Alright, nerds, just so we're clear, that was more than 15 years ago. Assuming this is current, which it probably isn't, that "53yo" dad was in his late 30s at the time, could very much have been posting about it when it happened. Given the current average age for having kids, "bumblebeebats" was probably wearing diapers by the time the Internet got to the point of entirely abstracting it to shapes. There is a longer period of time between loss.jpg and now than between the first rickroll and loss.jpg.
If it makes you feel any better, all of this is hurting me just as bad as it's hurting you.
It's wild to me that ctl+alt+del is relevant today at all. I used to read webcomics in high school all the time, CAD included. Loss was definitely eye opening, it was a real moment of "wasn't this comic about video games?" But then it was forgotten about for so long. It's a marvel to me that random moment in such a dated comic got meme'd on this hard.
Aren't all (or almost all) memes famous randomly though? No one expected a sort of doofy photo of a teen to be famous for years for having bad luck, for example.
"Under 30"? I'm 32 and I read Ctrl Alt Del in my sophomore year of high school. I was probably on the younger end of people reading it at the time it came out.
I swear the Internet is trying to make me feel ancient 💀
I read a bunch of webcomics, and I currently read a bunch of manga, mahwa, manhua, web novels, and yes, still some webcomics. I have some favorites, but some aren't that good and are just junk food.
Ctrl Alt Del was never a favorite, nor something I'd check all the time, but every once in a while I'd click through it and read some of it. I probably read it similarly often as Penny Arcade, which didn't really appeal duper heavily to me either.
I guess it would depend on where one's from then. I don't, as a northern European, have any clue what the Macy Day parade is. One needs to be a chronically online person to know what a rick roll is in my country, and I would call that phenomenon massively widespread in our online culture (well, back in the day). Someone being "very much not online" and at the same time being aware of Rick rolling is an oxymoron to me.