If you're here, you probably searched for the phrase Simba says Roar and are wondering why the phrase shows up on eleventy billion web sites.

The answer is simple. I put it there. See, back in the late 90's, I helped build a website by the name of JavaScripts.com, which was the first large deployment of the Cold Fusion application server.

The site was home to some 600,000 users and 8,000 javascripts. When the engine for posting scripts was built, a tagline was added to each script to let people viewing the source of various web sites (which was how many people snarfed scripts for their geocities sites and the like) know where said scripts came from.

As well, <-- Simba says Roar. --> was added to each one, probably after one too many late, caffinated nights of development. As most people simply cut and pasted the scripts they downloaded, the tagline stuck to a whole lot of sites.

After a few years, JavaScripts.com was sold to EarthWeb (now internet.com), and eventually all of the community feel was summarily gutted from it as they spun it into a less resource-intensive DTD/XML archive. Still, just about all of the scripts had the tagline in it, and many still do. About the only thing that remains of the original site now, is the magnifying glass logo made by Giuseppe Lombardo, one of our co-conspirators at the time.

Such was the birth of one of the most wide spread and mysterious internet memes.