The Hampster Dance
Encyclopedia
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
. Created by Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte for a Geocities
GeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service, currently available only in Japan.GeoCities was originally founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet . In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to place their web pages...
page, the dance features rows of animated hamster
Hamster
Hamsters are rodents belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae. The subfamily contains about 25 species, classified in six or seven genera....
s and other rodents dancing
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
in various ways to a sped-up sample
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
from the song "Whistle Stop" by Roger Miller
Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs...
.
History
CanadianCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
art student Deidre LaCarte, who was competing with her best friend and sister to see who could generate the most traffic, designed the Hampster Dance in August 1998 as homage to her pet hamster, named "Hampton Hamster." Using four simple animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
GIFs of hamsters and other rodents, repeated dozens of times each, and a loop of background music embedded in the HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
, at the time a fairly new browser feature, she named the site Hampton's Hamster House and had Hampton declare his intent to become a "web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
star". Initially, the website consisted of a single page website with four hamsters and other rodents, later redesigned and dubbed Hampton, Dixie, Hado, and Fuzzy. Over the next few years, alternate versions of the Hamsterdance appeared, such as for birthday
Birthday
A birthday is a day or anniversary where a person celebrates his or her date of birth. Birthdays are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with a gift, party or rite of passage. Although the major religions celebrate the birth of their founders , Christmas – which is celebrated widely by...
s, where the hamsters are slightly modified to hold presents.
The clip, a 9-second looped WAV
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
file, was taken from a sped-up recording of Roger Miller
Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs...
's "Whistle Stop", a song written for the 1973 Walt Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
cartoon Robin Hood
Robin Hood (1973 film)
Robin Hood is an 1973 American animated film produced by the Walt Disney Productions, first released in the United States on November 8, 1973...
.
Until January 1999, only 800 visits were recorded (about 4 per day), but without warning, the number jumped to 15,000 per day. The web site spread by e-mail, early blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, and bumper stickers, and was eventually even featured in a television commercial for Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
EarthLink
EarthLink
EarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...
. It became a common office prank to set a co-worker's browser homepage to the website, which led to televised news reports furthering popularity to an international level. The continued popularity of the site led LaCarte to a professional redesign, and the addition of an online store for T-shirts and CDs
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
of "Hamster" music.
LaCarte failed to register the Hamsterdance name, and for some time the hamsterdance.com domain was owned by humor business Nutty Sites. Initially, hampsterdance.com was used, and later hamsterdance2.com. The site webhamster.com is a copy of the original site complete with the 9-second loop WAV.
Fans of the site created variations on the original dance, using politicians such as Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle served as the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving with President George H. W. Bush . He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana....
and Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia Ann McKinney is a former US Congresswoman and a member of the Green Party since 2007. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. In 2008, the Green Party nominated McKinney for President of the United States...
as well as household objects such as Pez dispenser
PEZ
Pez is the brand name of an Austrian confectionery and the mechanical pocket dispensers for the same...
s and lung
Lung
The lung is the essential respiration organ in many air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of the heart...
X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s.
In 2004 Abatis partnered with Unreal Productions of Keyport, NJ to redesign the original Hamsters into a full 3-D CGI contemporary "look and feel". The website was also redesigned using the new characters and a DVD is in production with the first of a new series of adventures with the Furry Foursome and their roadie, Frank the Ferret
Ferret
The ferret is a domesticated mammal of the type Mustela putorius furo. Ferrets are sexually dimorphic predators with males being substantially larger than females. They typically have brown, black, white, or mixed fur...
.
The Hampster Dance, in its true original form, is no longer found at www.hampsterdance.com. The true original has been recreated at www.webhamster.com (the "P" taken out of the word Hampster).
Popular culture
In CanadaCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the "official" Hampster Dance song was released as a single, featuring a trance
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
music backing. The video was declared worst or cheesiest video of the year by MuchMusic
MuchMusic
MuchMusic is a Canadian English language Category A specialty channel owned by Bell Media. MuchMusic is dedicated to music-related programs, pop and youth culture.-History:...
in the one-hour special Fromage 2001
Fromage
Fromage was an annual one-hour special produced by the Canadian MuchMusic cable channel. Originally hosted by songwriter Christopher Ward, beginning in the late 1980s , Fromage pays "tribute" to music videos that are considered the worst or cheesiest of the year by MuchMusic staff.- History :Since...
. It stayed for two weeks in the Canadian Top 40, peaking at #38. In Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, "The Hampster Dance Song" was also released in 2001, credited to Hampton the Hampster. The song reached #5 on the ARIA
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
singles chart and spun off follow-up releases and videos, such as "Thank God I'm a Country Boy
Thank God I'm a Country Boy
"Thank God I'm a Country Boy", also known as "Country Boy" is a song written by John Martin Sommers and recorded by American singer/songwriter John Denver.The song was originally included on Denver's 1974 album Back Home Again....
" (a cover of the John Denver
John Denver
Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. , known professionally as John Denver, was an American singer/songwriter, activist, and humanitarian. After growing up in numerous locations with his military family, Denver began his music career in folk music groups in the late 1960s. His greatest commercial success...
song, reaching #12) and "Hampster Party" (reaching #44). It also reached #70 on the U.S. Hot Country Songs
Hot Country Songs
Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...
charts.
The track was used in the 2001 film, See Spot Run
See Spot Run
See Spot Run is a 2001 comedy film about a mailman who takes in a stray bullmastiff only to learn that it is a trained FBI dog that has escaped from a witness protection program and is targeted for killing by a crime boss...
.
Another track that featured the same sped-up sample was "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia
Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia
"Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" is a song by the Cuban Boys. The song consists almost in its entirety of a sampled loop from "Whistle Stop" by Roger Miller which was featured in the Disney movie Robin Hood...
" by The Cuban Boys. The single peaked at #4 on the Christmas chart.
In 2005, CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
named the Hampster Dance the #1 web fad.
In 2010, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio
AOL Radio
AOL Radio powered by Slacker, , is an online radio service available only in the United States.- Roots :...
ranked the "official" Hampster Dance song at #79 on the list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, stating that "This annoying-on-purpose, chipmunks-on-speed bit of nonsense was the grandfather of today's 'Rickroll.'"
Albums/Compilations
(in order of release)- Hampster Dance: The Album (#7 AUS)
- Hampster Dance Party
- Happy Times Ten
- Hampster Dance Hits
- A Very Hampsterdance Christmas
- The Don Flanco EP
Singles
(in order of release)- "The Hampster Dance Song" (#5 AUS, #38 CAN)
- "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (#12 AUS)
- "Hampster Party" (#44 AUS)
- "Sing a Simple Song"
- "Hampsterdance Christmas"
- "Time to Party"
- "Hampsters in Love"
Track listings
| U.S. CD 1: | Non-U.S. CD 1: | Non-U.S. CD 2 (Maxi single): |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The Hampster Dance Song (radio mix) | 1. The Hampster Dance Song (radio edit) | 1. The Hampster Dance Song (radio edit) |
| 2. The Hampster Dance Song (extended mix) | 2. The Hampster Dance Song (extended mix) | 2. The Hampster Dance Song (extended mix) |
| 3. The Hampster Dance Song (club mix) | 3. The Hampster Dance Song (club mix) | |
| 4. The Hampster Dance Song (Snapshot Remix) | ||
| 5. The Hampster Dance Song (Tom Stevens Remix) |
External links
- WebHamster.com – Copy of the Original Site
- original Geocities version – archived November 1999
- Hamster dancing into other venues