This sounds like the guy who played the really bad GTA "clone" with no physics and stuff. He was a little funnier there.

Generational? It's been with us for a while.

South Park, Kevin Smith's movies, Pewdie Pie, RedLetterMedia, etc. are sources of comedy (for various tastes) that often feature heavy use of profanity. Others decide, "Hey, I can be funny, too. I'll imitate that stuff and make lots of money."

Through hours of study, they decide that the secret of its hilarity must be the swearing.

This is like deciding the key to making a nationally best-selling soft drink is its label.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bothered by the swearing (I'm not quite that old). But yeah--you'd think this thing busted into his house and stole his weed the way he yells at it. It's a cartoon bird, dude. Calm down.

It's a pretty good reflection of how annoying this was.

I'm sorry, did you just try to say something positive about PewDiePie?

so is PewDiePie like the new CliffyB?

Nothing positive, really. He's turned a class clown schtick into a cash machine thanks to video games.

It's the same reason why bad movie/game/restaurant/whatever reviews are more entertaining than good reviews - there's more to expand upon in a funny way when something sucks. It's just that there's a whole lot of unfunny people who think that the fact it's a bad review is what makes it funny so they overstate the badness, forgetting that entire "humor" part that makes it funny.

exy, I think you mean penguinz0, AKA Cr1TiKaL, who is a hell of a lot more fun and entertaining that pewdiewhogivesafuck anyway.

From youtube comments:

I gathered some info on this software :D "On February 18, 2004, the Federal Trade Commission released a statement indicating that Bonzi Software, Inc. was ordered to pay ,000 in fees, among other aspects, for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 with BonziBuddy"

I don't really watch TV that much, but once in a while I'll be at my parents' house and turn on daytime Cartoon Network and they always have those cereal commercials advertising the website and at the end it just quickly says "ask your parents' permission.." poor bird forgot to ask the most important question, too busy telling jokes

Peedy was the original BonziBuddy; he was replaced by the purple gorilla in subsequent versions. I'm not sure if there's a canon explanation for this, but I'm guessing it had to do with Peedy refusing to give his grandfather's land to the Jews.

Real men used Comet Cursor.

What does it say about me that I was past 40 when I installed this? I think I must have literally been online for less than two weeks.

I wouldn't feel bad, John. I'm pretty sure Bonzi Buddy was aimed at people over 40 to begin with.

I can't imagine the sorts of bullshit I'll be falling for when I'm 40 and trying to navigate the Google VR HyperCloud.

Remember this was the same period that gave us Clippy and the dancing baby.

Anyhow, I do think I installed on a computer that wasn't connected to the internet just to see what it actually did, but that would have been in 2002 or 2003 long after it was even a thing. I don't remember ever seeing it "in the wild."

http://memegenerator.net/instance/61756278

( ˘ �˘)♥

I used to like the little dog helper for MS Word (or was it Office in general?)

Which one? IIRC, there were three dog helpers during the Clippy Era: Rover, Rocky, and Power Pup.

At any rate, the Office characters differed from adware assistants like Bonzi and Maeka in that they stayed put in their respective software, and generally didn't barrage you with ads/ screw with your registry / eat up bandwidth by constantly and surreptitiously sending your personal information off to god knows where. I never used them myself, but a less tech saavy friend of mine had Bonzi Buddy for years, and I suspect it was one of the leading causes for why his computer ran like shit. I told him to uninstall the damn thing, but his stepmom quote "loved the monkey", so Bonzi stayed until long after his official support ended.

I did consider installing Maeka, once, in a weak moment, but fortunately they charged money for her and I was still in my "if it's not on Limewire, I don't get it" phase.

I have an affection for Word's Rocky, he has a tiny little slice of my life, working on documents for hours over the years. I never use his tips, but I like how he winks, cries, strikes poses, sleeps, saves a floppy disk in his collar, and does funny stuff like get caught on his chain and uses a gas torch to free himself.

He's a happy Dog, who in some small way helps to make my writing time a little brighter.

I remember when Bonzi Buddy was a thing, but never had it. The first adware I had was Cute FTP, and I started to look into this stuff to try to stay clear.

Boomer

I liked Rocky, too. I rarely used the Office Assistants, but when I did, I'd always switch to Rocky (or one of the other dogs, depending on the version).

Clippy sucked ass, but Rocky, Rover, and Power Pup were neat characters, if still fairly useless.

I wasn't a fan of Clippy knocking on the glass, and had to use computers with him, but on my own it was always Rocky on Office 2K.

I think Power Pup was the Dog on Office '97, I just remember that he was a cartoony super Dog, flat looking. I'm going to have to do an image search now, woof!

Boomer

Yeah, I was just thinking that myself. The parrot's introduction could just as easily be describing the Google Overmind; the only real difference being Bonzi's annoying cartoon mascot, versus Google's cold, invisible Skynet.

I never understood why anyone would possibly actually WANT something like this on their computer, then or now.

OZ- This was the AOL era. The internet was still fairly new to many people, particularly old people and idiots, and I guess the theory was that having a friendly, colorful GUI character on hand to dumb down certain routine tasks would appeal to these folks.

Evidently it didn't work, so I guess another answer might be, people DIDN'T want something like this on their computer! At least not until Siri... which I guess brings up another point:

*Companies* want to have things like this on people's computers. Not all technological developments are actually good for consumers. Consumer desires and interests may not be met by a new software strategy, but corporate interests might be, and that is reason enough for developers to try pushing stuff like this. BonziBuddy wasn't just a dumb interface gimmick that slowed down computers and needlessly complicated simple tasks for all but the most clueless of computer users, he was also a data mining and ad-serving agent, which was the main criticism people leveled at him at the time, and which this review doesn't properly address.

Looking around for BonziBuddy stuff this afternoon, I happened upon a rather depressing article:

http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-says-microsoft-bob-will-ma ke-a-comeback/

As you can see, there's clearly a lot of lingering support from on high for bullshit like this, despite the fact that Bob, Clippy, and Bonzi were all unmitigated failures... which, if the motivation at work was based purely on consumer desire, should have ended the long dark shadow of Bob once and for all. No, the suits think the little fackahs just need hipper packaging and stronger pushing from the top.

On the other hoof, if they released a talking Rainbow Dash desktop agent, I would buy the shit out of it.

Here you go, EH:

http://mlpfanart.wikia.com/wiki/Desktop_Ponies

Awesome!

I love how half the article is the editors bitching about DA art theft, and the other half is the editors bitching about the standard Agent malware behavior, like locking up your system and ponies appearing all over the fucking place whether you want them to or not.

I'M SOLD!

Aww, the domain's dead. :(

You might be able to find it somewhere else Homer, most software isn't really gone for good and is archived.

I'm sure it's somewhere, it's pretty new and Bronies being what they are, it's probably easy to find.

Speaking of you, Boomer, I hope you don't mind, I just submitted that Bill O'Reilly clip you linked from your website. Also, you're a Pyrenean Shepard, right? Do you happen to have any pictures of those dogs in this kind of pose:

http://www.gloucester.nsw.gov.au/Images/UserUploadedImages/115 /dreamstime_6065810.jpg

Bronies are intense in the fandom, I've heard it said.

I don't mind that you submitted it, that's cool, it will help me to keep in touch here. I've only submitted one video that made it, for the Dog House TV show with Digby.

A Pyrenean Shepherd like Here's Boomer was. I might have gone bobtail Sheepdog like the Shaggy DA, but I found myself with the Pyr Shep after seeing Here's Boomer. I posed a zip file of some pictures to your O'Reilley clip.

Boomer

I miss GEOS!