What you are reading is a dead story. Hundreds of thousands of designer hours went into it, gigabytes of computer memory and bandwidth were taken over transmitting it and for two weekends, the phrase "All your base are belong to us" became one of the most requested on internet search engines across the world. Now, even this article mentioning it is passe.
More than two weeks ago, I received an amusing email. And then received it again, 17 times. Every message board I went to, every forum I visited, has a discussion thread named after it. Remarkably, it didn't involve sexual thrills, jokes about pets or scenes of gratuitous violence. It was the introduction to a 10-year-old computer game called Zero Wing for the Sega Genesis console. This consisted of a series of Japanese cartoon-style stills telling a story. The dialogue below the images had been very badly translated from the original Japanese. Accompanying scenes of a battle in outer space, they read:
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen?
Operator: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you!!
Cats: How are you gentlemen!!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say!!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Cats: Take off every "zig".
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move "zig".
Captain: For great justice.
A day or so later, the pictures began to follow. These were photographs taken and altered by computer designers, with the most popular phrase - "All your base are belong to us" - inserted where appropriate. Street signs, restaurant awnings, cinema fronts, advertising, cartoons, T-shirts, tattoos, golf balls inserted into turtles, all bearing this new phrase. What was remarkable was the time and effort that must have been spent on making the words fit perfectly into the background, finding the right font, matching perspective and accounting for folds in the material that the message appeared on.
This craze started around the middle of last year, sent around by a close group of technical experts. An in-joke to greet friends at the bar, an email signature, a punchline to a shared gag. And then it jumped, from speech and text to something visual.
An early example is a photo of the alien puppet Alf from the US sitcom of the same name, speaking on the phone with a speech bubble containing the phrase. The Somethingawful.com forum picked this up and ran with it, continuing the pattern of placing the speech bubble on to existing photos. From December through to January, the phrase infected other message boards, with Tribalwar.com taking the strain. It was still mostly a techie/gamers-only craze, and new executions were more likely to have the phrase embedded in the photo rather than just pasted on in a speech bubble. Often a labour-intensive job, this was a chance to show off, to be part of the gang, and probably lost each individual's employer hours of gainful employ. Variations included Uncle Sam pointing at the screen, road painters daubing the phrase onto the street behind them, airplanes branded with the phrase, Bart Simpson writing it a hundred times on a blackboard and the cover of Time magazine with a shot of President Bush.
In February it jumped again, hitting the mainstream. The Popbitch.com message board was essential in introducing the British to this phenomenon. And the various executions grew, multiplied and evolved. From the Popstars variation, All Your Base Are Belong To Darius, to the kitchen variety, All Your Turkey Basters Are Belong To Us, this time it hit the big time, outstripping the Hamster Dance, The Singing Hat and Am I Hot Or Not?
Next came the T-shirts. The best were arguably from http://www.cafepress.com/dreldarion, which offered a nice line in mugs and mouse mats as well. A previously recorded dance track, Invasion of the Gabber Robots by Laziest Men on Mars, became a hugely popular download from Napster due to the repetitive strain "All your base are belong to us". We had been well and truly invaded.
And then it died. Within a week of its new- found popularity, Guardian writer Charlie Brooker had added a wonderful parody to hishttp://www.tvgohome.com site, featuring the listing for I Love All Your Base Are Belong to Us. Following this was a small piece criticising media types who try to parade the latest craze on their T-shirt. Message boards began to deride any newcomer posting doctored photos. New email viral messages were touted as "The funniest thing since All Your Base". All it needs now is a Daily Mail feature to be truly killed off. This very article may well do the job.
A few years ago, a craze could last for years before being picked up by the mainstream, giving it at least six months of credibility. Having a Frankie Says T-shirt wouldn't be derided for at least a year. Even pashminas lasted a good nine months. Now it takes two weeks. Trends can be gone before most people ever knew they were even there.
Still, there are brands that would have killed for this kind of exposure. If Sega had attached its name to the original animation (for a long time many were unaware of where it came from), new life may have been breathed into its now cancelled Sega Dreamcast console. If Nike had placed their swoosh upon it and launched an All Your Base Are Belong To Us range, they'd have cleaned up. The value of making such an impact, with so many creative minds working for free, is incalculable. But not only are most brands too slow or scared to capitalise on such a trend, many are scared of their message being reinterpreted by the creative community, escaping their tight control.
So the most successful viral internet messages and trends remain brand-aware but commercial message-free. And no one can predict what is next. But I'll have a go: highlights from Ken Livingstone's transport policy, as spoken by a 70s disco hipster. Don't dismiss it so lightly, I'm already making the T-shirts . . .
Rich Johnston is a senior advertising copywriter for Grey Interactive UK.