From Tom Scott’s newsletter:

“When stick figures fought” is the history of the Flash-based stick-fight animations that I remember from 20+ years ago. And I never knew this history! They were just a thing on the internet, an artifact passed by email or instant messenger.

An excerpt from the blog post:

For people of a certain age, who grew up online, Xiao Xiao and its clones were part of life. The series isn’t deep and has little to say: it’s just kung fu, firefights, blood and chaos. But it was the height of cool to its (mostly young) audience. It was also a gateway to Flash animation for many.