I am echoing the others from this thread, but I am in line with missing the old animators from the way back when days. Well, at least if you count the dying days of the wild west of 2007-2009. Maybe up to 2014 if we really want to stretch it.
While I missed getting on the boat early, Newgrounds in the mid-late 2000s was a blast to surf. A lot the stuff they had there at the time was quite Franky shit, but for all of that you had a few diamonds in the rough that made it a joy to browse.
I.E; Bowser's Kingdom. I only ever found out about the series *after* it had discontinued, but it was still a joy to behold nonetheless.
And the Newgrounds link:
Bowser's Kingdom: Episode 1
Four Swords Misadventure was also a blast, considering that Four Swords was one of my first introductions to the Legend of Zelda franchise on a console, it was fun to see how these four Links played with their hijinks and what not while making a merry mess of things.
4 Swords Misadventures 4
This video
oozes midlate 2000s, and I love it, and so does the rest of the series.
Surprisingly enough, the last video for the series was posted back in 2016, which at that point... Well, Mario Bros Z was already dead in the water at that point, so it's shocking this series went on for so long.
Supposedly, HadokenDude may be making a comeback according to this
blogpost, but considering his age and everything else, I doubt anything will come of it. Even if it did, I bet it'll burn out quickly and fail to adapt to the changing times. Or if it did... Jeez, it'd probably be better for this series to stay dead than to warp and contort itself to whatever YouTube's bullshit is at the given day.
About the only thing of note I can contribute at the top of my head are those old, gloriously shit AMVs. You know the ones, the Linkin Park CRAAAAAAWLING IN MAH SKIIIIIN, I'm Blue, My Sanctuary, and stuff of that nature. That was my shit back in the day, and I still long for it considering what bland, mainstream garbage that YouTube peddles nowadays. I mean, it isn't like the AMVs of old, or so the old timers tell me, but there was a hell of a lot more soul in the stuff made with those vids with only Windows Movie Maker, a ripped MP3, and a 360p vid as the end result with copyrighted music that may or may not have slick editing to it for your favorite franchise/anime/whatever.
I have a playlist of the stuff from one of my old accounts, but...
Out of fifty five vids, that isn't horrible. But all the relevant old AMVs that I wanted are just *gone* man.
My loathing for YouTube at this point is but of cold apathy. But ever now and then, when you come across shit like this without even telling you which vids they were, just barely out of reach in your memory, it boils my piss. Supposedly, there was some addon or some such thing out there in the wild that could call up the URL and fetch the video title, if nothing else, but I lost track of it. God, I'd kill for something like that just to know what was lost. YouTube is just plain shit for any archival purposes, as I have had to learn the hard way over the years. Been trying to build up some form of archive with portable SSDs as a stopgap with the hope of moving up to some proper long term media storage that's resiliant to things like bitrot and the like, but that's a long time coming.
Coincidentally, I did managed to unearth many of my old bookmarks from an XP machine that was active all the way up to 2011, so I have at least an inkling of what some of the titles I browsed back then were. But alas, every third to fifth video just leads up to fucking nothing.
It's quaint at least, to see what my browsing habits were at the time, and what YouTube was as an indication of my mind back then. Lot of religious bull, proto reddit atheist R-tards, fan videos galore, plenty of skits, YouTube documentaries, history stuff like this interview...
Shockingly, this video managed to remain on YouTube despite the content. It might be tame to some, but I have no doubt YouTube will purge it given enough time.
It was stuff like this that made YouTube special. I remember this being one of the first YouTube videos I ever watched, and I distinctly remember it appearing in the front page at the time. You don't get this sort of stuff in trending anymore, period. If anyone has the extra hard drive space, I would *highly* recommend you archive his channel. It's a treat, despite being from an old, dead veteran.
And something that might be particularly relevant in these trying times is Great Depression Cooking.
This video, and the others like it, are just plain wholesome. Again, you don't get these sorts of vids much anymore. At least, not without all the sponsorship, modern YouTube infested bullshit trying to appeal to whatever algorithmic monster is in vogue at the time. Early Youtube was something else.
One of the other magical things of the time was the music scene for video games at the time.
I.E: Like so from this deleted
video. Thank God someone managed to archive this one. Bask in it, that old YouTube aesthetic. Behold, how those related videos are actually relevant.
(Coincidentally, I did managed to find the channel is still active, with an "updated" video for the theremin-... Holy shit, he actually brought it back.)
(Well, that's bloody wonderful. Just wait till you see his
excuse for originally purging it.)
(I honestly have no idea why people do this. No earthly idea. Even with his excuse, I still do not understand.)
I know I am preaching to the choir here, but for anyone that browsed YouTube after 2011 to 2014, you missed out. There was all sorts of just plain shit back in the day for the platform, but at least isn't whatever targeted bull we get nowadays. People just getting into YouTube and the like just don't know any better or have any chance of knowing so, not unless they managed to somehow stumble upon some nostalgia video giving a glimpse of the times. Even then, it doesn't account for actually experiencing the site itself as it was, seeing as many of those videos are now lost to us.
I.E: Experiencing your first shit AMV in glorious 360p quality.
Behold, your pre-tween or whatever
video from the bygone days of 2007, featuring My Sanctuary!
Or at least, it would if the video hadn't been purged like so many others of the time. Shopro was quite merciless to such vids. Supposedly, the archive has the video, but for whatever reason, it will not allow access. A pity, seeing as I'd like to archive this just to preserve what AMVs were like back in the day, even if they leave something to be desired in the modern eye. I'd even be content just getting the raw video file, since it would be a simple matter of ripping an existing soundtrack and slotting it in. But alas, it is not to be.
And here's a few more miscellaneous videos from my old bookmarks.
(This video was both utterly naive and prophetic at the same time. But even back then, the writing was on the wall far back into 2008-2009. Most of us just didn't know how bad it would get until it crept right on top of us bit by bit.)
(Note: YouTube's compression algorithm was changed sometime back in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Some of the videos from back then are unaffected, but it seems for videos like this, a video that was already compressed by the YouTube compression algorithm of back then was compressed even further when it was updated sometime in the early 2010s. These videos did *not* look this horrible, even back then. Some were shite, but YouTube can be blamed for the quality of some of these old videos being the way they are.)
That's all I have about to post for the time being. I might revisit and post a few more choice videos from the time. If any of you still have your old bookmarks, run through them and archive whatever is still left standing. Post them here, so we may share in this nostalgia together. Their memories may die one day, but we can keep the fire going for a little longer.
![LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]](http://uploads.kiwifarms.st/data/avatars/l/61/61177.jpg?1699571951){kind=avatar}
