The YouTube 1911 April Fools Day Prank: Who's Ruth?

Egad, the trollops inside our computing devices have transported us back in time! Whatever shall those of us with weak constitutions do?! The YouTube's 1911 April Fools Day prank takes logged-in users back in time 100 years during the days when video had just started evolving into a form of entertainment with five jabs at popular internet memes and videos. So did you figure out all the modern-day equivalents of these old moving pictures? And who the dickens is Ruth?

The first top video of 1911 is entitled "The Irksome Citrus" and is obviously a reference to the popular annoying orange videos featuring a talking fruit. However, instead of the fruit saying "Hey Apple!" and Apple responding with "What?" over and over again, the silent intertitles are replaced with "Salutations, Apple," and, "Pardon?" It also seems that the orange's "wazzup" from another skit is replaced with the more 1911-ish "Koo-Koo-Ca-Choo!" (I personally prefer the silent version of the citrus fruit.)

The second April Fools Day YouTube clip entitled "Buggy Intruder" is an old-school moving picture based on the popular Bed Intruder video, with an excited man wielding a cane warning, "Alert. We have a fornicator in Lincoln Heights. He is climbing into your buggies and he is snatching your people up. Skiddoo your kids. Skiddoo your wife. Run and declare that, hayseed."

Up next is "Swing Flummox," a reference to any of the "swing fail" or "swinging fail" videos on YouTube. I'm guessing, since two gentlemen and a bar is involved, that it's particularly referencing the video shown on Tosh.0 featuring two modern-day dudes swinging on a bar (one of them probably can't make babies now).

The whole purpose of the "Horse & Buggy Crash" is to let the viewer know that they've been "Ruth Roll'd" when no buggy crash occurs and a dancing woman appears on the screen, obviously a send-up of rickrolling. I'm guessing that the Ruth reference refers to Ruth St. Denis, a vaudeville dancer who was influenced by the dances of "the Orient" and an innovator of modern-day dance. Ruth St. Denis' heyday actually ended not long after 1911.

And the April Fools Day prank fittingly ends with "Flugelhorn Feline," the predecessor to Keyboard Cat. This feisty feline dresses a little spiffier in a suit jacket, tie, and hat, playing a trumpet instead of a keyboard. The clip he "plays off" is of a man who injures his foot while walking on railroad tracks, inexplicably deciding to stay on them as he slowly scoots along in pain on the ground.

So is the YouTube prank the best so far? Or are Google's "We are hiring Autocompleters!" and Gmail Motion pranks better? Both are great and all, but there might be something bigger and better out there that's going to hit the interwebs sometime today...