# Hello My Future Girlfriend

> Hello My Future Girlfriend is a 1998 Tripod-hosted homepage by 11-year-old Michael Blount featuring his yearbook photo and audio introduction that spread across Newgrounds, making Blount one of the internet's first reluctant meme celebrities.

**Hello My Future Girlfriend** is one of the earliest personal web pages to go viral, created in 1998 by an 11-year-old boy named Michael Blount from New Mexico who built a Tripod-hosted homepage to find an online girlfriend[1]. The page featured his yearbook photo and an audio recording introducing himself, and it spread across Newgrounds, 4chan, and early web forums in the early 2000s, making Blount one of the internet's first reluctant meme celebrities[2].

## Origin
In 1998, Michael Blount was an 11-year-old in New Mexico who had just taken a two-day beginner HTML class[5]. He lied about his age to create an account on the now-defunct web host Tripod, then built his "Hello My Future Girlfriend" page out of what he later called "an act of desperation"[5]. He was chatting with people on Yahoo! at the time and wanted something like a profile page to attract an online girlfriend[1].

The original page is now lost, but its contents were preserved through mirrors and archives. Blount's site included his yearbook photo, the iconic audio greeting, and his email address[1]. The page sat relatively unnoticed for about a year until September 1999, when the humor site Chimp.ca discovered it. The site's owner, Magoo, contacted Blount via ICQ to find out whether his girlfriend request had actually worked[4]. Over several messages, Blount revealed he had been talking to a few girls online. Chimp.ca then interviewed one named Jessica, a 15-year-old gamer who had found the page through a Counter-Strike news link[6].

A troll named Chris, going by the alias "Streak," also got involved. The 16-year-old from Texas had been impersonating a girl to catfish Blount, and only confessed after his peers saw it as "preying on a poor defenseless innocent little boy"[7]. After this incident, Blount changed all his email addresses and chat handles and went offline for six months[5].

- **Platform:** Tripod (personal homepage), Newgrounds (viral spread)
- **Creator:** Michael Blount (creator/subject)
- **Date:** 1998

## Overview
Hello My Future Girlfriend was a personal web page built on early-web hosting platform Tripod by a sixth-grader named Michael Blount. The page was simple even by late-'90s standards: a yearbook headshot of Blount wearing a blue polo shirt, wire-framed glasses, and a dark-brown mullet, alongside an auto-playing audio file[1].

The audio greeting went: "Hello my future girlfriend, this is what I sound like. I'm 11 years old, in the sixth grade, in New Mexico. Please PM me. Bye! Thanks for stopping by!"[1] The recording was crinkly and compressed under the limitations of dial-up modems, giving it an endearing lo-fi quality that made it even more memorable.

The page was a pure product of its era. Before Myspace, Facebook, or any real social networking infrastructure existed, kids who wanted to connect online had to get creative[1]. Blount's earnest, unfiltered approach to finding a girlfriend through raw HTML turned his personal page into an accidental time capsule of Web 1.0 innocence[3].

## How It Spread
The first major wave of attention came on July 2, 2001, when Tom Fulp, the owner of Newgrounds, posted a link to Blount's original page on the Newgrounds forums[5]. On March 1, 2002, a mirror of the site hit the front page of Metafilter[5]. By 2004, threads about the page had appeared on the eBaum's World Forum and Winamp Forums, where users called it "older than the internet itself"[8].

The page spread through 4chan, IGN message boards, and GameFAQs threads[1]. Blount's earnest, lovelorn tone was irresistible to early-2000s internet edgelords, and his yearbook photo became an instantly recognizable image. By July 2007, forum users at Jinxworld were actively hunting for Blount, and they became one of the first groups to find his Myspace profile[5].

In 2008, the blog Misanthropy Today featured the site as an "Internet History Lesson," and Blount was interviewed by Revision3's YouTube show Internet Superstar[5]. He also started selling merchandise with the catchphrase and published his story on a personal blog[5]. The page was shared on Reddit in December 2009 as a piece of nostalgia, with the original poster calling it their "oldest LOL/WTF moment"[5].

## How to Use
Hello My Future Girlfriend isn't a meme template in the modern sense. There's no blank format to fill in. Instead, it typically functions as:

- **A nostalgia reference:** People link to the archived page or quote the audio to evoke early internet culture. The catchphrase "Hello my future girlfriend" works as shorthand for innocent, pre-social-media online earnestness.
- **A reaction/joke setup:** The yearbook photo and audio clip get posted in threads about awkward internet moments, cringe content, or discussions about how different the internet used to be.
- **A parody format:** Some users have created their own "Hello My Future [X]" pages or videos, mimicking the structure of Blount's original homepage.

The meme is best deployed when someone wants to reference the weird, optimistic, slightly desperate energy of the Web 1.0 era.

## Cultural Impact
Hello My Future Girlfriend holds a unique spot in internet history as one of the first "accidental viral celebrities" of the web[1]. Blount went viral before the word "viral" was even used to describe internet content. His page is regularly cited alongside Dancing Baby, Hampster Dance, and "I Kiss You!" (Mahir Cagri) as a defining artifact of the late-'90s personal homepage era[3].

The 2010 "Hello My Future Boyfriend" follow-up added a layer of significance. Blount's public coming-out through the same format that made him famous turned a cringe relic into something genuinely touching[1]. MEL Magazine later profiled him as one of their "Internet Boyfriends" series in 2022, framing his story as both a portrait of early internet culture and a personal narrative about growing up in public[1].

The Chimp.ca interviews from 1999, preserved through the Wayback Machine, are some of the earliest documented examples of a website conducting interviews about a viral web page, making them a piece of internet journalism history in their own right[4].

## Fun Facts
- Blount lied about his age to create an account on Tripod, the web hosting service where his page first lived[5].
- The "Jessica" that Chimp.ca interviewed turned out to be "Streak," a 16-year-old boy from Texas catfishing Blount. The site documented the full unmasking in a separate interview[7].
- Blount's page predates Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, and essentially all modern social media. He had to use raw HTML on a free web host just to put himself out there[1].
- Google search interest for the meme peaked at its earliest tracking point and saw a small bump in April 2010, coinciding with Blount's Reddit AMA[5].
- Blount told MEL Magazine he still cringes when he hears the original audio playing[1].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Hello My Future Girlfriend?
Hello My Future Girlfriend is a personal web page created in 1998 by 11-year-old Michael Blount, featuring his yearbook photo and an audio greeting asking visitors to be his girlfriend. It became one of the earliest viral memes[1].

### Where did Hello My Future Girlfriend come from?
Michael Blount built the page on the free web host Tripod after taking a two-day HTML class in sixth grade in New Mexico[5].

### What does Hello My Future Girlfriend mean?
The phrase is a direct quote from the audio file on Blount's page. It's become shorthand for early internet earnestness and the naive optimism of Web 1.0 personal homepages[1].

### How do you use Hello My Future Girlfriend?
People typically reference the catchphrase, share the archived page, or post the yearbook photo in discussions about early internet culture or awkward online moments[1].

### Is Hello My Future Girlfriend still popular?
The meme is a classic piece of internet history. While it isn't actively creating new content, it's regularly referenced in retrospectives about early web culture. As of 2022, MEL Magazine profiled Blount as part of their "Internet Boyfriends" series[1].

### Who is Michael Blount?
Michael Blount is the creator and subject of the Hello My Future Girlfriend page. He was 11 when he made it in 1998, came out as gay in 2010, and was still living in New Mexico and taking college courses as of 2022[1].

### What happened to the original page?
The original Tripod-hosted page is lost, but mirrors and archives preserved its content. A YouTube video documenting the page's remains still exists[1].

### When did Hello My Future Girlfriend go viral?
The first major spread came in July 2001 when Tom Fulp posted it on the Newgrounds forums. It reached Metafilter in March 2002 and spread to 4chan, IGN, and GameFAQs from there[5].

### What is "Hello My Future Boyfriend"?
In April 2010, Blount posted a follow-up video announcing he was gay and looking for a boyfriend instead, using the same format as his original page. It was covered by BuzzFeed and Tosh.0[3].

### Did Michael Blount ever find a girlfriend from the page?
According to the 1999 Chimp.ca interviews, Blount was chatting with several girls online, but the page didn't produce a lasting relationship. He later came out as gay[4].

### Who trolled Michael Blount?
A 16-year-old from Texas named Chris, using the alias "Streak," impersonated a girl online to catfish Blount. He was exposed by Chimp.ca and the full exchange was published[7].

## References
1. [Hello My Future Girlfriend - Encyclopedia Dramatica](<https://edramatica.com/Hello_My_Future_Girlfriend>)
2. [The ‘Hello My Future Girlfriend’ Kid Is All Grown Up — And Now Looking for a Boyfriend](<https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/hello-my-future-girlfriend-michael-blount>)
3. ["Hello My Future Girlfriend" Kid Resurfaces](<https://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/hello-my-future-girlfriend-kid-finally-resurface>)
4. [Hello My Future Girlfriend - Know Your Meme](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hello-my-future-girlfriend>)
5. [List of Internet phenomena](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena>)
6. [Jessica Imposter Interview](<https://web.archive.org/web/20010303003150/http://chimp.ca/interviews/jessica/jessica2.phtml>)
7. [Jessica Interview](<https://web.archive.org/web/20010303003016/http://chimp.ca/interviews/jessica/jessica.phtml>)
8. [Hello my future girlfriend - Winamp & Shoutcast Forums](<http://forums.winamp.com/archive/index.php/t-172369.html>)
9. [michael b exclusive interview](<https://web.archive.org/web/200101271232/http://www.chimp.ca/interviews/mike/mike.phtml>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/hello-my-future-girlfriend
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