Read This: In 2002, Black People Love Us artfully spoofed racial cluelessness
Today, people know Chelsea Peretti from her stand-up and her role on Fox’s cop comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine, not to mention her Booking.com commercials with hubby Jordan Peele. And people know her older brother, Jonah, for having founded BuzzFeed, that eternal source of lists, quizzes, and adorable cat videos. But back in 2002, no one really knew the Perettis for much of anything. They were just a couple of struggling comedians, looking for a break. That changed in 2002, when the siblings collaborated on a deliberately offensive and still extant satirical website called Black People Love Us! Here, a pair of utterly clueless Caucasians named Sally and Johnny (not played by the Perettis themselves, incidentally) bragged incessantly about just how much they were loved by the African-American community. Displaying the worst of early 2000s web design, including tacky GIFs, garish layouts, and Courier New typeface, the site utterly baffled its readers. Which was exactly what it was intended to do. At The Daily Dot, writer David Britton shares the story of how this controversial site came into being, what impact it had on readers at the time, and how it changed the course of internet comedy.