YouTube is a massive force these days but did you know it was first established back in 2005? It exploded in popularity even back then but the videos were a lot more simpler and there were no influencers or annoying edits made every half a second!

 

What are your memories of early YouTube and which are your favourite videos?

 

 

ouch Charlie that hurt!!

 

 

weren’t times much simpler when a sneezing panda was the most viewed video?

 

This is probably the earliest YouTube sensation I can remember!

 

See I remember there were some videos that went viral even BEFORE YouTube like this bunny

 

 

There's more examples on this article I found.

asdf embodies early YouTube in lots of ways. Short*, "lol randem XD", lots of mildly endearing somewhat amateur animation and of course, all wonderfully low in pixel quality.

 

*None of this 10 minute minimum for most videos for the midroll ads because there were no ads anyway and no one made careers of of YouTube, just short lil skits or quick uploads. It's much more longform these days and shorter content has migrated to other platforms a bit I guess. Not quite the same kind of content though, was really of its time. The content was often immature and silly but I'd take it over cringe lipsyncing on Tik Tok or music.ly. :lol:

 

A simpler time.

 

Rihanna cover of 'Silliness & Mayhem'

We have a winner

 

 

With Crazy Frog returning this year, they should definitely try and get them to recreate this :lol:

& the classique

 

 

Rihanna cover of 'Silliness & Mayhem'

Watching this now is even more uncomfortable than in 2011.