In an age earlier than algorithms or social media, Mike and Matt Chapman went viral the old style method — importing good things at a dependable tempo that was so quotable it rewired the brains of a whole technology. All of Homestar Runner’s bits, japes, and inside jokes had been closely regurgitative of Nineties media — cartoons, video video games, motion films — however whereas the flagship “collection” of the web site was the Robust Unhealthy Emails, I’ve a darkish horse contender for one of the best of HomestarRunner.com.
With the Teen Woman Squad, the Chapmans turned their eyes to the extensive world of Reveals With Stuff Executives Assume Women Like, and it’s type of the tightest bit they ever uploaded.
The self-esteem: the continuing adventures of formidable Cheerleader, overachieving So and So, drab What’s Her Face, and unpredictable The Ugly One — with every episode presenting some type of problem (normally to get one or a number of boys). However the framing gadget of Teen Woman Squad was a comic book made and narrated by Robust Unhealthy, first as a problem after which, it’s implied, as a result of he simply enjoys making it.
This creates a teen woman “present” as interpreted — or perpetrated, actually — by Robust Unhealthy’s slightly teen-boy-inspired capability for violent doodles and paucity of inventive expertise, a present the place a number of or all of its stars meet some type of grisly Looney Tunes dying in every episode. You wouldn’t assume that system would hit on any completely piercing observations of teenagehood, and but, I do keep in mind the age after I was too cool for Nick at Nite but additionally thought of WB reveals the top of sophistication.
I additionally recall being a clumsy woman carrying pants and a shapeless prime, harboring goals of courting Sci-fi Greg, or the equal D&D rule-quoting and only-mildly-misogynistic-by-2000s-standards boy. Certain, positive, America Ferrera’s Barbie speech is nice, however have you ever seen the episode the place the Woman Squad tries to kind a band and So and So suggests they name themselves “Well Fairly”?
Trendy children could have had Riverdale, however I had my very own absurdist teen media pastiche, nonetheless obtainable in bite-sized YouTube segments to at the present time. Additionally, it gave us the phrase “Taking the vowels out of phrases doesn’t all the time make them cool.” If that’s not peak web prescience, I don’t know what’s.
