As an old fart, I like saying some of the brainrot to Gen Alphas that I know so that it makes them cringe hard. Sometimes in context, sometimes out of context depending on my mood.
Semi related, but my mum likes to pretend she doesn't know what 'Netflix and chill' means. She keeps saying it to people. One time I said mum please google that phrase. She said she's well aware of the meaning and just likes to see people's reactions.
Oh no. I feel that. Back when ipods were a thing, I liked to call it my husband's "tiny radio." Particularly on planes, with lots of captive listeners.
But I was mainly torturing him.
It's OK - he does similar shit to me. 30 years and counting....
The author probably isn't personally familiar with pre-2010 internet jokes so he skipped from 5-year intervals, all the way back 30 years to Monty Python.
In the 2005-2010 era I was seeing a lot of quotes from Arrested Development, Anchorman, Talladega Nights. But the one that really made the jump from TV to internet text comments was the South Park underpants gnome meme, where step 1 was whatever people were doing (in the episode, stealing underpants), step 2 was ??????, and step 3 was Profit!. Meanwhile, some pure internet nonsense around then was stuff like O RLY?, Cheezburger and other lolcat stuff.
In 2000-2005 or so, there were plenty of Simpsons quotes to go around. Internet memes looked like demotivational posters (a take on the motivational posters common in corporate office settings back then). This was the heyday of surreal flash animation, as the Internet didn't really have the infrastructure to have high-bandwidth videos go viral. Stuff like Strongbad, Group X, All Your Base, etc. Text references to bash.org quotes (I put on my robe and wizard hat, hunter2) came from around this era, from what I remember.
Pre-2000, I'm less familiar with. Real Ultimate Power was the first website that made me laugh out loud. But there was less for user posting on the internet: fewer web-based forums before phpbb and vbulletin came along. You needed your own geocities or angelfire page if you wanted to post something that persisted on the web. Usenet and IRC were around, but I don't know the culture.
My favorite piece of text from a few years ago that I was disgusted to be able to parse was "Shrimp cereal Topanga husband is a Me Too milkshake duck."
"He's not pining, E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! E's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed him to the perch, he'd be pushing up daisies! It's metabolic processes are now 'istory! E's off the twig! E's kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!"
But I grew up only 1 degree removed from nerds incessantly quoting Monty Python at each other, so obviously that's the sweet spot and everything past that is bad and wrong
Of the two versions it makes sense that the one that is combining two words into a contraction takes the apostrophe. Makes sense to me anyway, it's how I remember.