[saurik]

I was at UCSB when Don did Rejected and the idea of it having much of anything to do with the Internet is mind-contorting... he didn't use any computers to film it and I see it premiered in person at ComicCon. But like, AFAIK, we had all gotten to see it in the theatre, as part of some campus-level film showing; though I think he later got to be on our Arts and Lectures circuit, and I feel like it was shown at the cartoon festival he co-ran soon thereafter (just to get people hyped up).

How did you watch it online, before it was (much later) put on YouTube? I feel like he didn't have a website at the time, but maybe it was that obvious? Were people sharing a video of it on file-sharing networks? (Honestly, I do feel like we knew it too well to not be watching it on loop, but I simply don't remember how we did it... all of my memories of Don's work--and honestly some of the short interstitials he did for the film festival are some of my favorites! "the illuuuussion of mooovement" ;P--are in a theatre.)

[RankingMember]

It was super popular on web forums like SomethingAwful's and was shared as big ol' hosted video files, probably in xvid format and usually direct-linked off someone's web provider's meager hosting space.

[pram]

Yep I got it from somewhere on SA in like 2002. Wasn’t that obscure, a ton of it was quoted all the time.

I am a consumer whore! And how!

[redhale]

Rejected is definitely the OG "weird" internet video for me. I must have seen it a thousand times. There are a few phrases from it that have a permanent place in my vocabulary.

My spoon is too big.

[mastersummoner]

"I'm the Queeeeeeen of France!" for me.

[gary_0]

In the late 90's my dad got dialup and a brand-new e-mail address, and someone forwarded him a GIF of Don Hertzfeldt's Ah L'Amour. So this was happening before Rejected even came out.

By the time I was in college in 2003, Don Hertzfeldt animations were all over the Internet (usually in truncated, uncredited form).

Don's new series, World of Tomorrow, is really great, btw, and a wonderful maturation and evolution of the animation style I saw in that GIF in 1998.

[myself248]

The first "accelerated" video card I bought (I don't remember what it was) included drivers and some "multimedia" demo stuff on a CDROM, including Rejected as a .MPG file or some such.

It hadn't occurred to me until just now, to wonder if that CD is still around, and if anyone ever archived it. I'll probably see my folks for the holidays and I'll try to remember to take a usb cd drive in case I can lay hands on the disc.

Later, Rejected showed up in Spike & Mike's animation festival, but I think I'd seen it passed around online by that time, and actually most of the stuff in the festival that year (probably 97?) was familiar. IRC Fservs were huge by then and they basically demolished the novelty of in-person festivals.

[archagon]

I’m pretty sure we got it off file sharing networks. My high school friend group quoted it endlessly.