Another Trip To 2000s YouTube 

This is such a wild experience if you didn't grow up English-speaking. We're the same age but i only started watching English RU-vid content around 2015, so this feels a little bit like walking through a surreal museum of a culture I've never heard of before

For all its flaws, early to mid 00s internet was a beautiful era. I about passed away when you said Numa Numa is almost 20 years old.

I *immediately* started smiling so hard as soon as Kitty Cat Dance came on because my husband, a 28yo hyper masculine man (he’s a truck driver for Christ sake lol), on a regular basis will just randomly be going through the house and just scream CAT! (Turns to make eye contact) I’m a kitty cat! Followed by a silly little dance, and it never fails to crack me up lol i get so much joy knowing ive implanted that deep into his brain palace

Hey fun fact about the Fred movie: Lucas Cruikshank was actually a contributing writer and director on it and had an actual vision for the story and the symbolism of Fred’s journey via the characters he meets all being reflections of facets of his personality. There’s a shot in it that was directly inspired by King of Comedy (he admitted so himself on the directors commentary) and it’s the same shot that Joker 2019 also uses from King of Comedy. Fred also has a dark, angry version of himself he speaks to for the entire movie named “Derf” that only he can see and that despises him and keeps telling him to behave normally. The ending is also super ambiguous and if you’re reading it like a genuine attempt at an art film it straight up implies that Fred entirely breaks down after years of bullying and retreats deeply into his subconscious to cope by imagining a world in which he wins at the end, but that win isn’t real and he’s actually just super depressed and sitting at home, miserable and lonely. TLDR; Fred did the Joker 2019 before the Joker 2019 was even a working thought and then sprinkled some 90’s Coming of Age and a smidgen of Fight Club, and literally no one but Lucas at the time and the 5 people who have listened to the commentary track know about it.

Thank you Strange for repeatedly digging up core memories, and helping me figure out why my sense of humour is fucked.

I meet you in my dream last night. You were 2 meters tall, insulted my friends, told me my hair looked nice and proceded to buy multiple kilos of margerine from a butcher. Probably one of the most memorable dreams I will ever have.

Dragonstea din tei is still such an iconic bop. Play it at an European college party and people will go WILD

i just want to say, as an autistic person who finds eye contact very hard even in videos, your new background is amazing. there’s so many nice things to look at while listening

as a trash child of the 2010s i can confirm that we had the peak of viral videos

the fact most US peeps discovered numa numa through memes and not through actual music charts always makes me laugh. like we were unironically vibing to this at school dances for about 2 years before the US realised it was a bop.

as an european, it shocked me so much that you had to explain what dragostea din tei is. this is the cultural essence of EVERY european country

Old guy here: Newgrounds was a lot more than YT before YT. It was memes and macros and thousands of flash games and chat rooms and message boards and everything else internet-culture. It pretty much was one of THE places you went when you were online, why you were in the first place, a destination where you could spend hours. Point being, when something went viral on newgrounds, it reached EVERYBODY. Good video :)

As someone who has a brother in middle school I find his addiction to asdfmovies videos fascinating.. like I knew them for YEARS and now he CONSTANTLY references them and thinks they are the best shit on earth

But what you don't know is that his real name is Strange Aeons....

Watching that opening of Salad Fingers reminded me of being oddly fixated on the video at like, age 11 and quoting it everywhere like a little meme freak. I remember, multiple times, saying the "orgasmic" line out loud completely unaware of how uncomfortable it made the adults around me. Awesome vid as always, Strange!

I was an intensely online and unsupervised internet access child, so I remember showing all of these videos to my friends and leaving very poorly-written comments about how cool they were... It would be SO COOL if you could cover more 2000s web content. Homestar Runner, the hamsterdance, maybe even some old AMVs... What an era.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is a legit work of artistic genius.

If you ever have 4 hours to spare, Quinton Reviews' deep dive into the Fred empire is incredible and so well done, it's such a thorough exploration and stays interesting the entire time?? You somehow end up with a weird soft spot for Fred

Honorable mention to "they're taking the hobbits to isengard" along with a Swedish song about Aragorn smelling like dead bodies and potatoes. They were my favorite of the 2000ths. Also "Sagan om de bannlysta" for any other swedish 00"s lotr meme lovers out there...

so wild to see you talk about tomska, the only youtuber i've been following since the 2000s and still adore as easily one of the most honest, self aware and imo always one of the funniest people on the platform, right before casually cutting to annoying orange, something i had so deeply repressed and that ignites such rage in me

Honestly, the two deep dive videos and just thinking about viral content in the 2010's explains why Millenial and Gen Z humor is the way it is better then any article ever could

Ah, the Numa Numa song - here in Europe the song itself was actually a pretty huge hit internationally way before it became an internet meme. It was weird to discover that in America it was always associated with that youtube video because i remembered it being just EVERYWHERE for about a year before that

It's interesting to see which of these ever arrived in my German sphere of early RU-vid. For example the asdf movies were highly popular here, because there was a German guy making translations of them. To me, he just was the guy for asdf content, it wasn't until much later that I learned that asdf movies originally were in English, and weren't just popular in our class, but a viral video a lot of people knew.

Can't believe Peanut Butter Jelly Time still hasn't been mentioned yet. That video is, no joke, 20 years old now - it was originally posted in 2002 and was popular enough by 2005 that it was referenced in an episode of Family Guy, all before RU-vid even entered the scene. I realize as I'm saying this that it's probably another Star Wars Kid situation where it's too old to even be considered an early RU-vid viral video since it was already popular long before RU-vid was even created, but I still really wanna mention it since a) it was one of the first things I remember seeing on the internet so it'll always have a special place in my heart and b) the band that made the actual Peanut Butter Jelly Time _song_ - the Buckwheat Boyz - has an absolutely fucking buckwild story.

Tomska is still my favourite youtuber, and surprisingly nice in person too. Met him this year at a con and he had like ten minute+ chats with everyone that queued for the meet up.

I remember actively avoiding the annoying orange on RU-vid back then. It was terrible when my friend showed up to school with the backpack key-chain plush that talks when struck

Some other viral videos from the 2000s I remember that you didn’t talk about are “Do You Like Waffles?” and “The Yes Dance/Let’s Do the Fork in the Garbage Disposal,” the latter of which is one of my favorites!

Tom Ridgewell is the nicest guy, I went to a fan meet of his when I was in high school and met him at several comic cons since and he's just a really lovely and genuine person! I'm glad the Internet has been kind to him

this video made me realize that Fred was my introduction to the “unreliable narrator” trope and is why I love it so much 😅

The Fred videos always had a kind of discomforting loneliness that I found addicting when I was younger. I often wondered if I was supposed to believe that Fred was lying for attention, which is tragic.

Since spanish is my first language, I wanted to add that the numa numa song here sounded like "pluma pluma gay" (pluma means feather, and was also a term to refer to femme gays), so it was used as a joke in parties but also reclaimed by the gay community and I think that's beautiful.

The asdf series became widely known in Germany when it was dubbed around the same time the original came out. Not a whole lot of Germans know the "I like trains" catchphrase but if you mention the translation „Ich mag Züge“ they will know exactly where that’s from. I just think it‘s really interesting how much english/american RU-vid content was dubbed by German creators and how much they actually influenced what Germans consumed back then on RU-vid

Also I am seeing a disturbing trend where the overwhelming majority of our beloved viral videos have tragic trajectories...like, you'd think that videos from the mid 2000s are just some RANDOM internet memes, but no we cannot have NICE THINGS.

Shane Dawson’s obsession with Fred was so creepy. Shane said on a podcast that he thought Lucas Crookshank was trying to hook up with him while Lucas was still a minor.

This feels very weird if you grew up in a different country. I wonder what it would be like to explain my countries early 2000s meme culture

This is a scary throwback for me. As a 2000s kid, I'm very familiar with a lot of these videos and the fact I get to have a full history lesson "behind the memes" is actually phenomenal. Can't wait for the 2010s! So much has happened...

newgrounds was one of the big pre-youtube youtubes, but there was also albinoblacksheep and ebaumsworld, which were more general, whereas newgrounds was mostly for flash animation and games. individual content creators often had their own sites, too, and people would actually go to them - like for homestar runner, weebl's stuff, foamy the squirrel, realultimatepower, etc.

Absolutely cannot forgot how Salad Fingers deeply ensnared me and my friend group. It was creepy, like creepypastas, and had so much potential for fan theories before FNAF. Also I remember it being weirdly popular with folks with fetishes for gore and seeing some general sexual fixation around Salad Fingers.

Growing up in Canada, I had no idea Bananaphone was a meme - we used to listen to it all the time in the car as kids, along with Raffi's other songs. Possibly that's why Teya is confused about this, because Raffi is Canadian.

Oh God, I remember the Bananaphone + Potter Puppet Pals crossover back in the day, lol. My friends were also obsessed with Salad Fingers, strangely I think teen girls liked Salad Fingers better than the boys, at least from my experience, but as a baby nerd gay in highschool with a gaggle of nerdy female friends, maybe it just felt that way.

As a very long time Tomska fan I honestly forgot that ASDF was what propelled him into the mainstream as I first saw his content through Eddsworld then later found his channel

It's so weird hearing people talk about the environment of my childhood in this way lmao

The Evolution Of Dance guy came and spoke at the university in my home town a little bit after he got big online. My friends and I went and saw him, and tho I don't remember much of what he talked about I do remember having a good time. I grew up having to listen and see a whole bunch of motivational speakers due to my mom being in Amway, and he was the only one who came across as not having an agenda. He just seemed like a nice guy who wanted to encourage people.

I feel like covering all the viral videos from the 2010s would be next to impossible considering the amount of viral content just grows exponentially the closer you get to 2020

Oh lord the Kitty Cat Dance. The way you described your feelings on it spoke to me. I was 14 when it came out and to this day I still hear it in my head all the dang time.

Thank you Strange for the nostalgia! David Firth of Salad Fingers was such a tangible piece of my childhood. I completely fell down that rabbit hole in 5th grade, definitely a part of that "cult following." For anyone interested in more, his series "The News Hasn't Happened Yet" goes crazy- it's hilarious, surprisingly topical, and not *very* gory. (btw I've also made a video on his wack ass series "Spoilsbury Toastboy")

Tomska and the yogscast have been some of the youtubers I've followed since the old days of youtube

Gotta appreciate that Lucas went from Fred to doing water park reviews with his brother and writing a song called "Shargay Evans."

my favorite thing about learning internet history like this is discovering the context behind shit i remember from childhood but only in, like, an adjacent way. i only knew Fred as a kid from 1. that episode of iCarly, and 2. my friend in elementary school who wanted to be like him SO bad. i never knew where he... came from until a couple years ago. and now i can go back and see the cultural phenomenon that took place around him. it's so crazy.

You talking about Fred was like a spiritual freewrite session. Like it just started and then all of a sudden you had all these fully formed opinions

I feel like the annoying orange is the first example of a viral video that went viral not because people actually wanted to watch it but because people wanted to inflict it on other people. The idea was never going to be successful outside of youtube because nobody willingly watched the annoying orange.

Man, Fred was dope. Watching that as a kid was such a trip how that guy managed to create such an engaging universe with honestly really good storytelling. Yea the screaming was a lot but for awkward hyperactive 12yr olds it was great content with an uncanny amount of depth. The neighbourhood squirrels maaaaaan. That, salad fingers, and the annoying orange is fond memories for sure x

My boyfriend sings banana phone every time we go to karaoke. If he’s drunk enough he will even shove a banana in his back pocket and pull it out when he sings. He’s been doing it for years. I love that man.

"The Evolution Of Dance" was the "Moses parting the sea" moment of RU-vid, you HAD to be there.

I feel like the 2010's one is going to have way more memories for me than these ones because I was born in 2002, you just mentioning how animals eat their food unlocked so many memories

as a child i had a hermitcrab and i named him fred and he was so glorious and whimsical and he lived for like 9 months before succumbing to having a 7 year old owner with no heat lamp

I can't believe Shia LaBeouf (the original version which doesn't continue with the "wait, he isn't dead!") is from 2012. I could have sworn I remembered watching it on Albino Blacksheep back when I was still in school

i once watched the fred movie with a friend as a young’n. we had never heard of fred before, nor did we know he was famous. the lack of context made it quite haunting.

I grew up in the town next to where the creator of Salad Fingers lived. He was a pretty active local DJ and a Tesco (basically Walmart), that has since been knocked down, had a Salad Fingers mural spray painted on the back of it near the bins

I am so happy you talked about asdfmovie because I will try to reference or talk about with people now and I always felt crazy because no one ever knew what I was talking about. Also maybe it was just me and my school but Parry Gripp songs were iconic to me in 2010s. I know raining tacos is his most popular song although neon pegasus lives rent free in my brain. same with boogie boogie hedgehog but that was a 2000s song.

idk how fred got like three movies and a whole SERIES but i hope that man is set for life. he has contributed too much to the culture and has gotten too little recognition

when i was a kid, i had severe behavioural problems. i would scream, cry, throw and break things, hit people and myself in meltdowns, well up to the age of 10 or 11. whenever my parents put on the kitty cat dance video, though, genuinely it was like a switch was flipped and i would just calm down and watch it.

For me “taking the hobbits to Isengard “ is truly the most iconic 2000’s RU-vid video.

I went through an annoying orange hyperfixation when I was around 10 because me and my sister just randomly picked out a dvd of the high fructose adventures of the annoying orange for a plane trip and then proceeded to watch it over and over again for weeks. My mom HATED it.

The trauma… i thought I had outlived it… but it has risen from the ashes and returned to haunt me

Another old 2000's series that I still love to this day in RvB. I know it started on other websites, but its still the series I think of when I think of a "RU-vid show". Just some normal dudes recording their TV and talking on their phones created an 18 season long epic. That first episode was so insanely widespread on early YT with quotes that are still memorable like "You ever wonder why we're here"

The excitement I felt when I saw asdfmovie in the thumbnail is indescribable. Anytime I see it mentioned outside of my little Tomska fan corner of the internet I get so happy lol. I feel like Tomska nowadays doesn’t get talked about nearly as much as he should, his content is stil great and he as a person is just a genuinely good guy, his pride shirts where charity shirts that he paid lgbt+ artists to design then doubled any profit made of the shirts and donated it all all to charity.

Shout-out to Salad Fingers for giving 6-year-old me nightmares. Scared me off the internet aside from flash games, which kept me from falling down the alt-right rabbit hole that I would have definitely ended up in. Edit: Oh god Annoying Orange was mentioned, I am cringing at elementary school me who got obsessed with the series. I had a full-on parasocial relationship with DaneBoe and watched his Plants Vs. Zombies let's plays like 5 times over. Poor, poor child me...

In 4th grade my best friend moved to my hometown from australia and went as salad fingers for Halloween and that honestly solidified us as being best friends forever, it’s wild to see the effects of the internet on people worldwide and our shared nostalgia ❤

It's a shame you didn't mention how the creator of the annoying orange tried to release a remastered version of the original video exclusively as a NFT, only for it to fail horribly with backlash and the fact that people were able to download the video without buying it. He even deleted the tweets about it.

29:02 Woah, brain blast, you’re right. One of the videos I found memorably hilarious was Fred auditioning or getting vocal lessons and he made up his own song for the occasion, complete with a piano accompaniment, about witnessing a murder. Randum XD and loud = funny comedy were my bag (hell, it still is) and I didn’t really realize how disturbing that would be in-universe. How dare you make me want to watch Fred for the lore.

17:03 - 17:09 might trigger photosensitive seizures to some viewers so might be good to add a warning 🙏🙏🙏

I was too young to understand most of the 2000's virals. But oh boy the 2010's are going to be a nostalgia train, literally my whole teens and I honestly can't wait.

potter puppet pals just reminds me that you need to do a video on neil cicierega and how he somehow shaped people entire youtube with so much of his stuff, like his more recent work on gravity falls and the song two trucks, potter puppet pals, the ultimate showdown of ultimate history, brodyquest, ariel needs legs, the mouth albums (strange name but oh well) and honestly probably more that i just dont remember

There are so many videos that I keep thinking are older than they actually are. I’m excited for the 2010s video! The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger and Dumb Ways to Die had such a death grip on my class’s sense of humor.

i have had the melody of "bananaphone" stuck in my head for over 20 years. almost my entire existence has been plagued by that melody and that snippet of lyrics "ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring bAnAnApHoNe" .... until now i couldn't fully remember where i'd learned it. thank you for helping me recall where i gained this curse

I feel like 'bananaphone' is probably best described as a meme song that served as the basis for many different videos that each lacked the impact to become true viral videos. still, they accumulate to turn the song itself into a sizable meme. I just realized I've been singing this song to myself for years and I've not seen any of these videos lol. I think that's speaks to how much people were listening to and singing this song back in the day.

I personally forced well over 20 people to watch the Bananaphone driving you crazy video on NewGrounds in the early 2000's. I'm wanted in 23 states.

I honestly think my love for horror, specifically very creepy psychological horror, stems from videos like Salad Fingers and Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. Those were my childhood, and then I grew to like other media and video games in the horror genre.

"Unsettling" is definitely the word for Salad Fingers. The background music is even called "Beware The Friendly Stranger".

You do need to do a whole video about the 2010s memes and include the pineapple pen song because no one ever had me watch a viral video until then.

I don't know when I first stumbled upon Fred but seeing his face unlocked a memory I didn't know I had 😂

Spanish-speaker here, it's kinda funny cuz we know the Numa Numa song mainly because some people made a whole cover because the iconic phrase sounded very similar to ''fiesta fiesta, pluma pluma gay'' (pluma means feather in Spanish). After watching it again, I think it aged very well

I remember when Numa Numa was on the freaking news back in the day. Society had no idea how to react to viral videos

Wow, thanks for unlocking the memory of being in middle school, seeing some guys from our class screwing around with a video platform they called "youtube" on a school computer, and shyly asking my friends, "hey, what's... a youtube?" xD I actually... Didn't realize it was a brand new platform back then!

Dragostea Din Tei is still on my playlist to this day. That song is a freaking bop.

I watched annoying orange unironically as a kid. My brother showed it to me and I thought it was hilarious. A few years ago I was feeling nostalgic so I went back to watch it and I was shocked to see there were recent videos.

the kitty cat dance and this was the first youtube video i ever saw, in a friend's basement and it was a hallmark for the future to me

This is bringing up so many repressed memories

This is your reminder that the library also does audiobooks, Libby is my fave

I still quote the “hahaha I can’t read” or “buy me more jewelry” from asdfmovie to absolute silence every single time

I had completely forgotten that I used to watch Annoying Orange religiously when I was a kid. Either I had a very bad sense of humour as a child or I hadn't figured out how youtube worked and just watched videos from the front page (probably a combination lol)

I feel ancient lol 👵. Not only do I remember watching almost all of these when they were new, I remember watching just about all of the videos that have uploads predating RU-vid on either the original site or one of those sites that stole content from around the web back in the day like eBaum's World. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Ok so there are a few other cultural classics (to me at least): Ultimate showdown is a song that my sister and i actually sang fully in the car a few weeks ago, because it's embedded itself in my brain. It's also worth finding mittens the crime solving detective and magical trevor in addition to all of the weebls stuff animations

I come back to asdfmovie, laser collection, and llamas with hats every so often. For the nostalgia

The annoying orange video came out when I was 5. I vividly remember my dad laughing his ass off and calling me to the computer room to watch it with him lol

I adore your stuff about old YT snd Tumblr. It's so nostalgic. Reminds me when I was kid/teenager

Gun to head, I'd say The Newgrounds animation for Bananaphone was 100% viral. I wonder if it was because of the kind of social circles I was in. But - I'd say it was more popular via Newgrounds

when you metioned annoying orange i died, i still remmeber so many of the song covers 😭

How animals eat their food is the most iconic thing in my memory banks. I feel so much joy thinking of how animals eat their food