#with the janky colour correction and juddery tracking artifacts because they were ripped from third and fourth generation bootleg vhs tapes

[prokopetz]

Based on the notes it's pretty clear that when a lot of folks picture early YouTube they're basically just imagining modern YouTube minus the ads. I guess the "full episodes of fansubbed hentai downsampled to 360p and posted in 2–5 minute chunks" era is something you had to experience first hand to really appreciate it!

The thing that always throws me about Internet history is that YouTube was bought out by Google only eighteen months after it launched, and Google began implementing ads and content filtering less than a year after the acquisition. The initial free-for-all phase of YouTube's existence always feels like it was a lot longer than that – and, like, I was 22 when YouTube first came online, so I don't even have the excuse of the distorted chronology of childhood to account for it!