Me too

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The short phrase "me too" became an internet cultural phenomenon during the early and mid 1990s on Usenet, a massive distributed bulletin board system.[1]

Contents

[edit] Background

Typically, the trigger for a "me too" post on Usenet came when one user would post a message to a group requesting information that would ordinarily be considered very interesting to multiple participants in the group.[2] This inevitably lead to multiple follow-up posts by other users consisting simply of "me too".[3][4]At times this sort of "information begging" reached ridiculous levels, with dozens of "me too" posts tacked on to a particularly juicy original request. Although not exclusive to them, AOL users were particularly infamous for this sort of post, having gained access to the Usenet network during this period, flooding it with a new population of less net-literate (and probably younger) users.

The "me too" phenomenon seems to have largely died out, probably due to the growth of the World Wide Web, search engines and peer to peer networks, which made much more information (including music and software) available and easy to obtain without help, and to the decline in popular usage of Usenet.

Even while in popular use, the "me too" post was the object of ridicule by many experienced internet users.

However, while the phrase "me too" gained worldwide popularity via the internet, it had been in common use at least two centuries prior.[5]

[edit] Examples

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A joke related to "me too" involves treating the second word as the number two, indicating how many people so far agree with the statement made. Follow-ups may include "me three", "me four", and so on.[citation needed]

An example ridiculing stereotypical AOL users that can still occasionally be found on Usenet goes: <AOL> me too </AOL>.[6] This example references SGML tags which are supposed to add to the in-joke as most AOL users (and other newbies) will presumably not know what SGML tags are and how they work, and so will not get the joke.

In the song "It's All About the Pentiums", "Weird Al" Yankovic refers to "posting 'me too' like some braindead AOLer."

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Dern, Daniel (1994). The Internet Guide for New Users. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070165114. 
  2. ^ For example the question, "Hey guys, know where I can get some porn/warez?" in a group devoted to these or similar topics.
  3. ^ Edwards, Margaret (2001). The Internet for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals. Springer. ISBN 0387952365. 
  4. ^ Ackermann, Ernest (1994). Using Unix. Que. ISBN 1565296192. 
  5. ^ First recorded mention is from 1745. Another example from 1873 (by Louisa May Alcott Work II. xi. 336) ‘Me too!’ cried little Ruth, and spread her chubby hand above the rest. (Oxford English Dictionary, online edition)
  6. ^ Raymond, Eric S. AOL! in Jargon File. Accessed on October 5, 2007.

[edit] See also