From Homestar Runner to Salad fingers to badgers, stick figure battles, and the End of Ze World, this — dare I call it an artform? — was a cultural touchstone for a generation.
Flash made vector animation available to the masses, and internet distribution of the relatively small video files was a piece of cake. With the filetype now essentially deprecated, the creators gone on to bigger and better things, the distribution sites shut down, it is a dead form. Most of it will be lost forever, although there may be someone archiving some of it for posterity.
Hey, the badger is still alive and badgering!
So is Homestarrunner. Most of their flash stuff still works, too.
They’re still making videos on YouTube at least once a year too! One of the two brother chaps who created it went on to work on the animated show Gravity Falls too.