Albino Blacksheep (ABS) is an animation website made by Steven Lerner in
Toronto, Ontario on January 4, 1999. It publishes member submitted digital media made with
Adobe Flash. The website also features image galleries, audio files, and text files. along with a
mobile section that provided
ring tone
A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...
s,
screensavers, and
wallpaper for mobile phones.
Etymology
According to the site's creator Steven Lerner, the name is an intentional
oxymoron
An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase that creates an ostensible self-contradiction. An oxymoron can be used as a rhetorical devi ...
; by definition, a black sheep cannot be an
albino because it quite obviously possesses skin pigmentation. He also points out that "
black sheep
In the English language, black sheep is an idiom that describes a member of a group who is different from the rest, especially a family member who does not fit in. The term stems from sheep whose fleece is colored black rather than the more comm ...
" can also be interpreted as "outcast" and that the site's title could be interpreted to refer to an albino outcast.
History
Albino Blacksheep was founded on January 4, 1999, by Steven Lerner, to promote his band of the same name, which was started in 1996. Very little information on the band Albino Blacksheep exists. In 2000, Steven took a
web design course and redesigned the website. This new incarnation contained rants, graphical images, and a video stream from Lerner's video camera.
Perhaps Lerner's first famous work was in 2003, with his site's
Google bomb for French military victories. Between then and 2006, the site had been growing in popularity, receiving about 1.50 million pageviews per day.
Albino Blacksheep is also famous for being a major portal for
Flash animation and
animutation (a Flash animation style created by
Neil Cicierega
Neil Stephen Cicierega ( ; born August 23, 1986) is an American comedian, actor, filmmaker, singer, YouTuber, musician, songwriter, puppeteer, artist, and animator. He is known as the creator of a genre of Flash animation he termed "Animutation ...
in 2001). The popular Web game ''Musical Lantern'' can be found on this site. The website also helped the band
Tally Hall achieve some notability after posting their music video ''Banana Man''.
On April 1, 2007, Lerner changed the homepage to a joke homepage, designed to make people think that the site had been bought and turned into "Google Animations". The joke was reinforced by a
fake blog stating that
''"Albino Blacksheep has been acquired by Google Inc. for roughly $32 million in stock options. The deal was discussed over a casual breakfast in Mountain View, California between the Canadian-born founder of Albino Blacksheep and the Google co-founders and CEO. Plans are underway for Google Inc. to tie its services and software into the former Albino Blacksheep website which will go by the new nam
Google Animation"''
Notes and references
{{reflist, 40em
External links
Albino Blacksheep
1999 establishments in Ontario
Internet properties established in 1999
Canadian comedy websites
Free music download websites