The ROFLcopter meme is one of the earliest and most notable examples of using ASCII art. It first gained attention on forums such as Fark and was initially used to poke fun a new users who overused “l33t” (elite) acronyms such as ROFL (roll on the floor laughing). The usage of ROFLcopter became really popular after it was featured on the Something Awful forums. In 2004, a website, roflcopter.com, was registered and only featured a GIF of an ASCII helicopter with the abbreviations “ROFL” and “LOL” as blades. The popularity of the meme eventually led to the creation of a Flash game, which then spawned a wave of other ASCII art animations based on popular internet slang.
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