Hello there! I’m Trym Stene, the person who had fun creating the Dancing Banana Dancing Meme Gif back in 1999. It’s quite surreal to think about how long ago that was! I clearly remember working on various GIF animations on my AMD K6-2 350MHz computer. At the time, it felt like amazing technology, even if it wasn’t exactly cutting-edge. It was my first personal computer, and it opened up a whole new world for me as a young person.
Creating funny and lighthearted content has always been something I enjoyed, and making quirky GIFs to share was a fun way to express that. I had a small but engaged group of people online that I connected with on IRC. They gave me great feedback and encouragement, which was really valuable.
Growing up in a rural part of Norway, not many people around me shared my specific interests. But this actually pushed me to be even more creative and come up with more imaginative things. I was inspired by other digital artists who were exploring the possibilities of the early internet.
I used a simple animation program called Animation Shop, which came with Paint Shop Pro, to make my GIF ideas a reality. This software is where the Dancing Banana dancing meme gif first came to life.
Why a banana, you might ask? Well, I used internet forums a lot and liked using emojis to show how I was feeling when talking to people online. The Dancing Banana was like taking that idea further – it was a fun, celebratory emoji to use whenever I had created something new and cool.
I made other GIFs too, like an angry toaster and a melting ice cream cone with sad eyes. But none of them became popular in the way the banana did. It slowly but surely started to win over internet users.
Before Flash animations became super popular, I got an opportunity through IRC to create GIF ad banners for a business. I jumped at the chance. I even sold some of my creations, including a chalkboard ad that went for 250 Norwegian Krone, about 25 USD. It might not seem like much now, but back then it felt like a huge achievement.
When Flash animations took off, The Buckwheat Boyz made a Flash version of the Dancing Banana with the song “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” That’s when the Dancing Banana really took off and started appearing everywhere, even making a cameo on Family Guy. It’s amazing to think that something I made as a small project has become such a big part of internet culture, thanks in large part to the positive and fun internet community.
So, that’s the short story of the Dancing Banana dancing meme gif. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed making it!
