4.07.10 - 10:00AM
- by
Jay Hathaway

Hello Again, Hello My Future Girlfriend Kid - An Urlesque Interview

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Back before YouTube existed, before an internet meme was called an "internet meme," the web was already full of funny pages that ended up going viral. One of the biggest was Hello My Future Girlfriend, a dating profile set up by 11-year-old Michael Blount. Michael started a page at a free hosting service and posted a picture of himself, complete with glasses, mullet and a recording of his voice: "Hello, my future girlfriend. This is what I sound like."

It unintentionally went viral in a way that today's aspiring internet stars only dream of. There were parodies, techno remixes, the whole nine yards. Michael started getting e-mail at the address he had posted and phone calls from people who had tracked down his real-life contact info. The attention eventually died down, but it never really went away.

Today, at age 22, Michael still gets asked about Hello My Future Girlfriend. He recently caused a stir by popping up on Reddit and he was so laid back about the whole thing that we had to talk to him ourselves. He was such a good sport that he agreed to an interview and even made us a video update of the original Hello My Future Girlfriend recording.

Here's the twist, though: as Mike told everyone on Reddit, he's gay. He's also got a great sense of humor and doesn't mind poking fun at himself. So, naturally, his new parody video is called Hello My Future Boyfriend:

Internet, get ready to meet Mike Blount (again).

So far, the reaction to Mike's return to the spotlight -- voluntarily, this time -- has been overwhelmingly positive. After all these years, why did he decide to come forward with the whole story on Reddit now? He explained:

At some point I decided it wasn't going to go away, and trying to avoid it wasn't helping anything, so I changed my approach. I got bored the other day and was googling "Hello My Future Girlfriend" just trying to see what people were posting about me recently, and found a post on reddit from maybe 1 week or 2 ago, and in it they were talking about tracking me down and having me to do an AMA...Why not? Every now and then it's kind of fun to feel famous.

Mike doesn't Google himself all the time, though. In fact, Hello My Future Girlfriend isn't really a huge part of his life anymore. He told us:

It's not something I think about everyday. Once in a great while I'll check just to see what's being said about it. The random MySpace and Facebook friend requests always remind me of it when they come in. Most people that have sought me out have been nice to chat with.

It hasn't always been that way, though. When Hello My Future Girlfriend first went viral, he was forced to explain it to his parents after people started calling his house in the middle of the night, asking if he had a girlfriend.

I was probably about 13 then. They weren't thrilled. They had me try to delete it, but it had already been mirrored by then. The only way to delete the e-mail account was to not log into it for 90 days, so, I stopped using it. They still don't like to hear about it, it's sort of my dark moment in their eyes, I guess.

His childhood attempts to find a girlfriend on the web didn't work out, but being internet famous hasn't affected his dating life at all:

I told the first guy I dated, we were dating when Martin Sargent contacted me for the Internet Superstar interview. I think I got the "whatever" shrug. He really didn't seem to care.

Yeah, about that Internet Superstar interview... Mike told Reddit that he did the show via webcam with no pants on. I had to ask. Did Mike just want to show that the attention wasn't going to bother him anymore?

It turns out that it goes back to Internet Superstar host Martin Sargent's previous job on TechTV, where he once made fun of Mike. Doing their interview pantsless was just Mike's funny way of getting back at him:

I just still kinda resent Martin Sargent for the TechTV thing. I'm sure he helped immortalize it, but I was in high school and beginning to think it had died out. So, I figured one of the easiest ways I could show I didn't really care about the interview, was not finding it important enough to wear pants. Didn't want to do anything too obvious, just have my own little joke with it.

Here's the Internet Superstar episode where Mike got his revenge. It's an entirely different (and funnier) video now that you know what he's not wearing. Mike's segment comes on at around 10:30.

(Just a heads-up: Mike's interview is work-safe, but there may be some cursing in other segments of the episode.)

Being the guy behind a meme is a different experience in 2010 than it was in 2001. Back then, an "internet meme" wasn't part of our mainstream vocabulary, let alone something people aspired to create. Mike had no idea anyone would ever see Hello My Future Girlfriend:

I thought it was all completely innocent at the time, and had no idea that it would become what it has, something that even 11 years later people laugh and talk about.

Sure, we joke about Tron Guy, Star Wars Kid and the rest, but we also celebrate them. Mike told me that he's embracing this new wave of attention, but he's not sure what to do with his web fame.

I'd like to do something with it. It's neat that some refer to it as, if not the, one of the original internet memes. I did receive an invite to ROFLcon.

Mike closed the interview with this advice for future victims of unexpected online celebrity:

Well, chances are, it'll never go away. Someone will always find it and link it to you, so, don't fight it, just accept it, move on, and have fun with it. 11 years later I have people still reciting my audio clip, I never would've imagine it would continue as long as it has.

For more about Mike and the future of Hello My Future Girlfriend, you can check out his official blog or his Reddit thread.