The Terrible Secret Of Space

2000Flash animation / catchphrase / songclassic

Also known as: Space Robot Bonanza · Do You Have Stairs in Your House

The Terrible Secret Of Space is a 2000 Flash animation and song by Lowtax featuring Pusher Robot and Shover Robot who 'protect' humans by pushing them down stairs, spawning 'Do you have stairs in your house?

"The Terrible Secret of Space" is a Flash animation and song originating from a prank ICQ conversation conducted by Something Awful founder Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka in 2000. The meme introduced the characters Pusher Robot and Shover Robot, two malfunctioning space robots who "protect" humans by pushing them down stairs, and spawned the catchphrase "Do you have stairs in your house?" as a secret greeting between Something Awful forum members. It stands as one of the earliest examples of an internet in-joke becoming a cross-platform cultural artifact, tied directly to the same creative circle that produced the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" phenomenon.

flash animation memessomething awful memesearly internet memescatchphrase memesabsurdist humor memes

Overview

The Terrible Secret of Space is a Flash animation set to a song of the same name by The Laziest Men on Mars. It features two characters, the Pusher Robot and the Shover Robot, who claim to be "space robots here to protect you from the terrible secret of space." Their method of protection involves pushing and shoving humans down flights of stairs. The animation layers these absurd robot monologues over unsettling background imagery showing people in distress, creating a tone that's equal parts funny and genuinely creepy3.

The whole thing traces back to a single prank instant message conversation where Kyanka convinced a stranger he was building intelligent robots out of VCR parts. The robots, the stairs, the "terrible secret" — all of it came from one improvised chat session that spiraled into something much bigger4.

In 1999, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka began publishing transcripts of his prank conversations on ICQ, the dominant instant messaging platform of the era6. The seventh entry in this series, titled "Space Robot Bonanza~," went up on April 7, 20004. Over the course of the chat, Kyanka convinced a New Zealand ICQ user going by the handle "Corn_Boy" that he was a programmer who designed intelligent robots. The conversation escalated until Corn_Boy appeared to believe he was actually talking to one of the robots, which had "protected" Kyanka by pushing him down the stairs to shield him from a mysterious "terrible secret of space"4.

The transcript caught fire on the Something Awful forums. American techno group The Laziest Men on Mars, already well-known in that community for "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" (the track behind the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" animation), wrote a song based on the ICQ transcript2. The band's name itself came from a line in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode riffing on the B-movie *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians*2. The only confirmed member was DJ Jeffrey Jay Roberts of Kansas City, Missouri, who had created the original "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" track in late 20007.

By the end of 2000, artist Jonathan Robinson and a collaborator built a Flash animation to accompany the song3. Robinson later reported the animation was pulling over one million hits per day3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Something Awful (ICQ prank transcript), Newgrounds (Flash animation viral spread)
Key People
Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, The Laziest Men on Mars, Jonathan Robinson
Date
2000

In 1999, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka began publishing transcripts of his prank conversations on ICQ, the dominant instant messaging platform of the era. The seventh entry in this series, titled "Space Robot Bonanza~," went up on April 7, 2000. Over the course of the chat, Kyanka convinced a New Zealand ICQ user going by the handle "Corn_Boy" that he was a programmer who designed intelligent robots. The conversation escalated until Corn_Boy appeared to believe he was actually talking to one of the robots, which had "protected" Kyanka by pushing him down the stairs to shield him from a mysterious "terrible secret of space".

The transcript caught fire on the Something Awful forums. American techno group The Laziest Men on Mars, already well-known in that community for "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" (the track behind the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" animation), wrote a song based on the ICQ transcript. The band's name itself came from a line in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode riffing on the B-movie *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians*. The only confirmed member was DJ Jeffrey Jay Roberts of Kansas City, Missouri, who had created the original "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" track in late 2000.

By the end of 2000, artist Jonathan Robinson and a collaborator built a Flash animation to accompany the song. Robinson later reported the animation was pulling over one million hits per day.

How It Spread

The Flash animation stayed mostly within Something Awful's orbit until September 30, 2001, when an unrelated viewer posted it on Newgrounds, exposing it to a much wider audience. From there it spread across early-2000s Flash animation hubs including Albino Blacksheep and Popscreen.

In April 2001, a definition for the song and video appeared on Everything2, an early internet culture reference site. Multiple Urban Dictionary entries followed, covering "The Terrible Secret of Space," "Pusher Robot," and "Shover Robot" as separate entries. The animation and video versions eventually appeared on platforms like World News and Technorati as the Flash web gave way to video hosting.

The catchphrase "Do you have stairs in your house?" split off from the animation and took on its own life starting as early as February 2002. Something Awful forum members adopted it as a real-world identification code. When one goon asked another "Do you have stairs in your house?", the correct response was "I am protected". This call-and-response showed up on the Straight Dope message board, Yahoo! Answers, Democratic Underground, and Amazon Askville as SA members used it to find each other outside the forums. The phrase also got its own entries on Everything2 and Urban Dictionary.

The connection to "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" is worth noting for context. Both animations used music by The Laziest Men on Mars. Both drew from the same Something Awful community. "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" remixed Zero Wing music by Tatsuya Uemura and became the backbone of the "All Your Base" Flash video posted on Newgrounds in February 2001. "The Terrible Secret of Space" followed a similar template: forum in-joke turned into a song turned into a Flash animation turned into a wider meme. The band even made a track called "We Are Something Awful" and another called "113 Dead Goons" specifically for the SA forums.

How to Use This Meme

The Terrible Secret of Space works differently from most modern meme templates. There's no exploitable image format or fill-in-the-blank structure. Instead, people typically use it in three ways:

The catchphrase exchange: Ask someone "Do you have stairs in your house?" If they respond with "I am protected," they're signaling familiarity with Something Awful culture and early internet meme history.

Robot quotes: Drop lines from the Pusher Robot or Shover Robot into conversations for absurdist effect. Common quotes include "We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of space," "Do not trust the Pusher Robot, he is malfunctioning," and "Grandma has gone down the stairs". The humor comes from the circular logic of the robots arguing over whether pushing or shoving is the correct method of "protection."

Cultural reference: Mentioning the terrible secret of space in a thread or comment section functions as a shibboleth for early internet culture, similar to referencing "All Your Base" or Homestar Runner.

Cultural Impact

The Terrible Secret of Space occupies a specific niche in internet history as a bridge between the Something Awful forum era and the wider Flash animation boom of the early 2000s. The ICQ prank transcript format that Kyanka pioneered became a genre unto itself on SA, with "Space Robot Bonanza~" being the breakout entry.

The "Do you have stairs in your house?" / "I am protected" exchange is one of the earliest documented examples of an online community creating a real-world identification system from a meme. Years before Reddit's narwhal-bacon exchange, SA goons were using this call-and-response to find each other on other forums and in person.

The meme also sits at the center of a creative web connecting several early internet landmarks. The Laziest Men on Mars linked "All Your Base," "The Terrible Secret of Space," and Something Awful into a single creative ecosystem. The Flash animation format that Robinson used would become the dominant meme delivery system for the next several years, with Newgrounds as its primary distribution hub. One commentator noted the layered references: "This is about as freaking Internet as it gets".

Fun Facts

The Laziest Men on Mars' name comes from a Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff on *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians*, specifically the line "Droppo, you are the laziest man on Mars".

The ICQ prank was the seventh in a series Kyanka published on Something Awful. ICQ at the time was the first widely adopted instant messaging platform, with over 100 million registered accounts at its peak around 2001.

Jonathan Robinson's animation features deliberately disturbing background images of frightened or dead people flashing behind the robots' cheerful dialogue, creating an unsettling contrast.

The Pusher Robot shoves people while the Shover Robot pushes them. Each robot accuses the other of malfunctioning. This circular absurdity is central to the joke.

"Invasion of the Gabber Robots," the band's other famous track, remixed music originally composed by Tatsuya Uemura for the 1989 arcade game Zero Wing.

Derivatives & Variations

"Do you have stairs in your house?" catchphrase

— Broke away from the animation to become an independent Something Awful identification meme, with documented use across multiple non-SA forums by 2002[4].

Urban Dictionary entries

— Separate entries were created for "The Terrible Secret of Space," "Pusher Robot," "Shover Robot," and "Do you have stairs in your house," each with roleplay-style definitions written in the voice of the robots[5][8][10].

"113 Dead Goons" and "We Are Something Awful"

— Additional tracks The Laziest Men on Mars created specifically for the SA community, extending the band's role as in-house musicians for the forum[2].

Frequently Asked Questions

The Terrible Secret Of Space

2000Flash animation / catchphrase / songclassic

Also known as: Space Robot Bonanza · Do You Have Stairs in Your House

The Terrible Secret Of Space is a 2000 Flash animation and song by Lowtax featuring Pusher Robot and Shover Robot who 'protect' humans by pushing them down stairs, spawning 'Do you have stairs in your house?

"The Terrible Secret of Space" is a Flash animation and song originating from a prank ICQ conversation conducted by Something Awful founder Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka in 2000. The meme introduced the characters Pusher Robot and Shover Robot, two malfunctioning space robots who "protect" humans by pushing them down stairs, and spawned the catchphrase "Do you have stairs in your house?" as a secret greeting between Something Awful forum members. It stands as one of the earliest examples of an internet in-joke becoming a cross-platform cultural artifact, tied directly to the same creative circle that produced the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" phenomenon.

flash animation memes something awful memes early internet memes catchphrase memes absurdist humor memes

Overview

The Terrible Secret of Space is a Flash animation set to a song of the same name by The Laziest Men on Mars. It features two characters, the Pusher Robot and the Shover Robot, who claim to be "space robots here to protect you from the terrible secret of space." Their method of protection involves pushing and shoving humans down flights of stairs. The animation layers these absurd robot monologues over unsettling background imagery showing people in distress, creating a tone that's equal parts funny and genuinely creepy.

The whole thing traces back to a single prank instant message conversation where Kyanka convinced a stranger he was building intelligent robots out of VCR parts. The robots, the stairs, the "terrible secret" — all of it came from one improvised chat session that spiraled into something much bigger.

In 1999, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka began publishing transcripts of his prank conversations on ICQ, the dominant instant messaging platform of the era. The seventh entry in this series, titled "Space Robot Bonanza~," went up on April 7, 2000. Over the course of the chat, Kyanka convinced a New Zealand ICQ user going by the handle "Corn_Boy" that he was a programmer who designed intelligent robots. The conversation escalated until Corn_Boy appeared to believe he was actually talking to one of the robots, which had "protected" Kyanka by pushing him down the stairs to shield him from a mysterious "terrible secret of space".

The transcript caught fire on the Something Awful forums. American techno group The Laziest Men on Mars, already well-known in that community for "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" (the track behind the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" animation), wrote a song based on the ICQ transcript. The band's name itself came from a line in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode riffing on the B-movie *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians*. The only confirmed member was DJ Jeffrey Jay Roberts of Kansas City, Missouri, who had created the original "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" track in late 2000.

By the end of 2000, artist Jonathan Robinson and a collaborator built a Flash animation to accompany the song. Robinson later reported the animation was pulling over one million hits per day.

Origin & Background

Platform
Something Awful (ICQ prank transcript), Newgrounds (Flash animation viral spread)
Key People
Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, The Laziest Men on Mars, Jonathan Robinson
Date
2000

In 1999, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka began publishing transcripts of his prank conversations on ICQ, the dominant instant messaging platform of the era. The seventh entry in this series, titled "Space Robot Bonanza~," went up on April 7, 2000. Over the course of the chat, Kyanka convinced a New Zealand ICQ user going by the handle "Corn_Boy" that he was a programmer who designed intelligent robots. The conversation escalated until Corn_Boy appeared to believe he was actually talking to one of the robots, which had "protected" Kyanka by pushing him down the stairs to shield him from a mysterious "terrible secret of space".

The transcript caught fire on the Something Awful forums. American techno group The Laziest Men on Mars, already well-known in that community for "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" (the track behind the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" animation), wrote a song based on the ICQ transcript. The band's name itself came from a line in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode riffing on the B-movie *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians*. The only confirmed member was DJ Jeffrey Jay Roberts of Kansas City, Missouri, who had created the original "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" track in late 2000.

By the end of 2000, artist Jonathan Robinson and a collaborator built a Flash animation to accompany the song. Robinson later reported the animation was pulling over one million hits per day.

How It Spread

The Flash animation stayed mostly within Something Awful's orbit until September 30, 2001, when an unrelated viewer posted it on Newgrounds, exposing it to a much wider audience. From there it spread across early-2000s Flash animation hubs including Albino Blacksheep and Popscreen.

In April 2001, a definition for the song and video appeared on Everything2, an early internet culture reference site. Multiple Urban Dictionary entries followed, covering "The Terrible Secret of Space," "Pusher Robot," and "Shover Robot" as separate entries. The animation and video versions eventually appeared on platforms like World News and Technorati as the Flash web gave way to video hosting.

The catchphrase "Do you have stairs in your house?" split off from the animation and took on its own life starting as early as February 2002. Something Awful forum members adopted it as a real-world identification code. When one goon asked another "Do you have stairs in your house?", the correct response was "I am protected". This call-and-response showed up on the Straight Dope message board, Yahoo! Answers, Democratic Underground, and Amazon Askville as SA members used it to find each other outside the forums. The phrase also got its own entries on Everything2 and Urban Dictionary.

The connection to "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" is worth noting for context. Both animations used music by The Laziest Men on Mars. Both drew from the same Something Awful community. "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" remixed Zero Wing music by Tatsuya Uemura and became the backbone of the "All Your Base" Flash video posted on Newgrounds in February 2001. "The Terrible Secret of Space" followed a similar template: forum in-joke turned into a song turned into a Flash animation turned into a wider meme. The band even made a track called "We Are Something Awful" and another called "113 Dead Goons" specifically for the SA forums.

How to Use This Meme

The Terrible Secret of Space works differently from most modern meme templates. There's no exploitable image format or fill-in-the-blank structure. Instead, people typically use it in three ways:

The catchphrase exchange: Ask someone "Do you have stairs in your house?" If they respond with "I am protected," they're signaling familiarity with Something Awful culture and early internet meme history.

Robot quotes: Drop lines from the Pusher Robot or Shover Robot into conversations for absurdist effect. Common quotes include "We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of space," "Do not trust the Pusher Robot, he is malfunctioning," and "Grandma has gone down the stairs". The humor comes from the circular logic of the robots arguing over whether pushing or shoving is the correct method of "protection."

Cultural reference: Mentioning the terrible secret of space in a thread or comment section functions as a shibboleth for early internet culture, similar to referencing "All Your Base" or Homestar Runner.

Cultural Impact

The Terrible Secret of Space occupies a specific niche in internet history as a bridge between the Something Awful forum era and the wider Flash animation boom of the early 2000s. The ICQ prank transcript format that Kyanka pioneered became a genre unto itself on SA, with "Space Robot Bonanza~" being the breakout entry.

The "Do you have stairs in your house?" / "I am protected" exchange is one of the earliest documented examples of an online community creating a real-world identification system from a meme. Years before Reddit's narwhal-bacon exchange, SA goons were using this call-and-response to find each other on other forums and in person.

The meme also sits at the center of a creative web connecting several early internet landmarks. The Laziest Men on Mars linked "All Your Base," "The Terrible Secret of Space," and Something Awful into a single creative ecosystem. The Flash animation format that Robinson used would become the dominant meme delivery system for the next several years, with Newgrounds as its primary distribution hub. One commentator noted the layered references: "This is about as freaking Internet as it gets".

Fun Facts

The Laziest Men on Mars' name comes from a Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff on *Santa Claus Conquers the Martians*, specifically the line "Droppo, you are the laziest man on Mars".

The ICQ prank was the seventh in a series Kyanka published on Something Awful. ICQ at the time was the first widely adopted instant messaging platform, with over 100 million registered accounts at its peak around 2001.

Jonathan Robinson's animation features deliberately disturbing background images of frightened or dead people flashing behind the robots' cheerful dialogue, creating an unsettling contrast.

The Pusher Robot shoves people while the Shover Robot pushes them. Each robot accuses the other of malfunctioning. This circular absurdity is central to the joke.

"Invasion of the Gabber Robots," the band's other famous track, remixed music originally composed by Tatsuya Uemura for the 1989 arcade game Zero Wing.

Derivatives & Variations

"Do you have stairs in your house?" catchphrase

— Broke away from the animation to become an independent Something Awful identification meme, with documented use across multiple non-SA forums by 2002[4].

Urban Dictionary entries

— Separate entries were created for "The Terrible Secret of Space," "Pusher Robot," "Shover Robot," and "Do you have stairs in your house," each with roleplay-style definitions written in the voice of the robots[5][8][10].

"113 Dead Goons" and "We Are Something Awful"

— Additional tracks The Laziest Men on Mars created specifically for the SA community, extending the band's role as in-house musicians for the forum[2].

Frequently Asked Questions