Ate My Balls is one of the earliest viral internet memes, dating back to 1996. Created by Neale Talbot, the trend typically featured crudely edited images of celebrities or fictional characters—most famously Mr. T, Chewbacca, and Bill Gates—accompanied by the nonsensical phrase 'ate my balls' in a speech bubble. It is widely considered a cornerstone of proto-meme culture, predating the modern social media era by over a decade. The meme’s charm lies in its intentional lack of sophisticated humor and its use of basic, low-quality graphics, serving as a precursor to the absurdist and surrealist comedy that dominates the web today.