very timeless. Watching these cartoons now as an adult, I pick up on so many more subtle, nuanced references and jokes that I would never have as a kid. The Brothers Chaps tapped into a really special creative place when making Homestar Runner and I will all the time be happy I could experience it.

Gen Z/late millenial here. Found HR when I was just 9. Grew up with it since I was a little kid, at a time when nobody else my age even knew what it was. It was still worth it then and still amazing now

20:01 Remember Neopets? Their games were all Flash. Damn, good times.

I was at GenCon this week, randomly walked up to a guy holding a Dangeresque puppet, and in my best StrongBad voice said, “Dear Strongbad, how do you play card games with boxing gloves on your hands?” Imagine my shock when the guy who responded was StrongBad! I freaked out that I got to meet the brothers Chaps and they were incredibly cool that this random guy walked up and interrupted their card game. That’s 30 seconds I’ll be feeling out about for the rest of my life!

What a gorgeous love letter to not only homestar, but to flash itself. 100% sharing

Man, you just reminded me of every afternoon I spent hanging out at the college computer lab with my friends, waiting to see if the newest "Homestar Runner" just dropped, and trying not to laugh so hard that the other lab users would get mad at us.

Facebook's "homestar runner crapposting" has now been linked to this. Really hope this means a subscriber bump/takeoff for you, because your work merits a lot more exposure than it gets. I listen to a lot of youtube essay content and finding your stuff recently has been a breath of fresh air :)

There was actually a secret homepage, too. One of the games was a soundboard with voice clips of Homestar, and if you made him say the right phrase, it unlocked a Strong Bad mode. Then, if you made Strong Bad say the right phrase, it sent you to the Strong Bad-themed homepage.

I was late to the party with hsr, but thankfully my wife was not and she indoctrinated me. We quote the show all the time.

A Homestar Runner video? I see you're a man of culture as well

I got so much joy from this website over the years. The Halloween episodes were especially fun, and every ending screen was full of stuff to find. What a time.

There is a beer league hockey team that plays out of the 'Langley Twin Rinks' in Langley BC Canada that call themselves "The Burninators". Their jerseys are complete with a pencil sketched of Trogdor crest in the middle of their jersey. Homestarrunner lives on with this team.

You knocked this out of the park, and I'll definitely be checking out those Animorphs vids as well. Fantastic work!

The HTML serving as a "Curtain" I actually was aware of that, one of the most memorable experiences around that involves Strong Bad showing off a new chair, which has a back that's so high you can't see Strong Bad. That's when The Brothers Chaps actually showed him taking his mask off and showing a photo of his parents. Well, how could I resist? I downloaded the SWF file, removed the chair (I forget how to do that), but on the photo it said, "Nice Try, Dodongos!" 😏

I love how my brother described this series: dumb humor, done smart.

I can only hope that someday soon, a proper replacement for Flash is developed. Something that allows for the seamless integration of animation, video games, web design, and video streaming. Things like Homestar Runner and Homestuck were the pioneers of a whole new art medium that got unfairly shafted because Adobe wanted to streamline their apps. But for the short time that the medium existed, it was glorious. Wish I’d been an active internet user before KZfaq blew up, I’d have loved to experience H*R in real time. As it stands now, there’s just so much content to catch up on that it feels a little overwhelming. But alas, I was 4 when Homestar Runner started.

I was a massive HSR fan. This series is directly responsible putting the finishing touches on my sense of humor during my last days as an impressionable young person in the early aughts. From yelling "I'M A LONG PANTS MAN" as I dress myself, to liberal use of the word "Meh!" to delightfully exclaiming "CHOCOZUMA'S REVENGE!!" when I get frozen yogurt piled high with delicious, delicious chocolate everything. My avatar on my fitness app is a Trogdor, who burninates fat and calories. And I still learned a load of things I didn't know about the series. Great video. Also, Gregor is a weird name. Thanks for all the laughs, Brothers Chaps.

💜💜💜 I never knew anyone else who knew Home star Runner but I had a really bad lisp and LOVED him so much

My brothers and I quote Homestar, Strongbad and co. nearly daily, even now. Three cheers for the Chort!

Even with all that isn't possible anymore, the cartoons themselves are still worth watching. Very few of them even feel dated at all; they typically stayed away from current events/trends, most of the technology shown was already several decades behind at the time of release, etc. It's virtually timeless.

I consider myself a pretty hardcore fan and was certain I'd seen everything there was to see on the site, but I had NEVER seen the "stupid stuff" extra scene OR the hidden mustachio'd Homestar in Senorial Day until this video! Thank you for such an insightful deep-dive into one of my favorite things, and for masterfully tying it into the bigger picture of the cultural landscape and evolution of art and humor in the Internet age.

This is such a good video. I miss Homestar. It was so good. The death of flash really signalled the end of the Wild West of the internet.

As far as I'm aware, they're slowly trying to bring most of the features described in the video to formats like HTML, especially since now Adobe Animate exports to those formats

I cannot express the mix of nostalgia and sadness that I'm feeling watching this, but it's powerful.

Glad you made this video. Homestar Runner was a favorite of mine circa 2005-6. I had no idea how deep this website was, I wish I had known in the day.

Fun fact: if you install the latest version of the Ruffle extension, the .swf tricks you mentioned work again.

I was a few years late to homestar runner. I never really understood it but I did grasp through a single friend, that I don't know anymore, he had a passion for it that meant it must've been something special. This video helped put all the passion into perspective. Good video.

That Peasant’s Quest trailer is still one of my favorite pieces of media in existence! No one knows I’m making a reference when I say, “haldo!”

When I went back and rewatched all the sbemails in middle school (I think around 2010), I noticed the way the URLs were and being lazy I just kept typing in the next one. When I got to 100, I was ecstatic lmao, I love these guys

PREEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOW Man, I absolutely loved this back in the day and it still has a very fond place in my heart. Pretty sure I bought some absolutely random guy a beer in 2015 just because he was wearing a HSR shirt.

Great jorb!

Thanks for reminding me Homestar existed. That whole era was strange.

My favorite quote from the site was after the kickball game. Homestar said our strategy was to score more points than the other team in the allotted amount of time.

oh hey, I remember spinnerdisc even "borrowed" the dumb dinosaur music to use as theme music for a short-lived podcast I had once

I really love your editing in this video in particular. I just love a well-edited video essay and you have some of the best edited ones I’ve seen. Kudos to you and Niomi! Homestarrunner was my high school/college and I have bonded with many friends over our love of the site! My friend and I still say “Haldo” in greeting to each other. I have never stopped to think that, well, kids these days wouldn’t understand the site, how it worked, the interactivity of the Flash medium, etc. and I suddenly felt all of my almost 34 years watching this. It’s fun and strange to think about how our internet experience is so different now to how it was just 15 years ago. You really got that with the reference “what if they just stopped making movies in 1915” metaphor. Great way to explain it. I rec you to everyone as my new fave video essayist. And please don’t feel pressured to upload a specific video (regarding people asking for Animorphs 3). I know that getting more popular on KZfaq can make one feel more beholden to demanding fans. I support creating at your own pace about whatever subject you wish.

oof. this makes me really, really miss the experience of old flash cartoons. i miss how special it felt to click on a hidden button to see an extra scene, watch a cartoon on it's own page with a custom play button (and replay button at the end!), replay an animutation-- and see completely different graphics bouncing around! some elements were randomized all along and you had no clue! and now the versions up on youtube are the versions up on youtube, every frame set in stone. i know there are still ways to watch them as intended, but it still feels like the moment has passed. RIP flash.

Yooooo that 404 Easter egg blew my mind 🤯. Man round of applause to the Creator's!! 👏🏼 Hella funny! 😂

This form of entertainment needs to be revived in a new way somehow. I don't know if Ruffle can do it justice.

Ah man, that brings me back... I remember checking back everyday for new cartoons. Screw whoever was responsible for getting rid of Flash. >_

Found the site as a kid and my dad and I still quote the website introduction video to this day.

This has been the hardest video to ever watch. Because I have to constantly go rewatch all the cool videos he keeps referencing.

God I remember this being EVERYWHERE when I first got onto the internet around 2007. I spent most of my time in the Thomas the Tank Engine community, but even there this series was referenced constantly. People even crossed it over with their Thomas videos on several occasions. Even though I never saw the series itself, I'm deeply nostalgic for it because that era of the internet was so saturated with it. Glad you memorialized it here, and I finally have the full story. I gotta say, I think my version of this was Harry Potter Puppet Pals. I went crazy for the easter eggs in that as a kid, so I totally get it.

And now I will spend the rest of my evening overwhelmed with nostalgia

"If you were part of a highly-specific microgeneration of early millennials that were VERY online in the early 2000's..." Or part of a highly-specific group of Gen-Xers who had been online from the days when Usenet, BBSs, IRC, and MUDs ruled the roost, watched as the World Wide Web rose to prominence, and get nostalgic when people mention Netscape, GeoCities, ICQ, and Winamp, then you too almost certainly know what Homestar Runner is. Fantastic retrospective. Great Jeorb 'dere, Leard Ravenzcrorft!

Thank you so much for talking about this foundational cornerstone of the lonely Internet millennial childhood

I feel like not enough people fully appreciate how great even their post-flash youtube stuff is, infrequent as it may come; Mr Poofers Must Die, Characters From Yonder Website, even their original brief return with HREmail 3184 ("Aww, a weasel!")

For anyone interested in learning about Homestar Runner, they are still around. They have a KZfaq channel even and are still uploading new stuff. If you have any questions, just ask anyone at the KZfaq channel or the Reddit feed. Having been a devoted fan for fifteen years now, you can ask me as well.

My sister and I used to rewatch all the Decemberween 'toons on Christmas/Christmas Eve. I can still remember a lot of the words to the "Decemberween" song set to the tune of "Christmas Tree."

I saw the title and knew this was especially for me. I watched the first minute and a half and was struck by such intense nostalgia that I had to pause to go tell my kid about the importance of trogdor