When Good Hampsters Go Bad

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the Animated Rodent Satan known as The HampsterDance*. It was nothing but a stitched together animated GIF of a bunch of cartoon hampsters jiggling in strange and exotic ways. But what brought it all together was The Song. An eerie blend of the chipmunks and a freaky sidestep hoedown, The Song burned a fiery path through your brain, searing itself into your synapses indelibly so that you could be in a meeting a week later, and suddenly The Song would start up, and soon you're sitting there pretending to be listening to a presentation on XML while inside your head the Hampsters are going, "DEE DEE DEE DEE DA DA DA DO DO! DEE DA DO DO DO!". And then the image of the hamsters would slowly coalesce in your brain, with the dancing, and the jumping, and always the twirling, twirling, twirling...

Sorry. It almost had me there for a minute. Anyway, the Hampsterdance was one of those strange web phenomena that managed to get more hits with a crappy GIF than most of the flaming dot-coms** could buy with a twenty million dollar Madison Avenue budget.

So what does a self-respecting web site do when it has a bona-fide hit? Well, it 'improves' it, of course. Our lovable hampsters are gone, replaced by mutant offspring. Oh sure, the animation is better. Oh sure, they have cute product-friendly names now, and cute products with their friendly names on them. They have a CD. They even have a newsletter, no doubt chock-full of articles like, "The Dance Secrets of Vermin", "Spinning or Jumping: The Debate", and a letters section with readers writing in to say, "The Song! The SONG! It BURNS! Please kill me." So our Hampsters are now fully functional, economically speaking.

But the magic is gone. I was just over at the Hampsterdance web site (er, "Hampsterdance 2", to signify the snazzy newness), and the message board there is full of messages saying, "We Want Our Hampsters Back!". As do I. All the Flash and Shockwave animation in the world will never replace that goofy GIF and The Song. There's a lesson in here somewhere for web designers, but you'll have to figure it out for yourself because The Song has crowded out my capacity for rational thought.

Sadly, it appears the Hampsters are no more. But here's a web site that features The Song. How HampsterDance Stole My Soul appears to be operated by someone with way to much free time, and perhaps in need of therapy. But The Song is there, along with such promising dancing newcomers as "The Infectious Disease Organism Dance."

But beware - few have experienced The Song and managed to erase it from their memory. Listen at your own risk.

*Yes, I know 'hamster' is spelled without a 'P'. That's why these are Hampsters.

** "Flaming Dot-Coms" would also be a good name for a band.