The setup:
There’s a recent news item on WOWInsider about a ‘gold seller’ (someone selling WOW gold for real world cash) advertising by spelling out the name of their website in dead gnomes.

The challenge:
Explain this news story to someone living in 1977.

Background Information:
Computers: 1977 is the year the Apple II was introduced. The Apple II was capable of displaying 24×40 columns of uppercase only text to the screen (a TV by way of an RF Modulator (TVs wouldn’t come standard with RCA ports for quite some time), unless you had a ‘monitor’ which accepted a composite video signal directly), used an tape cassette to load programs and store data (the floppy disk wouldn’t be available for another year), and came standard with 4K of RAM.

The Internet: ARPANET was created in 1969, and X.25 had been created in 1976, but it would still be two years before CompuServe became the first company to offer public dial-in access to X.25 and offer email and technical support to owners of personal computers, though BBS use would continue to eclipse “internet” use for some time to come. The several methods of “internet(work)” linking wouldn’t become collectively “The Internet” for the better part of a decade.

Video Games: Atari had introduced the Pong arcade machine in 1972, and was available as a home console (one controller, one game, just pong) in 1975. By 1977 there were several Pong home console clones on the market and demand had died down, and by the end of 1977, Atari would release the Atari 2600 (the third home game system with removable game cartridges, but the first to gain any acceptance).

via http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/07/unpacking_the_zeitgeist.html