Skip to main content PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES Search PC Gamer View Profile Movies & TV Gaming Industry PC Gaming Show Newsletter Signup Community Guidelines Affiliate Links Meet the team About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine Subscription Why subscribe? Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View Baldur's Gate 3 Doom: The Dark Ages Marvel Rivals Gaming Industry I don't know why early 2000s internet is suddenly back, but both Ask a Ninja and Homestar Runner have just uploaded new videos Wes Fenlon 17 April 2025 What's going on? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Ask A Ninja Omnibus What Year Is This? - YouTube What year is it? The ninja behind early 2000s internet video series Ask a Ninja clearly anticipated the reflexive reaction to his first new video in nine years, leading off with an instant parry. "What year isn't it?" he says within the first three seconds. "If you're still believing in time, my friend, I don't know what to tell you. Have you ever heard of the internet? Everything lasts forever on the internet! Except MySpace photos, or if you had a Flickr Pro account. 2025, I'm still alive!" I cannot believe that the Ask a Ninja guy looks and sounds exactly the same as he did 20 years ago, when pirates vs. ninjas and the general concept of bacon were the most popular topics on the internet. Ask a Ninja sprang forth from the innocent time when memes lasted for years instead of days and putting on a balaclava, doing a funny voice and uploading 360p videos could get you a book deal and lead to you interviewing Will Ferrell. Seeing him suddenly pop up and do new jokes in 2025 makes me feel incredibly old. That balaclava better be hiding some gray hair. You may like Desktop pets are so back, baby! Rooster Teeth returns from the dead, under the ownership of one of its original founders But I think it's also… making me happy? Maybe confused. Unsettled. Yesterday I was prepared to write the return of Ask a Ninja off as a freak incident, but maybe there's something in the water (or in the tubes), because today Homestar Runner published a new video celebrating its 25th year online. It's a song called "Back to a website," and appropriately celebrates a time when "the whole internet wasn't just on four websites on peoples' phones." Back to a Website - YouTube I have some deep, unhealed wounds from being in high school when Homestar Runner was considered peak comedy by 15-year-olds—I would really be okay going the rest of my life without hearing Strong Bad's voice—but this song still speaks to me. As PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens recently advocated, the internet was a richer place to be when it was made up of a million thriving pockets of weirdos with no monolithic social media corralling everyone into the same centralized space. But I'm actually a little optimistic about what feels to me like a groundswell of interest in rebuilding some version of the 2000s internet with more personal blogs and decentralized social media that values people over platforms. In the last year I've seen more people adopt the concept of "POSSE," or Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere; push back against Substack's attempt to own newsletters in favor of independent publishing; and go all-in on making the fragmented web easier to navigate. Maybe the Homestar Runner video is simply a cheeky way to celebrate the site's longevity, but "let's go back to a website" manages to feel like quite a timely message to me in 2025. There are some good jokes in there about web rings, guest books and hit counters, quaint fossils of the early internet. Yet Homestarrunner.com still uses Flash courtesy of open source emulator Ruffle, and it's proof the video has a point. Clicking around that website is just fun in a way that most sites today are not. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Ask A Ninja Omnibus: Zune Vs iPod Ask Your Question In The Comments! - YouTube Ask a Ninja's return video is timely in its own way. "Is the ninja community being affected by tariffs?" he's asked, which gets a smooth pivot to "Ninjas are way more affected by tear-offs—we have to pay an extra duty for every arm that we remove!" I'm not saying that the ninja returned from his long slumber because the state of the world was so bad it awoke him in grand Arthurian tradition just when we needed him most. But his second Return Era video, released three days ago, is titled "Zune vs iPod"—clearly this is a man who knows how to deploy the healing power of Remembering 2009. I'm not sure two incidents are enough to declare a trend, but be on the lookout for the Potter Puppet Pals or the Peanut Butter Jelly Time banana to reappear at any moment. If this isn't proof enough the early 2000s internet is making a comeback, I don't know what is. Social Links Navigation Senior Editor Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games. When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific). You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Desktop pets are so back, baby! Rooster Teeth returns from the dead, under the ownership of one of its original founders Teasers for The Sims 1 and 2 re-releases continue with this official Y2K-inspired Sims site that's giving me severe nostalgia whiplash The run up to the US TikTok ban got as messy, emotional, and weird as the final days of an MMO—and now everyone's back and no one can look each other in the eye 1,465 consecutive days of (mostly) no Silksong news: I spoke to the Sisyphean internet hero that's kept folks informed, every 24 hours, for 4 whole years Hollow Knight: Silksong gets SteamDB updates, and at this point I can't tell if the end is nigh or if I'm just hope-poisoned Latest in Gaming Industry I don't know why early 2000s internet is suddenly back, but both Ask a Ninja and Homestar Runner have just uploaded new videos Eugh: Discord is scanning users' faces and IDs in Australia and the UK to 'experiment' with age verification features Ultrakill publisher co-founder throws up hands, jokes 'Tarkov has done irreparable f*cking damage to the game industry' because even FromSoftware games are extraction shooters now Seth Rogen goes rogue at science awards show to slam tech billionaires for backing Trump: 'It's amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr' Capcom gets a very special award from the Japanese government for having 6,000 worldwide trademarks According to David Fincher's new Xbox ad with an extremely late '90s/early 2000s vibe, you can escape capitalism by buying Xbox games Latest in News I don't know why early 2000s internet is suddenly back, but both Ask a Ninja and Homestar Runner have just uploaded new videos Co-op submarine survival simulator Barotrauma has a free weekend on Steam, so dive in with friends and experience the most comically horrifying deaths you can imagine Rematch, the soccer game from the maker of Sifu and Absolver, is holding an open beta this weekend Thanks to Baldur's Gate 3's new Swashbuckler subclass, it no longer sucks to be a pure Rogue 22-year-old MMO MapleStory is getting the 'old school' treatment with the original lead game designer in charge of new classic servers Forget Baldur's Gate 3's new subclasses: Patch 8's most disgusting power gamer combo is the Rock That Makes You Stupid paired with a sneakily revamped level 2 spell HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested MSI RTX 5060 Ti 16G Gaming Trio OC review Tempopo review Tempest Rising review Corsair Void Wireless V2 review Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB review (Palit Infinity 3) PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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