IMG_0416 (2024)

I read this article when it was new and I've shared it with a bunch of people because it it unbelievably fascinating to me.

There's something borderline "voyeuristic" (for want of a better term) about it. There are all these videos that are public, I'm allowed to watch them, but they were clearly not meant for me to watch. It's like when you see a family photo at a Goodwill or something.

It's definitely worth trying out if you get bored; it's a proper time capsule. There's absolutely nothing cynical about it; these videos weren't made for profit, they weren't made to sell you something. They're candid videos of people as they were in ~2010.

I recently stumbled upon a small channel called KVN AUST, who's been making videos about what he calls "YouTube's Recycle Bin". It's about this and SO many other search terms (over a hundred), that turn up videos that have been public for over a decade often without a single view. It's so fascinating to see the random things people have uploaded.

It's stupid that my YT front page is simply empty, because "Your watch history is off", when it could simply be filled with a random selection of videos.

It's worth noting that while these videos may have been unintentional, this was also an era when youtube was still inventing itself. Sure, there was real content creation, but the structures of sponsors and ad revenue that can be a real income today weren't there. Let's plays were just starting to dominate the platform, and people were still figuring out how to make money off of that.

As a result, there was a lot of this type of content: barely edited, poorly performed, honest moments of real life, amateurish creations of any kind, be that digital animation, music, acting, etc. I feel these IMG_xxxx videos reflect some of the vibe of the era. Now, sharing videos with people is easy enough in group chats, and youtube content feels so manufactured that people feel it's less appropriate to share this sort of thing via youtube.

Previously...

IMG_0416 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102506 - Nov 2024 (324 comments)

If you haven't seen http://astronaut.io/ its this but in a great form factor.

I wrote this article, and this is like the 4th time it's blown up on HN https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fv...

I've always wondered what the people in these videos/making these videos think of this extra traffic from articles, sites and subreddits like this. Do they ever randomly go on YouTube, then freak out when they see a ton of notifications from people they don't know? Are there people involved here who see the popularity of some random clip, realise there's a business/channel opportunity involved and go all in with it?

What it's like seeing some random seemingly unlisted/unedited clip you posted suddenly get thousands or millions of views from random people online?

I absolutely love to watch random stuff but not random stuff that youtube wants me to watch. This feels like a hole in the matrix.

See also: https://walzr.com/IMG_0001/

there used to be https://default-filename-tv.neocities.org/ but it got taken down :/

It’s wild how antique the iPhone interface design looks. It’s not THAT old.

this is outstanding.

lol