When does an internet meme officially die?three-way destruction sex video Is it when all the thinkpiecesabout the meme start to hit? How about when older people use it without understandingthe meme? Or maybe it’s when the meme lands someone a book deal?
Whatever the death knell may be, it seems like it's time to put “OK Boomer” to bed.
That’s because someone just bought the domain OKBoomer.com ... for $10,050.
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There were a total of 88 bidders by the time the auction closed on Nov. 20. A spokesperson for Web.com, the parent company of the domain auction platform where the bidding took place, confirmed the sale to Mashable.
So, who bought the domain? Was it a rare moneyed millennial? A Gen Z kid just cracking into their trust fund? A pissed-off baby boomer looking for revenge over the meme?
The answer is: We don't yet know.
Mashable attempted to reach the new owner of OKBoomer.com in order to see what their plans for the domain were as most memes do have a short shelf life. (Remember covfefe? The owner of covfefe.com is still tryingto sell it.) The domain currently forwards to a parking page often used for undeveloped names to serve ads.
An email sent to the address listed in the whois for OKBoomer.com returned due to its mailbox being full. The owner appears to be using a domain whois privacy service with its location listed in Panama to obscure their personal contact details.
The domain’s history is actually a bit interesting: OKBoomer.com was alreadya registered domain on Oct. 29 back when New York Times internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz’s “OK Boomer” piece was published. Lorenz’s articled kicked off the mainstream popularity of the meme used by Generation Z and Millennials to dismiss out-of-touch baby boomers.
OKBoomer.com wasn’t just registered a few months before Lorenz’s piece though. It was registered more than a year earlier in August of 2018, so someone was really ahead of the trend on this one.
The earliest usage of “OK Boomer” has since been traced back to 2015 on 4chan, the online image board where users are known for their anonymous (and sometimes racist) trolling, with some use on Reddit and Twitter in the years after. In fact, the domain was previously registeredin 2007(!) and 2015, but was left to eventually expire each time. But it appears "OK Boomer" achieved full-blown bonafide internet meme status in 2019 after Generation Z popularized it on the fast-growing social video app TikTok.
Naturally, there was even a TikTok video about the OKBoomer.com domain auction:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Unfortunately for the original domain registrant, they were no Nostradamus and let the domain expire in August of 2018. By the time the New York Times piece went up, the domain was well into its expiration and already in "Pending Delete" status. That’s right, the person who registered the domain over a year agoand was still technically the registrant when "OK Boomer" went mainstream didn’t received a dime from this sale.
The domain was finally deleted on Nov. 17 of this year and released back into the available domain pool. It was quickly snatched up and registered by Web.com’s domain dropcatching services, NameJet and SnapNames, where users can place backorders to immediately register expiring domain names. Because multiple people placed a backorder for OKBoomer.com, it was pushed to a three-day auction on those platforms where all those who had reserved the domain could bid.
We're not sure what’s crazier: The idea that 88 people had been watching this domain and waiting for it to drop? Or, the idea that OKBoomer.com could have sold for more had it been a public auction?
While the mystery of whopurchased OKBoomer.com for $10,050 still remains, one thing about the domain did change following the sale: It's now listed for sale on a domain aftermarket platform for $100,000.
RIP OK Boomer.
Topics Social Media Memes