Quote from Alex bobby on April 20, 2025, 7:50 AM

YouTube’s Lost Weirdness: Remembering the Golden Age of the Internet’s Most Human Platform

In early 2006, I fell in love with watching videos of strangers. Sometimes it was middle-aged women sharing recipes and tattoos. Other times, a soft-spoken goth would showcase their collection of dragon incense holders. These moments, grainy and spontaneous, were windows into lives far away from my own teenage bedroom—and they felt real in a way nothing else on the internet did.

YouTube, launched just a year earlier in 2005, was still an experiment. Its first video—a 19-second clip of co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo—was hardly a prophecy of the billion-dollar empire it would become. And yet, that early era now feels like a love letter to the internet’s weird and wonderful beginnings.

Back then, YouTube was a place where people simply existed. Videos weren’t always polished or purposeful. Sometimes it was just someone talking into a camera about their day, dancing alone in their bedroom, or offering life advice with no expectation that anyone would listen. But I did. Many of us did.

For me, YouTube was both escape and companionship. Summers blurred into hours spent watching Charlotte McDonnell (aka charlieissocoollike), a witty Brit who was one of the first UK YouTubers to reach a million subscribers. Or Peter Oakley (geriatric1927), an octogenarian recounting memories with such gentleness you’d forget you were on a website at all. And then there was Molly Templeton (mememolly), dancing to the Violent Femmes and quoting Closer with the kind of effortlessly cool weirdness that made me feel a little less alone.

Inspired, I began making videos myself—little cinematic dreams of raindrops, Doc Martens, and flower petals set to the Amélie soundtrack. They were indulgent, low-tech, often pointless. But that was the joy of it. There was no pressure to go viral, no algorithm to appease. It wasn’t about being seen so much as documenting yourself—the emotions too big for a diary, the quiet rebellion of simply existing online.

But innocence never lasts long on the internet.

The shift began when Google bought YouTube in 2006 and introduced the Partner Program. Suddenly, what was once creative self-expression could now be monetised. At first, this seemed like a win—anyone could make money doing what they loved. But soon, the demand for content intensified. The weird and wonderful began to be edged out by sleek, formulaic videos optimised for clicks and watch time.

Creators became influencers. Channels became brands. The strange, quiet videos—like a man cooking peaches and hot dogs in a grimy kitchen (Bo Burnham’s all-time favourite YouTube clip)—were lost in the noise. And the YouTube I knew, the one that felt like a shared secret, became a global marketplace.

To be clear, YouTube’s evolution brought many good things. It democratised content creation, gave voices to the unheard, and launched entire careers. But it also brought algorithmic pressure, mental health tolls, and the commercialisation of creativity. Growth under capitalism often comes at the expense of the very weirdness that made the internet so captivating in the first place.

The “golden age” of YouTube—roughly 2005 to 2012—is remembered as a time when the platform was still finding itself. Before drama scandals and monetisation schemes, creators like Zoella and iJustine led a new form of digital storytelling. But now, in a world of YouTube Shorts and multi-million dollar brand deals, the platform often feels more like a content factory than a community.

Recent controversies, such as the lawsuit against MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), underline the platform’s evolution—and its darker underbelly. Allegations of unsafe working conditions and manipulation on his reality show signal how power has shifted, and not always for the better.

Despite these shifts, YouTube remains the second most visited website in the world, drawing in nearly 78 billion visits a month. CEO Neal Mohan recently noted that more people now watch YouTube than television. But while the platform thrives, its heart feels different—less spontaneous, less weird, less human.

Still, fragments of the old YouTube endure. I now watch crochet tutorials, long-form video essays, and true crime breakdowns. But my favourite videos remain the quiet ones from unknown creators, whispering their thoughts to barely anyone. These forgotten uploads are relics of a digital past—odd, unfiltered, imperfect.

They remind me of who I was, and the comfort of knowing someone, somewhere, felt like me. They’re not trying to go viral or impress an algorithm. They’re just people, being people, in front of a camera. And in that rawness, there’s a rare kind of beauty.

You can’t recreate the magic of the early internet. But you can still find echoes of it—if you know where to look.

Conclusion 

YouTube may never return to the beautifully chaotic place it once was, but traces of its soul still linger in the quiet corners of the platform—videos with ten views, messy lighting, and no ulterior motive beyond connection. In a digital world that increasingly priorities performance over presence, these rare uploads offer a kind of sanctuary. They remind us that before the brands, before the monetisation, before the algorithms, YouTube was just people sharing pieces of themselves. And in that vulnerability, we found something real by Amber Louise Bryce.