The origin
A Canadian art student built a GeoCities page of animated hamster GIFs set to a sped-up sample of Roger Miller's 'Whistle-Stop'.
How it spread
It spread by word of mouth in the late 1990s and became one of the first pages people visited purely to show someone else.
What it means
The web page as a joke object. It predates video platforms entirely.
Follow the source
Short editorial summary written by Random Access Memes from the sources above; the wording is ours, not theirs. Every link was checked for a live response on September 13, 2026.
