The creator of email died and apparently there’s an Internet Hall of Fame?

CNN – Ray Tomlinson, widely credited as the creator of email, has died, his employer, Raytheon, told CNN on Sunday. He was 74.

Tomlinson invented direct email messages in 1971. Before his invention, electronic messages could be shared only on a very limited network.

Tomlinson, a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT, was working for a Boston technology firm in 1971 when he decided to figure out a way for people to send messages via computer. At the time, Tomlinson recalled, ARPANET — the Internet’s predecessor — was fairly new and the idea of sending messages from computer to computer was novel. Computers themselves were often giant mainframe beasts that filled entire rooms.

Tomlinson had seen a mailbox protocol he’d thought was too complex. In its place, he hacked together a simpler plan that included such now-commonplace concepts as the “@” sign — to denote the location of the correspondents — and the naming of the fields.

The reason for the “@” sign was mundane, he told NPR: Not only was it a little-used symbol, but “it’s the only preposition on the keyboard.”

Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.

Rest in peace to a great man, Ray Tomlinson. For if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have Internet gems such as the Nigerian Prince scam, emails that are guaranteed to increase my dick size 4 inches (hence why any future presidents are disqualified from my presidential dick ranks because they’ll have used literal PEDs), and FW: FW: RE: FW: HAHA YOU CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT SALLY DID emails that were not only not funny, but usually contained viruses. The predecessors to Buzzfeed, if you will.

The man’s creation may also be our saving grace from a President Hillary. Her use of a private email server may land her in the clink, which would give us either a President Trump, or Chairman Sanders. A win-win for Americans who have come to see American Politics for what it really is – a big reality TV show about dick sizes and who can bomb the enemy harder and faster.

The last sentence, though, says that he’s in the Internet Hall of Fame. Among the 2014 inductees are: Abhaya Induruwa, Demi Getschko, and Dennis Jennings. Real household names of the Internet game.

To honor the pioneers of the real Wild West Internet days, I’m going to list five people who actually entertained us back from DSL was but a pipe dream, we had to hope no one called our home phone when we were downloading porn playing on Miniclip, and the thought of people being able to see virtually any celebrity naked was crazy. These people were the real entertainers who had IT admins blasting out emails telling us to stop watching flash videos because the connection couldn’t handle it. Without further ado, I present the heroes of the Old Internet:

1. Eric Bauman – eBaumsworld

I think I speak for all of us when I say that eBaumsworld was the place to be back in the day. Sure, they were notorious work stealers, but isn’t that just what Reddit is today anyways? You ship me back to 2003 and my first website I visit is eBaumsworld to watch Schfiffty Five and the End of Ze World.

2. Tom Fulp – Newgrounds.com

Another king of flash, Newgrounds was where you went for all things flash. Games, videos, audio, you name it. Plus, their forum was pretty good too. If there was one site that was guaranteed to be blocked by those piss-poor web filters in schools, it was Newgrounds. Click a wrong link and you were playing some weird Japanese sex game with titties galore. What a great site for us youngins.

3. George Ouzounian / Maddox – The Best Page in the Universe (maddox.xmission.com)

A true early adopter of the Internet satire game, Maddox paved the way for guys like me to site at home and make shitty lists and weak humor on the Internet. A site whose articles would go viral on forums before going viral was really even a concept. No doubt he was inspired by the likes of Mad Max and other satirical publications, his site proved that you could make it on the Internet just through writing funny things.

If you consider yourself an Internet veteran like myself but you didn’t read Maddox, you need your Internet card revoked. A true OG of the Internet.

4. Max Goldberg – YTMND.com

The predecessor to viral and memes, YTMND’s purpose was simple – sharing a funny image background with scrolling text and music. The site had a culture of its own, so many of the most famous pages don’t even make sense unless you were “in” on the jokes. The sites were crude, hilarious, and simple. Some of my favorites:

Mom’s Spaghetti:

The Original Hampster Dance:

Nooooooooo:

Again, they were simple, but back before Netflix existed, this was all we had for humor. Like a fine wine, these get better with age.

5. Chris Poole – 4chan.org

The cesspool of the Internet. 4chan is the originator of so many Internet things – memes, rickrolling, SWATting. If it’s depraved or immature, 4chan relished in it. While it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, the Internet as we know it today would be so much different if 4chan didn’t exist. Imagine if we put every degenerate, pedophile, neckbeard, savant, and freak in the world into one room and just let them run wild and create and write whatever they pleased. It would just be real life 4chan. Sure, most of it was creepy, but some was legitimately hilarious and paved one of the original Internet highways.

/b/ was pure chaos in its heyday. We thank all of the wackos who patrolled those roads in order to entertain us normal Internet users when their creations would eventually trickle to us on eBaumsworld and the like.