24,000-22,000 BC: chunky fertility goddess statues (pictured at right: notice the prominent and large brains.)
10,000 BC: cave painting
4,000 BC: ziggurat construction
3,000-1,250 BC: pyramid raising (later revived by Mesoamericans and I.M. Pei)
1480-1700: Witch burning
1500s: homoerotic sonnet writing
1600s: pirate singing
1700s: pamphleteering
1760-1762: spreading syphilis
1790s: opera
1800s: novel-writing
1900-1914: being optimistic about the future
1919-1922: cutting up pieces of paper and pulling them out of a hat, also, painting
1925: jazz music
1927: soap-based radio
1933: burning books (mostly in Germany)
1951: find-the-commie (kind of like peek-a-boo, but with Senators)
1964: screaming (usually Beatle-related)
1966: TV
1976: disco
1977: DIY pet rocks
1982-1988: taking odds on Reagan-related nuclear holocaust
1987-1997: making answering machine messages (see below)
1998: web sites about your cat
1999: cappuccino drinking (related to dot-com bubble)
2000: looking forward to the future (this didn’t last as long as the previous fad in this genre)
2003: Friendster
2004-2005: blogging
2006: MySpace
2007: Facebook
April 2008: Twitter
2009 (Jan.-Aug): talking/writing/broadcasting about Twitter in MSM.
2009, Sep. 15: Blogging (again, briefly, but only about Dan Brown’s latest “masterstroke of storytelling”
2010 (Jan.-Feb.):getting really excited about the release of the iPad.
2010 (Mar.-May): trying to remember what all the fuss about the iPad was all about.
Answering machine messages: the most important creative outlet of the nineties!
Video here if it doesn’t beep. (via)