You're the Man Now Dog
is a humor site created in 2001.
The creator, Max Goldberg, made the first site after watching the trailer to Finding Forrester. This first site (recreated here) consisted of some ASCII art and Sean Connery's "You're the man now, dog!" line from the trailer. As other people started to create their own Spinoffs of the page by copying the code, Max started listing them. Eventually the list became overly long, so Max bought an entire domain for the sites and made an easy-to-use site generator. Indeed, in the pre-YouTube days, the site became a prime breeding ground for many an internet meme. And the rest is history.
The main feature of the site was to allow users to create their own pages, or YTMNDs, using a still image or GIF animation, an MP3 file and the site's patented zooming text.
Though the site was a well-known internet humour nexus in the mid-2000s, peaking in popularity around 2006-2007 and even getting mentions and write-ups in traditional media, the site began to sharply decline in relevance and traffic in The New '10s as sites like YouTube and Facebook grew in popularity, absorbing the niche market that YTMND had originally catered to. Left largely un-updated, most of the infrastructure that the site was built around has been slowly rendered obsolete, though a small but loyal userbase kept the site profitable enough to remain running through the middle of the decade.
YTMND went down on May 13, 2019 after the site database suffered a major crash. This made quite a few news sites (and even this very wiki) to erroneously report that the site was down for good, but Max soon stated that this was not the case, and that he would commit himself to get the sites back to working order, even if it meant that new subpages could not be created. Max was able to restore the site's ability to display already existing subpages, and his focus shifted toward creating a properly working archive version of YTMND so that the site can be preserved for future generations. The website itself was revived in earnest on March 30, 2020, just in time for its 19th anniversary.
It also has its own wiki.
This site contains examples of:
- Abandoned Area: The Abandoned Theme Park.
- Alternate Universe:
- After the trailer that started it all was posted as an YTMND, many users started wondering what would have happened if Max had decided to use one of Sean Connery's other lines, namely "Punch the keys, for God's sake!" or "Yes... Yes!". Eventually, some users started creating Bizarro Universe versions of popular YTMND fads under the label of PTKFGS. Soon after, sites with the YESYES label followed, which is basically a Take a Third Option spin on the fads. Then, since Connery only had these three lines in the trailer, many users worked around it by using some of his other lines from the film to create a fourth Alternate Universe. Which one of the many candidates is the true fourth universe is still under dispute, but the general consensus seems to be that the fourth universe is in fact a Multiverse known collectively as "Fourth Corner".
- HEH is considered by some to be the official 4th Corner Universe, as it is also in the trailer. However, those against this idea point out that HEH is technically a part of the "Yes...Yes!" line.
- Let's not forget YTMNSFW, the Not Safe for Work version suitable for more mature stuff.
- The apex/nadir of the running gag was SEAOMF.
- Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Mac Tonight, an originally harmless advertising mascot who was turned into the evil Moon Man.
- Doc Louis and Little Mac training◊ in the NES version of Punch-Out!! became Little Mac pursuing Doc the bike thief with "Nigga stole my bike!" To the point that the 2009 Wii remake added a scene stating that the bike did belong to Mac.
- Cosmo Kramer is often characterized primarily by his actor's racist outburst, so he is commonly portrayed as a hot-headed racist prone to shouting the N-word at the slightest provocation.
- Darth Vader is also primarily characterized on the site by his infamous NOOOOO! at the end of Revenge of the Sith, so rather than a badass, intimidating villain, he more commonly appears as a man who is
constantly failing at things, even to the point of sympathy. - Similarly, Captain Kirk is portrayed as being obsessed with Khan to the point that he blames him for every bad thing that happens and yells at him constantly.
- Dr. Billy V. Koen, in reality a kind but slightly eccentric engineering professor, is often characterized as a sinister, threatening, or even supernatural villain.
- Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, due to his bizarre and racially insensitive 'Chocolate City' speech, is often shown as actually obsessed with chocolate, as in the food.
- In canon, Severus Snape killed Dumbledore as part of Dumbledore's own plan to help the former infiltrate the Death Eaters. On YTMND, Snape kills Dumbledore (or other random people) just because.
- Amazing Freaking Grace: Whenever a celebrity passed away, some sites would show a picture of the celebrity while "Amazing Grace" played.
- Animal Superheroes: Supercat (Happycat/The NEDM cat sometimes takes this role too)
- Antiquated Linguistics: Used in the Medieval fad (although some people get it wrong and cross the territory into Spock Speak instead)
- Backhanded Apology: A (now deleted) site by the troll jimmm was titled "I'm sorry Umfuld". The actual text of the site continued to read "IS SUCH A FAGGOT!". Funny thing is, Umfuld was an even more infamous troll.
- Big Eater: Ugoff is often portrayed this way, due to the line in his commercial where he announces "Ugoff is hungry!" Occasionally verges into Extreme Omnivore
- Big "NO!": Darth Vader's NOOOOOOO was a major fad which started from a leaked scene before the movie was released. In addition, often other characters are made to say the line
- Black Comedy Rape: Used in a lot of fads, including Moon Man (who usually goes after people's mothers), Brian Peppers (who goes after everyone), the guy who yells at cats (who goes after cats), etc. One particular site ("Sonic gives advice on anal rape") actually triggered a legal threat from Sega.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: this YTMND ranks, in order of decreasing coolness, "Users who sponsor sites", "users who sponsor sites for $0.00", "users who sponsor their own sites", and "users who sponsor their own sites for $0.00"
- Broken Record: Every site plays sound in a loop. Some sound bites are shorter than others.
- Catchphrase: In ye old days of 2006, the troll sexymofo would serially downvote any YTMND with "you fail, please try again ^_^". The trolling was prolific enough to trigger rage and memes... and inspire similar trolls to leave catchphrases of their own.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: VinnyWeapons, the user who always made the same comment: "the robots have taken me. please send help." Also, the behavior of trolls Pilleater and Johnny Lurg often reaches this territory, such as the time the former user pretended that he went blind. Two months later, he posted, "I can see again!" The user zomglolwtfzor usually epitomizes this trope, but occasionally breaks character.
- Cool, but Stupid: Most sites that randomly combine different fads end up this way. Example.
- Conqueror from the Future: Future Conan, overlord of all Earth in something like Nineteen Eighty-Four.
- Creepy Basement: The short - lived "We never go down there anymore" fad.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: "How to care for your pet Bat""
- Deconstruction: FAMILY GUY 311 EMISSION IMPOSSIBLE and Everysentenceutteredinthegodfath, both of which were mockeries of sites that posted unmodified video clips masquerading as YTMNDs.
- Dramatic Reading: "The Bauman E-mails: A Dramatic Reading" is the Trope Codifier, if not the Trope Maker.
- Dying Town: The site itself. There was a time when the internet was young (not actually, 2006 and 2007) the when front page moved so fast, it'd be different every time you refreshed. Now, it stays static for days on end. It's portrayed as a zombie town in this site, and a wasteland in this one.
- The End of the World as We Know It: "The end of our World" minifad which showed several situations as to how this could happen (some more realistic than others)
- Before that, there was 'The End of the World', which consisted of a bunch of different fad sounds mixed into an apocalyptic - sounding explosion.
- Before that, there was 'The End of the World'
- Even Evil Has Standards: Moon Man hates and protests against religious violence and child abuse.
- Evil Twin: Doctor-L337 claims to have an evil twin named "Elshteveo". Moon Man is also sometimes portrayed as one of Mac Tonight.
- Forced Meme:
- Here's a list of them.
- The "PACARD" fad started out with its creators making unrelated sites to get on the front page, which were then quickly replaced with a site about how Captain Picard has dreadlocks now.
- Here's a list of them.
- For the Evulz: Seemingly Moon Man's primary motivation, aside from racism. In addition to his huge catalogue of hate crimes, many Moon Man sites simply had him killing or tormenting random people (often the viewer of the YTMND in question) for no apparent reason.
- The Fundamentalist: Inkdrinker was a meta example. He popularized the three "fundamentals" of YTMND: image, sound, text. None of his sites contained sound-synced gifs, dubbed by adherents as "faggy short films."
- Gangsta Rap: Moon Man's shtick.
- Giant Enemy Crab: YTMND was one of the first sites to popularize the phrase, and it has become somewhat of an accepted fact that in the YTMND universe, Samurai actually did battle Giant Enemy Crabs in Ancient Japan.
- Greedy Jew: Many users poke fun at the site's owner, Max Goldberg, with this stereotype. He usually takes it in stride.
- Heteronormative Crusader: PSA Guy and his gang are often shown as this, at least on the surface, although characterization sometimes differs.
- He-Man Woman Hater: Chad Wardenn.
- Insistent Terminology: YTMND users were very adamant about not referring to their memes as such, preferring to call them "fads", because "memes" are 4chan bullshit.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: This site, which involves the Poland fad.
- Killer Rabbit: Happycat/The NEDM cat, who often burns humans alive as retaliation for humans burning cats.
- Laughably Evil: This seems to be the entire appeal of the Moon Man fad/character.
- Leitmotif: This track from Chrono Trigger indicates that Brian Peppers is around the corner.
- Loudness War: The FPA and ear rape fads, such as this (and that's only a roughly typical example). There's also the requisite screamer YTMNDs, some of which manage to crawl up to the front page.
- Magic Feather: Part of the plot of a fictitious "EPIC PACARD" movie detailed in the comment section on this site.
- Mondegreen Gag: Two fads based on them:
- The first involves taking one line from a song that sounds like something else and pairing it with an appropriate picture. This collection was named the "Dew Army," after a famous YTMND of David Hasselhoff singing "Du"
- The second is the opposite: involving taking an entire song sung in a foreign language and using In My Language, That Sounds Like... to write English lyrics for it. This one started with an interpretation of the Finnish version of the DuckTales (1987) theme, which was actually spun off from a "Dew Army" type site which only interpreted one line from the theme as "Your arms are broken!".
- There's also one taking the theme song of pro wrestler Jushin Thunder Liger - which is sung in Japanese - and posting the "lyrics" in English.
- The first involves taking one line from a song that sounds like something else and pairing it with an appropriate picture. This collection was named the "Dew Army," after a famous YTMND
- Monster Clown: Moon Man's recurring enemy Goofy Clown Face, a pedophiliac rapist clown who brainwashes unfortunates into becoming drones to carry out his sick fantasies. Even Moon Man is creeped out by the guy.
- Mundane Made Awesome:
- The "Epic Maneuver" fad, wherein people do things in an unnecessarily epic manner, sometimes failing. The original was taken from the overly dramatic and badly acted Unnecessary Combat Roll underneath a really slow-moving door from Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds: Part I".
- There was a civil war once over whether the Epic Maneuver YTMNDs should be about actually epic maneuvers or mundane tasks passed off as epic.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The user Murdarmachene was the first one to make a site using the soon - to - be - infamous Moon Man gif (pairing it with a completely non-offensive song). Farkle and the Moon Crew then created the Moon Man fad by taking the gif from that site and reposting it hundreds of times, accompanied by racist TTS messages and the signature KKK chant. Murdarmachene allegedly quit YTMND (at least, under his original name) because he was so ashamed of what he had accidentally started.
- Non-Natural Number Gag: The rating scale only goes from 1 to 5, but certain users leave comments indicating that they intended to vote outside of the scale, whether it's 0 (which can be accomplished by simply not voting), a number off the scale like 6, 7, 8, 599, 3500, or 9001, or something completely ridiculous like 'voting percent sign'. Max also once used his admin powers to vote negative one million on a site, which was later deleted.
- Noodle Implements: Macgyver must do something. He is given 14 seconds and some random junk. He usually succeeds.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Played for Laughs in the "For the last time" fad. Exaggerated in this particular YTMND, however. There's a screamer at the end.
- Overly Long Gag: The "Extended Cut" Fad.
- Perverse Sexual Lust: Stephanie from LazyTown (to the chagrin of many YTMNDers)
- Piss-Take Rap: Moon Man was a shortlived advertising campaign for McDonald's. The Internet made him into a racist rapping moon covering many popular rap tunes with a synthetic voice and new lyrics.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Moon Man.
- Quintessential British Gentleman:
- Charles Moonington, Moon Man's stereotypical British alter ego.
- Prehistoric Dinosaur, a parody of Moon Man related to The Land Before Time, also has a stereotypical British alter ego, Topsy Hornington.
- Race Against the Clock: Eon 8. Subverted by the fact that the countdown was not stopped, but it turned out to all be a hoax and nothing happened. Or did it?
- Raptor Attack: Raptor Jesus, stolen from 4chan and made into a Leet Speaking Cloud Cuckoo Lander who occasionally liked the flesh of his followers.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Baron Lasers (although he's occasionally portrayed as heroic, neutral, or just eccentric)
- Sensory Abuse: Shock sites are quite common, with the most common tactic being amplified and distorted sound.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Ebaum's World; many YTMNDers declared war on the aforementioned webpage over a Lindsay Lohan picture they stole.
- Spectacular Spinning: The "You Spin Me Right Round" and "Ridin' Spinnaz" fads.
- Springtime for Hitler: Many forced fads that were originally intended to be annoying and pointless, such as Mike Done and Wicker Furniture, ended up catching on and becoming popular.
- Stealth Expert: "1,845 ninjas stare into your soul": A photograph of a flat, empty, barren field in broad daylight, with not a single ninja in sight.
- Stylistic Suck: The "Age 9" and "Crap TMND" fads. The "Heh" spinoff of PTKFGS also tended to dip into this.
- Sunglasses in a Dark Locker Room: PSA Guy
- Synthetic Voice Actor: Used in several fads such as Moon Man and TTSTMND
- Take That!: Very common. Usual targets are other websites such as Ebaumsworld and 4chan, other YTMND users, various YTMND fads (such as this one against Moon Man), or just anything the site maker wishes to mock.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: This site
- Those Two Guys: Lcadwallader and dunsparce/abomstar (two users who make very similar sites and often collaborate on projects, their output is prolific and their style distinctive, and they have started or popularized a few minor fads, but they never really achieved 'mainstream' success or popularity, thus effectively relegating them to the roles of 'side characters')
- Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Invoked in the comments here: http://ytmnd.com/sites/932943/profile
- Trademark Favorite Booze: Max once attributed a mishap that made the site lose a bunch of YTMNDs/votes/comments to him getting drunk off Grey Goose vodka. The site quickly started associating it with Max, and and bottles of it would always show up whenever he was mentioned or depicted in a YTMND.
- Trade Snark: Popularized by the user Murdarmachene.
- Villain Protagonist:
- Moon Man, in many of his sites.
- Though in some stories, like Moon Man Versus The Bleeders, tends to be more like an Anti-Hero.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: The reason that so much garbage lingers on the main page nowadays is that there aren't enough users who even care anymore.
- We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies: It's got one, entitled "We Didn't Start the Website", counting off all the various fads.
- Who Dares?: Used unironically by Neil Bauman in his infamous e-mail, which led to many YTMND users mocking him for it.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Medieval fad of turning other fads into The Bayeux Tapestry.
