In June 1994, when the late OJ Simpson was charged with murdering his ex-wife and her lover, Ron Goldman, the World Wide Web was in its infancy. Still, in hindsight, it’s easy to realize that modern internet culture is all around us.
Not literally, of course. The Netscape browser wouldn’t be released for another six months. If you wanted to tie up the phone line, fire up your 56K modem and “surf the Internet” (an obscure phrase at the time) Created by librarian), you can use the buggy Mosaic browser. But you have to know your site and your service: a few nerds just created a directory called Yahoo, but didn’t add a “search” feature until 1995, when the OJ experiment began.
Learn about the O.J. Simpson trial from CNN’s ancient ’90s site
The Internet developed rapidly that year. It does this in part by providing a gathering place for orange juice lovers. 》Dozens of OJ related databases [sic]An interactive discussion forum and email list have been open in cyberspace since last June,” New York Times In February 1995, in a Now it seems that this story is too bizarre to be true. Defunct service provider Prodigy “already has 20,000 orange juice-related messages in its database,” while on AOL, “Court TV forums are filled with armchair analysts.”
In “The First Trial of the Digital Century,” era” Peter Lewis enthused: “Anyone with a PC, a modem and a phone line can become a [defense attorney] Robert Shapiro [prosecutor] Marcia Clark, [judge] Lance Ito, or Geraldo. You can almost hear Pearl walking up and down Park Avenue.
Some of our extremely online future is already lurking in these forums. GIF: Check. (“A zone on the web that, as it’s called, allows visitors to watch over and over video footage of Mr. Simpson pleading not guilty at his trial,” Lewis writes) Casual conspiracy theorists: Check. (Ito replaced his Toshiba laptop with an IBM Thinkpad; he Internet access during trial? ) Randos is suddenly an expert: check. (One owner of a Canadian OJ website with 10,000 users boasts: “We’re as up to date as the lawyers are. It makes for informed discussion.”)
But here’s the thing: Beyond the overwhelming cable TV coverage and screaming front pages, these online discussions often did Looks smart. (To get a sense of the media’s attitude at the time, compare this remarkably sober website for journalists at the time with the shocking CNN trial page, which splashed crime scene blood all over its front page.) In 1994 and 1995, The frantic, social media-driven news events we associate with them are already here, but in a different form.
Bronco chase in which OJ flees arrest and threatens to shoot himself while a posse of police follows him 75 miles away? This is the 20th century version of a must-see live broadcast.The virtually unchanged image had an estimated 95 million viewers, more than that year’s Super Bowl, and Ten times the current live broadcast record. If it happened now, the wild horse chase would break the internet — or at least come closer than O.J.’s friend Robert Kardashian’s daughter did. (The OJ trial arguably launched the Kardashian family, and the reality show culture that followed it.)
Today, social media users using drones may find Bronco faster than a news helicopter, which takes an hour to find him.If anything, though, the Bronco Chase more Interactive, not live: A sportscaster connected Simpson to a former coach after he learned the car was tuned to his radio station. Convince OJ to put down the gun.
In 2000, OJ Simpson held his own livestream event as a fundraiser.
Image source: AFP, Getty Images
Of course, there were memes during the trial, even if we didn’t call them that. Star witness Kato Kaelin is a Z-rated actor who lives in OJ’s hotel and is a one-man meme machine. After Kaelin uttered the words, “Oops, lawsuits” became one of the most widely used phrases in 1995. He was using a pointer to point out areas of the Simpson estate on the blackboard when he accidentally poked the juror.
The fact that Kaelin’s thoughts were racing there seemed to sum up the madness surrounding the courtroom: Everyone involved was as desperate for their 15 minutes of fame as any modern influencer, and image is everything (hence Marcia Clark (Marcia Clark’s famous transformation).
The entire trial sparked what was, and still is, a very popular meme. ‘If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit’: Celebrity defense attorney Johnnie Cochran’s rhyme is as simple as a political tweet (And just as cynical: Gloves found at scene didn’t fit OJ’s hand, because it was shrunken by dried blood) and the defendant made no effort to put on rubber gloves). 2024 Rhythm is an image macrowidely shared on TikTok and Instagram.
comedy have At least that has changed.What’s really weird about remembering from such a distance is the way comedians and late-night talk shows think they have license to produce Content that seems tasteless at best, at worst racist or misogynistic, on YouTube today. “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno often features a group of dancers who look like Judge Ito and one who looks like Marcia Clark, even changing her hairstyle. That’s it, that’s it.
But overall, the conversation that America is having around this case — about domestic violence and murderous men, about racism in the LAPD, about celebrities buying into the legal hierarchy — is different from the conversation we are having now, 30 years later. it’s the same. They happen on the streets, in the letter pages, and on cable news, not social media. The deeper you delve into this quintessential 1990s case, the less nostalgic you become about that era.