This morning I was thinking of writing a post to boast about spoiling myself with a couple new gadgets (my very first graphics tablet and an external SSD) but since the idea itself felt a bit far from my natural self, cheekilly showing off stuff... I ran some errands instead, put on some music, logged on Discord, and surfed the web (lol, imagine saying that in 2020).
Today's post is actually about YouTube of the 2000's.
I've got to admit, I haven't been very keen on watching YouTube videos for half a decade now, but I was quite into YouTube in the 2000's to the first half of 2010's. I'd call them two totally different eras, too, based on the content I consumed. Today we're consentrating on the first era - the 2000's.
But before we go any further, here's a little backstory:
I've used Discord pretty much daily since early 2018 when I first found Steem - I used to be in a lot of different Steem related servers but I've now narrowed them down to about 3. In total I'm in 10 servers out of which 3-4 I use daily. I'm also a moderator in 4 of them, and an admin / owner of one.
The one I own is for former users of an old Estonian social-ish media platform for players of online games (think flash, shockwave, java). It (the site) was first released to the public in the early 2000s and used to be pretty popular around then to mid 10's. Then it spiralled down into a slow slow death. I made my first account there in 2005 and have been a moderator there since somewhere around 2013-2014.
Lately (in the Discord server) we've had a bit trouble with a young controvertial man and one of the mods proposed to ban him. I agreed and gave the mod a green light to do as she pleased. I announced the ban in the main channel by saying: ''Ight. Enough is enough. There shall be no more toxicity and hatred of ''all things odd'' for a while. One of our lovely mods has eliminated the pipebomb.'' I stopped to think a while. ''Pipebomb...'' A sly smirk came up on my face, as I remembered a YouTube video from 2007.
That's right...
The Mysterious Ticking Noise
Ah, the 2000s - the decade of my childhood. (Yes, I'm a '97er properly calling myself a 2000's kid like I'm supposed to instead of being a wannabe 90's kid). I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents' place. Not only because grandma would buy me a lot of chips, ice cream and other sweets whenever I wanted, but because I had a chance to hang out with my cousin's son who's 3 years younger than me. Well, not always could I hang out with him, as he actually lived in Finland, but whenever he was brought to Estonia, it was sweeeet!
We were unseparatable like best pals. We'd do all sorts of stuff - pretend to be secret agents or possess magic powers (mostly over elements like water, air, fire, earth), and watch all sorts of cool YouTube videos and try to create some ourselves. Most of them were quite raw and never edited, but at some point I tried getting into video editing and effects. Even made a couple videos that had us play around with lightning bolts! Man, those were some cool times. We'd dream about acting in movies or making some of our own, getting better at video effects, editing, etc. It's a shame I didn't really continue practicing or learning about the stuff.
While we made tens, if not close to a hundred different videos, only about three to four of them got uploaded to YouTube throughout the years. Most of the videos got lost on an SD-card while the ones on YouTube I either deleted or made hidden (and no, I would've not shared 'em on Steem anyway, they're embarassing!) Embarassing, yet memories I am very fond of.
But what has it all to do with YouTube of the 2000s? Well, a lot of inspiration we got came from YouTube and the wonderful videos you could find there in that decade, like the Potter Puppet Pals one you saw earlier.
For example -
If we weren't making videos about paranormal activity or our ''haunted'' apartment, we'd be watching nigahiga's ''How to be Ninja'' over and over again, trying to master the art of making ourselves appear and disappear from all kinds of different places without cutting the video.
Or if we wanted to create something plain weird / fucked up, we'd watch this ol' gem:
Sometimes we'd feel like dancing, so we'd put on some Dragostea Din Tei and have a rave.
Or if we wanted our moves to be extra, we'd turn to ''Evolution of Dance'':
I wanted to showcase another great video we used to watch but sadly it's been deleted or hidden. It was a compilation of cats and dogs talking like humans (not like a human talking onto their videos, but actual dog / cat sounds that sounded human). It used to drive my aunt's cat crazy, hearing a cat go ''hello? Hewlow??? Hell-eow-meow-ow?'' or ''Oooohhh, loooong Jooohnnsooon'', ''whyyy I-eye-eh'', ''oooooh graand piaaaanooo''. I'm LMFAO just thinking of the video!
YouTube of the 2000s was amazing. To think of the videos that went viral! So real, so pure... so beautiful. Looking back at them now, one'd associate most of them with what we'd nowadays call ''dad jokes''. I think that's a great description. Dad jokes are funny. And so was YouTube back then.
None of the videos featured in this post were made by me. All rights to the videos belong to their rightful creators - those beautiful... beautiful souls. Thank you for these wonderful videos!
Did you have ''eras'' of your own associated with the content you consumed on YouTube? What kind of videos did you watch back then? What kind of videos do you watch now? Have any other cool gems to show?