-
Bert Is Evil: The True Story Behind the Web's First Viral Hit
- Narrated by: Elaine Baden
- Length: 21 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $3.43
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
This is the story of the web's first viral hit.
Bert Is Evil, a website created in 1997, "collected incriminating images and documents that prove that Bert is not the lovable harmless geek he so successfully makes us think he is."
The site sent shocks waves across the Internet, from New York to Bangladesh. Bill Meeks tells the story of Dino Ignacio, a young college student who rocked the online world with his satirical look at Bert from Sesame Street. Ignacio becomes embroiled in conflicts a world away, dodges the Children's Television Workshop, and suffers attacks from journalists as one of the web's first superstars.
More from the same
What listeners say about Bert Is Evil: The True Story Behind the Web's First Viral Hit
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- M. Lucero
- 05-25-15
A glimpse of Internet history...
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
It's hard to imagine life without Internet memes, even for people who have lived in decades before they were around. For this and similar reasons, reading Bill Meek's single, Bert Is Evil, feels surreal. Exploring one of the first memes to spread around the Internet, the book recalls those far-off days when something amusing on the Internet to pass around to all our friends felt novel and unexpected.
Given the ubiquity of memes like Condescending Wonka, Philosoraptor, and Misunderstood Spider, this look back into the recent past feels more extreme of a retrospection than it should — as if we are talking not about something that happened in the late '90s, but rather something out of your grandfather's reminiscences of walking uphill to school both ways. The days before color television. The eight track. An odd effect, making me feel old as well as inspiring thoughts about the contracting and dilation of time.
In his book, Meeks carves out the story of a proto web developer by the name of Dino Ignacio, who created Bert is Evil in that early era of the bare-bones Internet which Meeks likes to call the Old Wide Web. Ignacio, we learn, derived the meme's humor from his linking of the well-known Muppet to dark and shadowy figures Lee Harvey Oswald, Osama Bin Laden, and even Hitler.
Reading this account, I realized that I had indeed browsed this site — or perhaps one of its many mirrors, the reasons for which Meeks chronicles at length — and that its 'shopped images indeed lingered somewhere in the ephemera of my memory. It made me think as well of other similar early memes, my favorite of which was Mr. T vs Everything, a site which 'shopped (with much less skill than Ignacio) images of the A-Team hero into poorly-executed webcomics, often ending with T throwing his foes into outer space.
These sites, as well as many others, provided troves of amusement at a certain point of my life; and yet all of them find their provenance in the work of Ignacio. A shadowy figure himself, Ignacio is brought to life by Meek's story, which takes the form of interviews with the man himself, and analysis and commentary by Meeks. Weaving together the history of its naissance, its popularity boom, and the fallout of its unfortunate involvement in a protest rally, the short feels like an episode of This American Life for the internet, especially if you listen to the audiobook edition.
Recommended for anyone interested in the history of the Internet, or even for those mildly curious about how these memes got their start, Bert Is Evil is a short, amusing, and informative look back into the incomprehensible labyrinth that is the Internet, clearing it up and lifting it out from obscurity for the reader to understand, maybe, one of the many roots that grew into the Internet we know today.
What other book might you compare Bert Is Evil: The True Story Behind the Web's First Viral Hit to and why?
It reminds me of This American Life for the Internet.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
- Natalie Niezgoda
- 07-24-15
How far we have come!
Hard to believe we have come this far.
Great narrating. I love listening to anything Elaine Bacen reads.
Natalie Niezgoda
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Deedra
- 06-16-15
Bert Is Evil
Would you listen to Bert Is Evil: The True Story Behind the Web's First Viral Hit again? Why?
no,because I already read it
Any additional comments?
Bert is Evil is a retrospect of the early days of the internet.It doesn't seem that long ago that we all dialed up and jumped on the www train.It's the story of the one mans rise to stardom for his original viral hits and the fall out from his satire.
Elaine Baden is fine as the narrator,though maybe a man would have suited this material better.(sorry)
"I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author in exchange for an unbiased review via AudiobookBlast dot com."
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carolyn
- 05-17-15
Interesting bit of history.
This is an engrossing short history about a website. I really liked the memories it brought back of how it used to be using the web. The only complaint I might have is I wish it was longer.
Related to this topic
-
Fanatical Prospecting
- The Ultimate Guide for Starting Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, E-Mail, and Cold Calling
- By: Jeb Blount
- Narrated by: Jeb Blount, Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fanatical Prospecting gives salespeople, sales leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives a practical, eye-opening guide that clearly explains the why and how behind the most important activity in sales and business development: prospecting. The brutal fact is that the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe, and the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to consistently prospect.
-
-
A must read for any sales professional
- By Bill King on 07-04-16
By: Jeb Blount
-
Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- By: Nick Bostrom
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
-
-
Colossus: The Forbin Project is coming
- By Gary on 09-12-14
By: Nick Bostrom
-
YouTube Secrets
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer
- By: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Narrated by: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
YouTube sensations and best-selling authors Sean Cannell and Benji Travis take your YouTube channel from slow and dormant to accelerated and engaged, using premium and updated YouTube growth tips for creators, business owners, digital entrepreneurs, and influencers. This is the ultimate game plan to grow a following and make money with the power of video.
-
-
Don't use a credit on this. Moderately passable
- By Scott on 08-04-19
By: Sean Cannell, and others
-
Slenderman
- Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls
- By: Kathleen Hale
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman”. Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.
-
-
Compassionate and thrilling
- By hart on 08-16-22
By: Kathleen Hale
-
The Grid
- The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
- By: Gretchen Bakke
- Narrated by: Emily Caudwell
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.
-
-
Needed more... and less
- By J. Pegg on 11-22-16
By: Gretchen Bakke
-
Alan Turing: The Enigma
- By: Andrew Hodges
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.
-
-
A Fantastic Biography For The Patient Listener
- By Sara on 02-22-15
By: Andrew Hodges
-
Fanatical Prospecting
- The Ultimate Guide for Starting Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, E-Mail, and Cold Calling
- By: Jeb Blount
- Narrated by: Jeb Blount, Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fanatical Prospecting gives salespeople, sales leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives a practical, eye-opening guide that clearly explains the why and how behind the most important activity in sales and business development: prospecting. The brutal fact is that the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe, and the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to consistently prospect.
-
-
A must read for any sales professional
- By Bill King on 07-04-16
By: Jeb Blount
-
Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- By: Nick Bostrom
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
-
-
Colossus: The Forbin Project is coming
- By Gary on 09-12-14
By: Nick Bostrom
-
YouTube Secrets
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer
- By: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Narrated by: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
YouTube sensations and best-selling authors Sean Cannell and Benji Travis take your YouTube channel from slow and dormant to accelerated and engaged, using premium and updated YouTube growth tips for creators, business owners, digital entrepreneurs, and influencers. This is the ultimate game plan to grow a following and make money with the power of video.
-
-
Don't use a credit on this. Moderately passable
- By Scott on 08-04-19
By: Sean Cannell, and others
-
Slenderman
- Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls
- By: Kathleen Hale
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman”. Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.
-
-
Compassionate and thrilling
- By hart on 08-16-22
By: Kathleen Hale
-
The Grid
- The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
- By: Gretchen Bakke
- Narrated by: Emily Caudwell
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.
-
-
Needed more... and less
- By J. Pegg on 11-22-16
By: Gretchen Bakke
-
Alan Turing: The Enigma
- By: Andrew Hodges
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.
-
-
A Fantastic Biography For The Patient Listener
- By Sara on 02-22-15
By: Andrew Hodges
-
Glow Kids
- How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
- By: Nicholas Kardaras PhD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.
-
-
Fear Mongering - a modern day Mazes and Monsters
- By Veronica on 11-03-20
-
So You've Been Publicly Shamed
- By: Jon Ronson
- Narrated by: Jon Ronson
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.' For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work.
-
-
You'll never look at public shaming the same way
- By Megan Gunter on 04-02-15
By: Jon Ronson
-
Sex, Race, and Robots
- How to Be Human in the Age of AI
- By: Dr. Ayanna Howard
- Narrated by: Amandla Stenberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the movies, robots can be terrifying. In reality, thinking machines are disrupting the world in ways that are even more disturbing than in Hollywood fantasies - but they also have the potential to change our lives for the better. In this stirring, visionary work, acclaimed roboticist Dr. Ayanna Howard explores how the tech world’s racial and sexual biases are infecting the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, with profoundly negative effects for humans of all genders and races.
-
-
Will not return
- By bilihor on 12-26-20
-
Algorithms of Oppression
- How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
- By: Safiya Umoja Noble
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
-
-
Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it.
- By Joshua Daniel-Wariya on 06-06-19
-
Prediction Machines
- The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible - driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
-
-
Not sure what I was expecting, but underwhelmed
- By William J Brown on 09-27-18
By: Ajay Agrawal, and others
-
The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide
- How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
- By: John Sonmez
- Narrated by: John Sonmez
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Technical knowledge alone isn't enough - increase your software development income by leveling up your soft skills Early in his software developer career, John Sonmez discovered that technical knowledge alone isn't enough to break through to the next income level - developers need "soft skills" like the ability to learn new technologies just in time, communicate clearly with management and consulting clients, negotiate a fair hourly rate, and unite teammates and coworkers in working toward a common goal.
-
-
Good read for developers of all experience
- By Krzysztof on 01-05-18
By: John Sonmez
-
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
-
-
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
-
Super Pumped
- The Battle for Uber
- By: Mike Isaac
- Narrated by: Holter Graham, Mike Isaac
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a pause-resisting story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic 12-month periods in American corporate history.
-
-
A forced narrative and a bad version of Bad Blood
- By Benji on 09-09-19
By: Mike Isaac
-
Computer Programming: The Bible
- Learn from the basics to advanced of Python, C, C++, C#, HTML Coding, and Black Hat Hacking Step-by-Step in No Time!
- By: CyberPunk Architects
- Narrated by: Adam Johnson
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world of technology is changing and those who know how to handle it and who have the most knowledge about it are the ones who will get ahead. If you are a beginner who is interested in learning more and getting ahead, then this guidebook is the one for you.
-
-
I am really happy to have this book
- By Karolin Luft on 01-07-19
-
The Box
- How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
- By: Marc Levinson
- Narrated by: Adam Lofbomm
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.
-
-
Fascinating Topic sometimes lost in minutiae
- By zombie64 on 07-15-14
By: Marc Levinson
-
No Place to Hide
- Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
- By: Glenn Greenwald
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security....
-
-
Best Read in Print Format
- By Alfredo Ramirez on 11-22-14
By: Glenn Greenwald
-
Hardcore Inventing
- Invent, Protect, Promote, and Profit From Your Ideas
- By: Robert Yanover, Ellie Crowe
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on the author’s experience in the world of inventing and promotion, Hardcore Inventing offers the kind of advice you can only learn from experience: how to developing an idea into an invention, how to build a prototype for show, how to safeguard intellectual property, how to market both strategically and in “guerilla" mode, how find investors, and much more. And all of that is based on his IP 3 Tacitical Method which breaks everything down to Invent, Protect, Promote, and Profit.
-
-
Best Invention/Patent/Business Book I’ve Read
- By Silverback on 05-02-13
By: Robert Yanover, and others