It’s the early aughts, and the internet is dark and lawless. Just one click on an innocent-looking link could lead you to Goatse, where you find yourself face-to-face with the gaping red butthole of a gay porn star; or Rotten, where you can watch live beheadings from your bedroom; or Tubgirl, where you encounter a superhero mask-clad woman shooting orange juice from her asshole into her own mouth.

One minute you’re excited to see an AIM message from a friend, and the next you’ve been Rick-Rolled, only with an added splash of grandpa penis. And that’s how you know you’ve landed on Lemon Party — a shock site playing hardcore, geriatric gay porn that continues to have an enduring impact on pop culture. Unlike many other shock sites at the time, Lemon Party wasn’t just some niche online phenomenon; in fact, once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it, and then you started to see it everywhere.

Throughout the early 2000s, everyone from the cast of Superbad to the creators of The Simpsons were slipping Lemon Party references into their work. From American Dad’s saucy alien Roger dressing up as a glamorous divorcee named Abigail Lemonparty in the episode “Killer Vacation” to a big ol’ Cars 2 Lemon Party, complete with lemon-printed party hats, the internet’s favorite threesome was firmly on the radar of mainstream comedy writers. 

[Easter Egg?] In Cars 2, the Lemons have a lemon party.
byu/kraftykid1204 inMovieDetails

Michael Cera referenced it as an example of a gross joke back in a 2007 Superbad press conference, while Jonah Hill cracked up laughing and warned viewers not to search it: “It’s three old guys blowing each other,” he clarified, as Cera awkwardly cleared his throat and asked: “Can we cue it up?” 

In the Simpsons episode “Flaming Moe’s,” Moe’s Tavern becomes an accidental gay bar, with the help of Mr. Smithers. “Hey Smithers, I didn’t know you were a geezer pleaser,” jeers a muscle-bound gay guy, as Mr. Smithers walks in with Mr. Burns. “Are you having a lemon party?” Mr. Burns grins and rubs his hands together with glee. “A good old-fashioned lemon party, eh? I call first squeeze!”

Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz even used the classic bait-and-switch tactic in an interview with Young Hollywood, recommending the site and describing it as “this really hardcore blog that keeps you up-to-date on everything that’s going on in fashion.” 

Then, there’s the best — and yes, we’re biased — Lemon Party parody, featured in 2012 on eBaum's World. “I sure am bored,” sulks a grandpa in a retirement home, crossing his arms in despair. A walking, life-sized lemon promptly smashes into leisure hour at the old folks’ home, instigating a geriatric orgy — notably, with an old man who looks disturbingly like Joe Biden.

So how did a shock site with such cultural resonance begin? According to Know Your Meme, the notorious lemonparty.org domain was first registered on October 3, 2002 in  Canada. The location here is important, as the Lemon Party, or the Parti Citron, was an actual Canadian political party founded in 1987. The parody political organization looked to make Canada the world’s epicenter of lemon production. And the group advanced such policy proposals as “combine the Great Lakes,” “repeal the laws of gravity” and “abolish Toronto.” The core of its manifesto was to “embrace global warming” and make Canada hot enough to grow sufficient lemons for world domination.

Whether or not they knew about this niche Canadian history, chat-room edgelords would often claim the Lemon Party site was a political party to lure unsuspecting people into clicking on their porn masterpiece. “Tired of Obama’s sour lies? Visit lemonparty.org!” Hate gas prices? Has the state of modern politics left you bitter? You guessed it… Lemon Party!

With this context, it would make sense for the highly satirical Canadian party to be affiliated with the grandpa porn site, right? Sadly, probably not. In his video essay on the Lemon Party, YouTuber Whang! points out that the Canadian party was active until around 2006, meaning there was a timeline overlap, but they had a website of their own, and never publicly claimed the shock site. 

If a hoax you started made it onto 30 Rock, you’d brag about it, right? But strangely, no one ever has. To this day, the identity of those three geriatric horndogs in the immortal meme remain a mystery.

At its core, Lemon Party is the kind of “haha, you’re gay bro” online prank we saw so much of in the early aughts, and it’s arguably pretty homophobic at heart. After all, these are just three horny old guys going at it — nothing wrong with that.

The soundtrack — the bouncy, doo-wop 1963 hit, If You Wanna Be Happy by Jimmy Soul — adds another layer of meaning. The track’s lyrics haven’t exactly aged well: “If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife,” he croons joyously. Soul recommends an “ugly wife” instead — she’ll cook, clean and couldn’t break your heart even if she wanted to! In the context of Lemon Party, it seems these horny old guys left their “ugly” wives at home, choosing instead to blow each other. 

That said, societally, we haven’t really moved that far away from Lemon Party. At the crux of the joke is that old men fucking is funny, and that “gay shit” is weird and lame. In that sense, is Lemon Party really all that different from the weird illustration of Trump tongue-fucking Putin? The world might be more PC now, but low-blow gay jokes are still popular.

As for the site itself, click on the link now (not at all recommended), and you’ll be redirected to an old-school chat room filled with racist and misogynistic posts, as well as bizarre, romanticized Americana. But that also seems about right: Lemon Party is — and always has been — peak edgelord comedy.