BUFFALO, N.Y. — Friends and family of Dayton Cooke, a grown man who is 34, are continually disheartened by his habit of dropping dated references from Ebaum’s World, Newgrounds, and other turn-of-the-millenium internet content repositories, disappointed sources confirmed.
“Dayton and I grew up watching flash animations together and AIMing memes to each other before YouTube was even a thing. Actually, I don’t think we called them memes back then—this was the pre-LOLcats era, mind you,” says longtime friend Jaylen Grimes. “But somewhere down the line, everyone else I know our age stopped saying stuff like ‘I am le tired’ and ‘all your base are belong to us’ in regular conversation. Dayton didn’t though. He’s still a good dude, but it can be tough to be around him if you experience secondhand embarrassment.”
Cooke’s wife Leah admits she thought the G.I. Joe PSAs and Albino Blacksheep references were “sort of endearing” back when the couple started dating in 2010. Over time, however, the charm has faded.
“Right after our wedding ceremony in 2018, Dayton said to me ‘You’re the wife now, dog.’ That’s when I finally accepted that he was never going to stop, and I just had to learn to live with it,” she said. “Thankfully, I’ve gotten pretty good at predicting when he’s going to say something cringy. If we’re in the grocery store, for example, and he sees mushrooms, I know he will start singing ‘badger badger badger.’ And if we pass the frozen breakfast food aisle, there’s a 99% chance he’s going to ask me ‘Do you like waffles?’ It’s annoying, for sure, but Dayton makes up for it by being an amazing father to our two-year-old, Leeroy Jenkins Cooke.”
Cooke says he doesn’t see what the big deal is.
“Internet humor was at its peak level of leet from 1999-2004 and has been in a precipitous decline ever since. I can’t help it if no one else appreciates my Homestar Runner references. If anything, that’s a reflection on them, not me,” he said. “The people that get it, get it. Like when I went as Salad Fingers to my office Halloween party last year, the one person who recognized my costume, Gary from IT, almost died laughing. He still asks if I have any rusty spoons whenever he sees me. That makes it all worth it.”
At press time, Cooke was humming Dragostea Din Tei while watching his son Leeroy Jenkins pet Dancing Baby GIF, the family’s cat.
