If you were lurking on the internet in the early 2000s, you probably remember them. Those bulging, googly eyes. The chaotic, screeching vocals. The incredibly crude, jittery animation. We Like the Moon—originally titled "The Moon" by its creator Joel Veitch—wasn’t just a weird video. It was a cultural reset for a generation of people who were just starting to realize that the internet was going to be a very, very strange place.
It was 2003. Dial-up was still breathing its last breath in many households. We didn't have TikTok. We had Flash. Specifically, we had Rathergood.com.
The Spongmonkeys: Where did these things come from?
The characters in the "We Like the Moon" video are officially known as Spongmonkeys. Honestly, they look like taxidermy gone wrong. They’re basically tarsiers—small primates with massive eyes—superimposed onto vibrating, hand-drawn bodies. Joel Veitch, the British animator behind the site Rathergood, created them as a bit of a laugh. He didn't expect them to become the face of a national advertising campaign, but we'll get to the Quiznos disaster in a minute.
The song itself is intentionally jarring. It’s a lo-fi, screechy anthem about, well, liking the moon. "Because it is close to us," the lyrics explain. It’s simple. It’s absurd. It’s the kind of thing that gets stuck in your head for three days until you start questioning your own sanity.
But why did it work? You have to understand the context of the 2003 web. We were transitioning from the corporate, sterile "information superhighway" into the chaotic, user-driven "Web 2.0." Sites like Newgrounds, Albino Blacksheep, and Ebaum’s World were the Wild West. There was no algorithm telling us what to watch. We just emailed links to our friends or posted them on obscure message boards. We Like the Moon felt like an inside joke that the whole world was eventually invited to.
The Quiznos Gamble: A Marketing Fever Dream
Usually, when a meme goes viral today, brands try to "sanitize" it. They make it polished. They make it safe. In 2004, Quiznos did the exact opposite. They looked at these screeching, terrifying rodent-things and thought, "Yes, these should sell toasted sub sandwiches."
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It was a massive risk.
The Quiznos commercials were essentially a high-res remake of the original Rathergood animation. The Spongmonkeys wore little hats. They played guitars. They screamed about "The Subs."
"THEY HAVE A PEPPER BAR!"
It was polarizing. That's putting it mildly. Half the audience thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen on a television screen. The other half was genuinely unsettled. Parents complained that the creatures were frightening their children. Fast food consultants called it one of the biggest marketing blunders in history. Yet, here we are, decades later, still talking about it. Most people can't remember a single Subway commercial from 2004, but they remember the Spongmonkeys.
Why We Like the Moon Still Matters in 2026
You might think a 20-year-old Flash animation is just a footnote in internet history. It’s not. It represents the "Abstract Era" of digital humor. Before memes were templated images with white text, they were experiments in surrealism.
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Joel Veitch’s work proved that you didn't need a Pixar budget to capture the world's attention. You just needed a weird idea and a way to host it. This paved the way for everything from Charlie the Unicorn to the absurdist humor of modern Gen Z "shitposting."
There's a specific kind of nostalgia tied to We Like the Moon. It represents a time when the internet felt smaller, weirder, and less monetized. It wasn't about "engagement metrics" or "brand synergy." It was just a guy in the UK making a funny video about tarsiers who like celestial bodies because they are "full of tires." (Yes, that’s a lyric. No, it doesn't make sense.)
The Technical Side: Flash’s Final Stand
From a technical standpoint, the animation was incredibly basic. Flash was the king of the mountain because it allowed for small file sizes. You could watch a Spongmonkey video on a 56k modem without waiting three hours for it to buffer. When Adobe killed Flash player at the end of 2020, a huge chunk of this history was threatened.
Luckily, projects like Ruffle (a Flash emulator) and the Internet Archive have preserved the original "We Like the Moon" file. You can still experience it in its original, choppy glory. It’s a digital artifact.
Moving Past the Cringe: The Legacy of Surrealism
Some people look back at early 2000s memes and cringe. They see "Random XD" humor as a low point in comedy. But if you look closer, We Like the Moon was actually quite sophisticated in its absurdity. It used juxtaposition—the contrast between the screeching audio and the weirdly endearing lyrics—to create a specific vibe.
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It taught us that the internet is a place where the weirdest voice in the room can sometimes become the loudest.
What You Can Learn from the Spongmonkey Era
Whether you’re a creator, a marketer, or just someone who spends too much time on Reddit, there are actual lessons here.
- Memorable is better than "good." The Quiznos ads weren't "good" by traditional standards. They were ugly. But they were impossible to forget. In a world of infinite content, being unforgettable is the highest currency.
- Lean into the weird. Some of the most successful digital movements start as things that "shouldn't" work. If you have an idea that feels a little too strange for the mainstream, that’s usually a sign you’re onto something unique.
- Understand your platform. Veitch knew Flash was perfect for jittery, high-energy movement. He worked within the limitations of the technology to create a specific aesthetic.
Actionable Steps for Exploring Internet History
If you want to dive deeper into this specific era of the web or even try to capture some of that "Spongmonkey energy" in your own projects, here is how to proceed:
- Visit the Internet Archive: Search for the "Wayback Machine" version of Rathergood.com from 2003 or 2004. It’s a trip to see the original layout and the other weird animations (like the singing kittens) that lived alongside the moon song.
- Check out Ruffle: If you have old .swf files (Flash files) sitting on an old hard drive, use the Ruffle emulator to play them safely in a modern browser.
- Study the "Uncanny Valley": If you’re a designer, look at why the Spongmonkeys were so effective at grabbing attention. It’s the mix of real-world textures (tarsier eyes) with abstract movement. It’s a technique still used in "weirdcore" and "dreamcore" aesthetics today.
- Listen to the full discography: Joel Veitch actually produced a lot of music under the Rathergood name. It’s a masterclass in DIY British electronic punk-pop.
We Like the Moon was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. It was the sound of the internet finding its voice—and that voice happened to be high-pitched, distorted, and obsessed with the moon. It’s a reminder that even in a world of high-definition 4K video and AI-generated art, sometimes a vibrating primate and a simple song are all you need to change the culture.