The death of Adobe Flash on Dec. 31, 2020, may have marked the end of a great era of internet creativity — but one of its most significant triumphs is still around. In an archival feat for the ages, HomestarRunner.com still lives on YouTube.
In an age before algorithms or social media, Mike and Matt Chapman went viral the old-fashioned way — uploading good stuff at a reliable pace that was so quotable it rewired the brains of an entire generation. All of Homestar Runner’s bits, japes, and inside jokes were heavily regurgitative of 1990s media — cartoons, video games, action movies — but while the flagship “series” of the website was the Strong Bad Emails, I have a dark horse contender for the best of HomestarRunner.com.
With the Teen Girl Squad, the Chapmans turned their eyes to the wide world of Shows With Stuff Executives Think Girls Like, and it’s kind of the tightest bit they ever uploaded.
The conceit: the ongoing adventures of ambitious Cheerleader, overachieving So and So, drab What’s Her Face, and unpredictable The Ugly One — with each episode presenting some kind of challenge (usually to get one or several boys). But the framing device of Teen Girl Squad was a comic made and narrated by Strong Bad, first as a challenge and then, it’s implied, because he just enjoys making it.
This creates a teen girl “show” as interpreted — or perpetrated, honestly — by Strong Bad’s rather teen-boy-inspired capacity for violent doodles and paucity of artistic talent, a show where several or all of its stars meet some kind of grisly Looney Tunes death in each episode. You wouldn’t think that formula would hit on any absolutely piercing observations of teenagehood, and yet, I do remember the age when I was too cool for Nick at Nite but also considered WB shows the pinnacle of sophistication.
I also recall being an awkward girl wearing pants and a shapeless top, harboring dreams of dating Sci-fi Greg, or the equivalent D&D rule-quoting and only-mildly-misogynistic-by-2000s-standards boy. Sure, sure, America Ferrera’s Barbie speech is good, but have you seen the episode where the Girl Squad tries to form a band and So and So suggests they call themselves “Smartly Pretty”?
Modern kids may have had Riverdale, but I had my own absurdist teen media pastiche, still available in bite-sized YouTube segments to this day. Also, it gave us the phrase “Taking the vowels out of words doesn’t always make them cool.” If that’s not peak internet prescience, I don’t know what is.
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