Redditor JesseB342 was eager to hear examples of when a tiny bit of internet fame resulted in an expanded ego, leading them to ask:
"What’s the smallest amount of internet fame / clout that you’ve seen go to someone’s head?'
Blink and you'll miss them.
"Friend was in a video at a car meet that went viral back say 2011-2012."
"He said like 8 words and couldn’t see him but you could hear him."
"He would go around telling people after he is 'famous' for being in a viral YouTube video."
"I was like 'if you have to announce you are famous, you might not be as famous as you think Broski'."- HoneyMussy4goodBoy
It made the movie!
"My dad's collection of vintage drinking glasses were used in 'The Mothman Prophecies'."
"His glasses made the movie much better.:
"Just ask him, he'll tell you."- cleonavarro
Anyone remember MySpace?
"I made a fairly successful MySpace type quiz once.'
'Over a million people took it. I put that on my resume.''- effieokay
Social Media Hearts GIF by Flamingo ServicesGiphy"Remember when I did that thing? No? Well, you should!"
"A guy from my hometown who was sort of a skeezeball helped some elderly folks escape a fire."
'The act itself was commendable and he deserved the recognition he received in local media and he went viral for a week or two."
'But uh….5 plus years after the fact he was still using that as a way to try to get out of tickets or being cut off at the local bars after refusing to pay tabs."
"My brother encountered his Instagram recently and his self-description says something like 'Unspoken hero, DM me for details."
"lmao.'- FartAttack911
Fame can't get you everything.
"I work for a company that books luxury travel, think $20,000 packages."
"A woman contacted us wanting a free trip in exchange for posting it on her blog, proudly proclaiming that she had 800 followers."
"My coworkers' dog photo account has more followers."- AnastasiaSheppard
Even if he's not wrong.
"That dude telling Keanu Reeves that he's breathtaking."
"He would later comment on other stuff whenever breathtaking was mentioned, as if he was the one that came up with the word and made it his thing."- Sir_MoonDoggy
Keanu Reeves Reaction GIFGiphyBig ego making up for other shortcomings?...
"The guy from TikTok dancing in that parade to 'I’m just thinking with my d*ck'.”
"He went home to Indianapolis and started doing meet and greets with people at local car dealerships lol."- jkaycola
It happens to the best of us...
"I entered a blog competition to my uni the summer before I started.'
"I won, and myself and two others were given a free laptop on the understanding we'd keep publishing blogs as 'Insiders' for the uni to use as a marketing tool."
"I put one up a week, and enjoyed it."
"They were decently entertaining and linked to on the uni website, but probably got no more than a few dozen reads."
"On my birthday a few months into the year the bouncers at a club wouldn't let me in as I appeared too drunk."
"I got into a pedantic argument with them about whether the pavement was public property or not, then shouted at them I was going to write about it in my Uni-sanctioned blog."
"I woke up hungover the next day and did not write about the incident in my uni-sanctioned blog."- Fascinatedwithfire
It's one way of putting yourself out there...
"Any amount of sound cloud rappers that get a few hundred views and a few mates gassing them up and think they've found their calling."
"Source, I have to produce them."
"Money is money tho."- EddieHxtler
urban hip hop GIFGiphyBad sportsmanship will never pay off...
"Back in the day when I played Wow there was a guy on my server who had a tiny amount of name recognition."
"He was good at the game and spent a lot of time and energy organizing things."
"People on the server knew him and would ask for his help, or show him deference in order to get his attention on things."
"One day he put together an optional raid and at the end of the raid a particularly rare item dropped."
"Instead of an open roll - which was the standard at the time - he simply gave the item to his friend."
'When people complained, he said something like, 'I'm so and so, I'm the most important raid leader on this server, you're all lucky to even be here right now, so shut up and deal with it'."
'Well screenshots were taken and links were sent around."
"Dude ended up transferring off the server less than a week later because nobody would give him the time of day."- shaidyn
Blatant breach of contract!
"I was working on a movie set a few years ago, and we had a few hundred extras, and I saw a lot of them, taking selfies, of a room, and posting that they were in a movie."
"Again, extra's, you rarely see a face."
"But part of this and what we make them sign is a paper stating that when they are on set they can not take pictures of any kind and if they do their phone will be wiped, as we of course do not want anything getting out."
" Well we caught 2 people doing it, removed them from the set, wiped their phone so they had an old 'new' phone."
"Now that was fun."
"Read what you sign people."- VivaLasVegasGuy
We Get It!!!
"My friend's minecraft meme template was used for about a month and a half on r/minecraftmemes, and he wouldnt shut up about it."- WolfReadsMemes·
Surprise Microsoft GIF by MinecraftGiphyAre there at least free doughnuts?
"The kid from my neighborhood is the Krispy Kream kid from Tosh.0."- ClenchedFart
Too famous for his own parents!
"That guy on Dr Phil who said he doesn’t speak to his own mother anymore because 'she’s not relevant' and 'won’t make him anymore famous',"
"The crowd boos him, only for him to claim 'maybe they’re irrelevant too'."
"While completely awful, it may have been slightly more understandable from someone Uber-famous."
"Thing is, nobody has ever heard of this kid."
"His identity is a complete mystery, but he claims it’s important enough that he doesn’t speak to his own mum."- joe282
Father knows best...
"My father (44 M[ale]) at the time, started a small YouTube to promote/share his hobbies with the world."
"Through making friends and connections his YouTube grew to a small following around 200 subscribers."
"He did a giveaway and all, and started to talk of meet and greets and meeting his 'fans'."
"This lasted no longer than a year."- chikenluver84
Proud Schitts Creek GIF by CBCGiphyYou liked me! You really liked me!
"One guy in my high school became the most selfish, arrogant and disrespectful person after he got 1.3k likes on a video."- entomology_fr3ak
Careful the things you boast about...
"I saw a person in a Facebook group comment on someone else’s post and brag that Ben Shapiro retweeted him."
"The opposite of clout."
"The group immediately kicked him out and started making memes about the guy."- ceweston
Fame can't be bought...
"14 Followers."
"Even though following over 250 herself."
"You could instantly see 25% of them were for sure bots."
"Wanted a free 3 course meal."
" Wine and all for 3 people, at first for free."
"Said the new guest who be swarming would easily make up for it."
"Boss ended up her allowing a 3 course meal, with a very large discount, just breaking even, with her and 2 others."
"Day and time arrives, and in walks a group of 8 people, all 'Important VIP' who decided to join."
"I've never seen such stuck up kids."
"In they end, boss gave them a finger, they wanted the whole hand."
"So they got a different finger instead."
"Out of curiosity while she was bickering, I ended up talking to 2 of the attachments."
"They said 'she asked us out for dinner here, said all expense paid on anything we wanted."
"Like she had something to celebrate."
"Except for one guy, no one was following her on instagram."- NotAPotatoCube
Mariah Carey Sunglasses GIFGiphyBribery only gets you so far
"I knew a guy, a real jacka**, who ran the biggest professional wrestling server on Discord."
"How did he accomplish this?"
He paid someone on Fiverr 20 bucks to fill the server with hundreds of bots."
"The percentage of real people in the server was probably 20% or less."- ChonkyBeagle
We all like being recognized for an accomplishment.
But rather than let fame get to our heads, it's important to use that fame for good.
Particularly if you can reach as many as 100 followers to make a difference.
Redditor EzucraAaAa wanted to wax nostalgic about the good old days of technology and its humble beginnings.
"Redditors, what's something the internet was crazy about but is now forgotten?"
I miss the simplicity of not having a thousand apps. I'm simple.
Ah Memories...
"Search engines before Google existed. Alta Vista, Lycos, Web Crawler..."
deenali
the messengers aol GIFGiphyBad Downloads
"Downloading custom cursors for your computer. I gave my family computer so many viruses back in the '00s trying to click things with a lightsaber."
TW1103
"Amazing. I had totally forgotten about all the virusy stuff I downloaded to my home computer, purely so the cursor would disappear and reappear. My parents had zero knowhow with computers either, so likely had no idea wtf I was downloading. Cursors were cool though, despite all the malware."
AdderWibble
Collections
"During the early days of the web, when most websites weren't plastered with advertising... Website view counters."
over_clox
"Back in the day of counters, one day I went to my website and the counter was in the thousands. I just thought it malfunctioned and ignored it. Years later I learned that my website, which had a MIDI collection, was published in a newspaper in another country. I couldn't say for sure if that was true and whether it aligned with the counter change."
pupeno
The Look
"Yea the internet was simpler too, layout style I mean. I like old style HTML webpage layouts. I personally don’t like hyper modern logos and designs on interfaces. Something about old slightly pixelated designs about them home screens and app logos really made them satisfying. I’ve even went as far as seeing if I could install some extensions that could change the layout of sites, make them feel older, give them that 2000’s html look."
Original_Ad_1103
Found It
"Stumbleupon.com"
idont*uckwithstupid
"I used to waste so much time with stumble upon."
lilbroccoli13
Looking The Loud House GIF by NickelodeonGiphyWhat a strange and crazy place the internet was.
notification
"Poking on Facebook."
lamspartacus
"I had a friend that poked me and I never noticed the notification. He died. I now have this unreturned poke as a reminder that I’ll never be able to poke them back."
Klaus0225
Baby Love GIF by LINE FRIENDSGiphyPlaytime
"Flash games."
mc_mike810
"Many flash games are not dead. BEHOLD! The flashpoint project. They have saved thousands of the old flash games in a playable format. Go forth and relive your childhood Also paging u/The_Middler_is_Here"
Jayccob
I will find you...
"There was a rhythm game that I don't remember the name of that me and some friends would challenge each other in, and it had the song Guitar vs Piano 2 which introduced me to Envy, who was a pretty big newgrounds artist at the time. I wanna go check out their stuff again now, I'd completely forgot about them till now."
Silvervirage
GroupMeet
"Forums. There used to be so many, incredibly active and dedicated forums."
FromJavatoCeylon
"A lot of the forums I visited were ruined by photobucket when they decided they wanted paid a lot of money from their users. So many build threads and tutorials ruined."
jus_like_at
"IMDb had the best message boards back in the day. Chatting with your internet friends around the globe about every nuance in your fave movie. Man I miss that. Reddit is close, but nothing beats the olden days."
FeFiFoMums
Fun
"Do you guys remember those egg things that hatched little creatures after a while? You'd put one on your website and then the artist would update the source url with images of it hatching? There were all kinds of little fun things like that."
Sapiencia6
Egg Hatch GIF by The Roku ChannelGiphyThose were the days!
Do you have something you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments below.
I've never visited the dark web, nor do I know how to find it. Thankfully. But tell me some stories.
The Regular
Spongebob Squarepants Internet GIFGiphy"Mostly just like the regular web but with illegal stuff. Drugs, weapons, passports or Kreditcard, apparent hitman service (not sure if that was real though). It is super slow though and the link collections you find for the Tor browser are mostly dead."
PvtPill
Layers Lag
"Slow."
SixBitDemonVenerable
"Just like VPN slows down your connection a bit like 5-10% slow if it's a good VPN with it's company spending lots of money on running thousands of servers. Dark web required multiple layers of encryption and proxies just like a using 3 VPNs on top of each other so that alone makes it much slower, moreover the proxies servers are cheap low budget ones run by volunteers (and some by intelligence agencies)."
idorandombs
Ah... simpler times indeed
"I've seen scarier stuff in the untamed age of the internet than I did when going through it."
hats4bats22
"We lived in simpler times back then, I loved growing up on the internet. Back when most people didn't even know what social media was, AOL chat rooms, MSN and Yahoo chat rooms."
funnystuffmakesmelol
Not a Browse
"'What it's like.' is just websites. What you find depends on what you look for. There's a bunch of piracy sites, a lot of counter-culture blogs, sites on hacking (not just blackhat stuff, but a lot of whitehat stuff too)."
"You will also find a lot of sites in other languages too, especially ones you don't normally see, as a lot of darkweb stuff is used to circumvent censorship (the most famous Darkweb network, TOR, was developed by the US Naval Research Lab), and most major news orgs will have some sort of presence there, just as a way to get tips they can't get otherwise."
"A lot of what people assume is there, isn't as common as you might think, and a lot of what is there of that, are government-run honeypots. It's not generally a 'browse' thing, you tend to go to the darkweb with a specific topic in mind, and go to that."
P2PJones
Watching You
Glitch Snes GIF by Death OrgoneGiphy"I think of the darkweb as a honeytrap. Drugs, guns, antisocial groups. There's no way a place with that potential isn't being monitored."
5point5inch
Sounds pretty run of the mill so far. With a few naughties here and there.
Bad Clicks
computer clicking GIF by South Park Giphy"Turns out the accessing the deep Web doesn't do you any good if you don't have any idea where to go. Like I know of websites that are supposed to be on the dark web but I don't want to go to them. That seems like a short road to a long prison sentence."
TheOneWes
Window Shopping
"A lot of freaking searching for correct url’s. Idk, I was just window shopping, if you’re not there to shop, and been around for a while, it’s not that interesting."
Chickenmilk_
"This is the best way to describe the deep web imo. I tried using it once out of stupid impulsive curiosity, and it was just rather boring, slow, and overall rather tedious to use. A lot of the websites are poorly designed and dated, and that's if they work at all. Not worth it if you have no business being there and don't know what you're doing."
J0HNNY-D0E
Meh...
"Oddly boring. I disconnected and covered up my webcam. Because all of those stories I heard, people accessed your webcam. The first thing I noticed was that it was as slow as hell. Can you imagine running a livestream on this thing? The next thing I found was surprisingly weird."
"It was selling fake magazine paper or fake newspaper paper to print forged coupons on. Not a single person opened a chat window saying 'I SEE YOU! You are x in y!' No red rooms, and any videos of creepy things would probably take days to load. No links to those either. I did find fake accounts to access scientific journals though."
CrazyCoKids
Risk
"Awkward and slow to use. It's hard to find what you are looking for, even harder to find a reliable source. The only currencies used are crypto currencies and anonymity is taken extremely seriously. PGP encryption is widely used for direct messaging."
"You have access to a reliable site it is just the same as using a website url and clearnet only slower and the interface is much older looking. I won't get into any details on how its accessed for very obvious reasons but the process of purchasing is normally just found a listing on one of the market websites (think eBay only much shadier), make sure the seller is reliable by checking reviews etc and then place an order."
"You message them directly using PGP (encrypted messages only they can decrypt) with your address and pay them using some crypto. After a few days a package shows up with whatever you brought in it. Usually disguised as something else. For example what I bought came disguised as a sim card!! It's all quite similar to the clearnet just with more security steps added in and a bit more risk!"
Cheekythrowaway69420
Rarities
Working On It GIF by KAT BALLGiphy"I haven't, but a guy I watch on YouTube used to do a weekly video series where he would look at stuff on the deep/dark web."
"Obviously for video purposes he was showing stuff that was YouTube friendly, but he frequently talked about how the dark web is pretty boring, and 99% of the stuff on it would be perfectly fine on the normal web. Yes, illegal content does exist, but it's actually pretty rare in the grand scheme of things."
Zoomii555
Letdown...
"Boring. There was a page with a bunch of links to illicit things that were probably just the FBI or some other glowie organization."
simpkill
"I agree. The creepy illegal websites Are either honeypots or scams. Dread is a reddit for the dark web but that's it. There aren't effective search engines but you can find postings of the onion addresses of websites but half the time they don't work."
crustybuttplug
American prices...
"Drugs mostly. Insanely cheap prices as well. I could get 20g of molly for like 4g's worth here. Boy that cra[pwas risky. Glad I don't do that anymore mostly."
Sm0ahk
"Where was that? All the drugs I ever saw were substantially above street prices. Like people were buying crap at normal street prices then trying to make a profit by selling on tor. At least American prices. Are you in Australia? I hear stuff is crazy expensive down there."
People
"Word of mouth. If you don't know people. You're just going to end up nowhere. Website urls are more like passwords... And you won't find them listed anywhere. Then there is the surface shit that's crawling with law enforcement and honey pots."
AiharaSisters
"TOR has a bunch of search engines at least. If you fool around a bit you can find sites that work. ZeroNet has a bunch of indexes, so finding sites is a lot easier. But once your curiosity is satisfied, there isn't really anything there to keep you interested."
SixBitDemonVenerable
Who Knows
"Ten years or so back, it was crawling with under-age porn. The Dark Wiki at that point had links to several sites. And people would post links to others in comment threads. Then Anonymous (or someone claiming to be Anonymous) took an interest and hijacked a lot of the sites and shut them down. I'm assuming that there is still a lot of that traffic but it isn't easy to find. There must be some, as I keep hearing about arrests. I haven't looked around for a year or two, so I don't know what it is like now."
rock_and_rolo
Ratings
Giphy"Dark markets for drugs are the equivalent of a black market eBay. The sellers have ratings and everything."
Soggy_asparaguses
That's Depressing
"I was always curious what was on the dark web, I've heard some stories, but when I went on I had no idea what I was looking for so I just went to my usual sites like ESPN and shit, lol."
CaptainSlappyBear
"It's literally just unlisted websites you can't google. Conceptually it's really not that exciting. Media just likes to hype it up."
snek-without-oreos
Guns. Guns. Ammo
"I didn't do it directly. My friend showed me. He used to use it to get drugs for self use or to sell to close friends. Nothing hard, but like mdma, acid, dmt, coke. Anyway, it was about 8-9 years ago and all I really remember is pages and pages of guns and drugs for sale like it was eBay or something."
"It was honestly pretty crazy just seeing lists for any drug you can think of or damn near any gun like I was scrolling through any typical online shop. He showed me other weird stuff, but nothing too insane to be remembered. I do remember seeing some hitman ads though."
InanimateSensation
Let's Chat
"Not as terrible as games and media made me think of it. It isn't riddled by hackers and murderers. Although one time my antivirus blocked a trojan and I didn't download anything so not sure what that was about. There was a website to chat with random people on the dark web and I found someone exactly like me who was just curious about it."
kryptek_86
Well that is underwhelming but comforting. Maybe there is more good in the world than sleaze.