Salad Fingers Premieres

2004

Date: 1 July 2004 (Spoons) · Place: Newgrounds · davidfirth.com · Fat-Pie · Figures: David Firth, animator, Doncaster, UK, 21 · Tags: Flash, Horror 01. Pale Green Man, Rusty Spoon David Firth, 21, uploads Salad Fingers: Spoons to Newgrounds on 1 July 2004. The cartoon is four minutes of a pale green man with elongated fingers stroking rusty spoons in a wasteland, speaking in an unsettling falsetto to imaginary friends called Hubert Cumberdale and Marjory Stewart-Baxter. There is no joke. The cartoon is genuine, original horror, produced in Flash 5 on a domestic PC. It does not cost a thing. It plays like nothing has before. 02. The First Time the Web Makes Real Horror Salad Fingers proves the Flash medium can produce work that is not stupid, not ironic, not aimed at twelve-year-olds. Firth follows with ten episodes through 2019 and a stack of darker work (Burnt Face Man, Spoilsbury Toast Boy, The Child). The first episode passes 100 million views. Firth becomes one of the few independent Flash-era animators with a sustained adult career. Every weird YouTube horror channel (Local 58, Petscop, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared) descends from Salad Fingers. Sources • David Firth interview, Guardian (2014) • KnowYourMeme, Salad Fingers • fat-pie.com, Salad Fingers archive