Spongmonkeys

About

Joel Veitch is a web animator and singer-songwriter who united these two talents when he launched rathergood.com. At first the site mostly housed singing kitten videos until January 2003 when this was posted. Played by Joel and his brother Alex.

They’re called “spongmonkeys” and originated on b3ta.com. Their names come from the words “spong” and “monkey”. “Spong” is a popular term from b3ta that means “The practice of adding large staring eyes with small pupils to an image”. The practice of Sponging was already popular amongst b3ta users prior to the creation of “We Like the Moon.”

It started spreading when it was in a b3ta newsletter and also found it’s way to youtube where it has >390,000 views.

Mainstream Crossover

The strangeness of the video made people send it off left and right, one person who was sent the video was an ad firm worker for Quizno’s. Soon, this hit television airwaves.

Memetic Videos

Understandably, the commercial was either loved or hated. But for the fans, there are a number of re-enactments.

Here are people playing the song IRL

Mandatory video game music video (kingdom hearts)

Slowed down? Why not?

Sped up? Be my guest.

Love them or hate them, the spongmonkeys are hard to forget.