The Web Celebs Of Yesteryear

Did you know that the nature of fame is different now Because The Internet? Of course you did, you’re not an idiot. You’ve thought about these things. But consider this:

First, on the Web we sometimes make people famous for inexplicable reasons. For example, one of the first Web-famous people was Mahir Cagri, a Turkish photographer whose home page (remember them?) welcomed viewers with a big “I KISS YOU!!!!!” message.
Mahir’s page was the opposite of slick, and his enthusiastic explanation of his interests was in less than perfect English. There was absolutely no reason… for his page (which had been slightly “enhanced” by hackers) to go viral. But it did. Certainly some who passed around the link did so to make mean-spirited fun of a man who turned out to be something of a sweetheart.
But many who shared the link to Cagri’s page did so in part because it asserted that we the audience could make an obscure person famous overnight. It was “sticking it to the old media” that had for so many years rammed commercial nonentities into our brains. And it’s happened countless times.

Leaving the contentions of that argument aside, let me ask you this: What year did “I KISS YOU!!!!!” happen? Click through for the answer, which may, as is the case with so many things in life, surprise you.