The feeling of disenchantment can be overwhelming.
By mid-2010 I had mostly settled into my new existence as an adult just living on my own for the first time, but the shine had largely vanished from the whole picture, chipped away one disappointment and wake-up call at a time.
It was actually amazing seeing just how much one's entire idea of how the world works can change when facing it alone: my days were no longer something to be glossed over (or skipped entirely if needed), turning instead into small things from which every possible second needed to be squeezed out of. Likewise, my nights were no longer endless marathons of smoke, haze and bad decisions waiting to happen, transforming instead into precious time dedicated to recharging the batteries of this fleshed automaton as thoroughly as possible in preparation for tomorrow's endless onslaught.
Having no-one to help me shoulder the burden of existence really illustrated just how short a single day could be, how meaningless twenty-four hours are in the grand scheme of things... and that led me to strategize like a World War II general awaiting for the next engagement, having me plan my days in advance to the "T" -- but, as anyone foolish enough to actually try this could attest, that's a plan doomed from the start because it relies almost entirely on the incredibly naive assumption that things would go according as plan day in and day out, which is an idea the universe delights in shooting down time and again.
And if you were working a variety of physically-destroying hell jobs like I did? Oh, that plan was dead on arrival, voided as soon as the reality of having to drag my half-broken self to my tuna box of an apartment became a daily occurrence, as predictable and routinely as the Sun coming up each morning.
Not actually my first laptop, but close enough... The other one was an "Admiral", this one's a "Commodore"!
What surprises me the most about this whole era of my life is that I remember taking it all a little too well for my liking, stoically soldiering on like the background character of an epic war drama who just knows his fate and is absolutely resigned to it. As far as I was concerned, my bases were all covered (I had a roof over my head, food in the fridge and clothes on my back) and that was all that truly mattered.
But what this really what I wanted?
I remember having many late-night talks with friends over a million sleepovers and bar outings just thinking about the future, revisiting topics like the kind of houses we were gonna buy and live in and the set of wheels we were gonna drive (down to the individual model and makers of our dream cars!) and, yet, there I was: a feral creature still running on the fumes of a messy teenhood and way too tired to steer himself in any meaningful direction, standing on wobbly legs made out of rubber and spending a worrying amount of time just fantasizing about how nice the pillow would feel at night.
While all of this was going on, however, a plan was taking shape in the back of my mind, something so wild that it could only be accomplished in absolute secrecy: I was constantly putting away small amounts of money and saving up however I could to net the ultimate prize for myself: my very own laptop, something I had dreamed of owning ever-since I saw Izzy mess around with one during the time I was a huge Digimon fan as a kid.
NOW... laptops were always prohibitely expensive in my neck of the woods and that hadn't changed one bit in the +10 years since I had stupidly asked my parents for one, but the difference was that now it was MY money to burn and that opened some doors for me, regardless of how many sacrifices were needed to be made in order to save up enough cash to grab one of those sweet, portable rectangles of status and power.
It's pretty incredible just how far one's willing to go when a prize is on the line... I even changed the way I ate in order to maximize my margins! And, in doing so, I discovered that I had been wasting my money all-along.
Learning just how cheap potatoes were on my local fruit & vegetable store was such a slap in the face that those are STILL the base of my diet, and all that really changed was the fact that I was no longer blowing up all my money buying McCain's pre-packaged stuff. I also let go of carbonated drinks (both big brand names and knockoffs) and of my beloved pizza, all in the name of getting some damn, honest fun out of this whole experiment turned into an almost mandatory thing by a set of circumstances I had put in motion but largely didn't understand.
Pictured: What YouTube started off as and still claims to be about.
Whatever the case, I collected my hard-earned reward some six long months later.
I distinctly remember walking into the mall with the kind of laser-focused dedication that makes security guards keep an eye on you because no-one's supposed to be that sure-footed and purposeful while traversing the neon-lit halls of a place designed like a maze and crafted to make you feel small and lost through a relentless assault on your senses. But that's something I could (literally) afford to do now that the goal was within sight and also because my pocket burned with the proud result of half-a-year of grinding my bones to dust with little to show for it. And the thing that triggered this whole thing? A single junk mail that had arrived earlier that same week, courtesy of a mailing list I was put on without my knowledge or consent after buying a gift for my mom in that same store earlier that year... who would have thought that getting a cheap hair straightener could land me an irresistible offer on a brand new laptop?
The laptop I got was a $2000 Admiral made that same year -- a slick black box dotted with shiny buttons, boasting smooth corners and just enough flair to make you turn around in the same way that a SEGA Genesis might: by making you feel just how classy, glossy and awesome the whole thing looks like upon seeing it for the first time.
The trick certainly worked for me, and I had no reservations forking out the money for the whole thing after confirming that it was, indeed, in stock (watching the employee consulting his PC to confirm this was a distinctly nerve-wracking experience, and one I hadn't experienced since I was a kid, watching my dad ask the video store people if a certain movie or game was still available... it was a sweet throwback of the glorious kind).
I was instantly hooked by this one... I mean, look at it! How could you resist?
I knew that this computer was right for me the second I took it home and out of the box, whereupon the little metallic nameplate showing off the manufacturer's name and logo came loose from its place of privilege on top of the lid, falling out entirely within two days. Then it confirmed that it was made for me by turning GTA: Vice City (a game that, should be noted, was six years its senior) into a slideshow through the magic of its SIS Mirage 3 integrated graphics card, which could be bested by pretty much anything made after the turn of the millennium (it looked like). And even though those were both huge disappointments for me, I was also uncharacteristically fine with that because I just wanted to own a laptop... and now I did.
And the next thing I did? Hook the damn thing to a neighbor's unprotected WiFi through the power of... just clicking on the thing (no epic set-up, no Deus Ex-style hacking minigame, just plain, old ignorance on the dude's part).
I was simply blown away by how fast this godsend internet was, pulling download numbers I had only seen whispered about on tech boards by people who had been abroad. Maybe that was the reason for which the owner didn't notice that half the building was leeching off his connection, but that worked splendidly for me and to me sheer benefit, because now I could just harness the night again by doing far more than sitting on my bed, waiting for sleep to overtake me in an instant. I didn't even need to convince myself (through endless inner debates) to get up and hook up the PlayStation to have something to do; now I could simply get the PC going, go to YouTube and have some minimum effort fun.
People who were already seasoned YouTube veterans at the time may remember a lot of things from this time period (some good and some not so much). I personally rememeber this whole period as the end of the "classic" era of the website, finishing its transformation from a place in which anyone with a camera and the guts to upload their raw footage could share what they were doing with the world. It was the time when awesome little channels like that of Kirstine & Laura or even Rinry GameGame's were pushed aside by the new content aggregator and Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs) that basically "curated" videos by poaching massive creators and centralizing their creations in a way that was both predatory and akin to content farms. Many of you will probably remember just how hard it was to find something awesome to watch without those videos being headlined by the spinning, animated logos of larger entities like Blistering Thumbs, Retroware TV or Machinima.com.
With the enormous benefit of hindsight, we can see just how harmful these networks truly were and just how much damage they did when they were still around (which is particularly true of Machinima.com, whose negative impact can still be felt around a platform that hadn't seen it in close to a decade by this point). At the time, though? I was one of literally millions of people who just didn't care and went right along with it, playlist-jumping like an internet "Mario", spending a lot of time by the glow of my monitor, sipping coffee and watching things like "Battlefield Friends" and "Sonic for Hire" until my brain shutdown on its own as a self-preservation measure, tired of reminding me that the next day was workable and that I really should stop messing about, even casually throwing in that I was watching just as many ads as actual footage from series I was interested in (yes, I didn't know what Adblocker was at the time).
Still one of the coolest things to ever grace the internet.
Watching things like Ross Scott's "Civil Protection" and "Freeman's Mind" was a binge-worthy blast I hadn't experienced since I was a kid scanning through the TV guide in hopes of catching one of those rare Nickelodeon all-day marathons focusing on one of their hit series, but it was even better because now I controlled the flow and pace myself -- I could either watch 65 episodes in a row or none at all, and the chance was always there. It was heavenly. And if I got tired of watching those aforementioned logos at the start of every video and pasted on the corner of some of my favorites? I could still tune into other offerings, independent stuff on the rise like Emma Blackery's "BirdyBoots" channel, an experimental thing in which she played mostly serious games and then turned them into comedies through her wit and commentary. It was a pretty great time to be alive, single and with internet access, is what I'm saying.
But, naturally, those times couldn't last... life had to move on somehow and I just couldn't keep working hell jobs by day and floating around my computer like a moth bordering a flame by night, and, so, I gradually disengaged from the whole thing around 2014, just when my life was starting to change for the absolute better, all the while the incredible storms that were raging on both YouTube (and the net in general) barely registered as small blips on the outer edge of my radar, their importance completely minimized to me as a spectator no longer engaged with any of it, only really paying attention with the aforementioned Ross posted about the hellish time he had getting word back from Machinima after they had disrupted his livelihood and left him legally unable to release videos (his main source of income) while this was going on, forcing him to eat through his savings in order to survive while the company itself was way too busy trying to look as good as possible for a potential buyer to actually fulfill their responsibilities with their thousands of partnered channels and employees alike.
But while all of this was going on, I already had a small child to take care of and another one on the way, so my time for caring about any of this was severely limited.
Most I could use my laptop for was writing articles for a site in order to get a small (but much-needed) income boost, when not directly leaving it open and playing children videos and nursery rhyme stuff on loop while the kid ate or played. The rest of the time, though? I watched small, easy-to-digest stuff that didn't require much engagement and could be enjoyed in short bursts, like Rooster Teeth's "Things To Do In GTA V" and "Rage Quit", and also "Fail" and "Try Not To Laugh" compilation-style videos.
My mindset at the time was that I could always go back to watch some of those awesome classics that had fueled me all through my first three years of living alone, being absolutely sure that those videos would stay up there forever. I mean, how could they not? Even my critically-ignorant self knew that those were money makers that were shoveling large amounts of money for their companies and channels simply by existing. It was a no-brainer thing, which led me to try and recapture some of that old, forgotten magic during the pandemic, as the threat of endless lockdown loomed ahead and became a very real thing.
This is so soulless... Exactly what corporate death row looks like.
Would the same trick work twice? Could I cheat a world-changing event the same way I had cheated boredom, tiredness and isolation all those years earlier? There was only one way to find out and, so, in March 2020 I pulled up YouTube with an energy and a drive I hadn't had since a decade before and decided to treat myself to some awesomeness I was just starting to feel nostalgic for.
I went through my specially-curated (and private) playlist and began looking for videos I had faved in the last decade... only to be greeted by an endless array of the gray "error" thumbnails that signaled either "deleted" or "private" videos. I didn't quite understand why that was, so I used the search bar instead and began typing words I remembered:
"BirdyBoots Life Is Strange", "BirdyBoots Until Dawn" and "BirdyBoots Gone Home" were all still there, by they were posted under a different (newer) channel called "The Blackery Archive", whose videos were all more recent than the dates I had originally watched them in and had nowhere near the views and comments. That was a bad sign (and it stayed bad because the emotional climax of the "Life Is Strange" stream was muted due to a copyright claim that didn't exist in the original upload) but I could at least still watch them... right? Yes, I could watch pretty much every video Emma had ever made and still had a blast with them, despite the complete lack of colorful comments that had originally enhanced the experience.
Machinima, though? That was a dead channel through and through. So much so that it was actually almost surreal to see because you now had eleven million people (!) subscribed to a channel with absolutely no videos. It was a thing a madness! And the worst part was that this was done so utterly sneakily as to blindside the entire internet, including those who had at one point being affiliated with the channel and were given no chance to back up their old videos before they were all privated, probably because the new corporate overlords who had bought the company didn't want to deal with the potential liability of having thousands of possible instances of copyright infringement in their newly-acquired media libraries.
It was asinine to say the least, but that's what happens when traditional media companies "want in" on these newfangled tech startups that look like straight acts of sorcery performed by the people running them, kinda like when Universal and Sony decided to join forces and create the "Press-Play.com" music store to compete with the rise of Napster and its many imitators, not understanding that a lack of interest wasn't the problem, but that no-one was going to pay for a product being offered for free somewhere else (which is ironically what caused Google to lose millions of dollars trying to get companies like Machinima into the VOD --Video On Demad-- market, again missing the point by a country mile as those videos underperformed when compared with stuff being uploaded for free on their main channels and didn't garner much interest regardless of the quality (or lack thereof) of the final article).
You can argue that nothing's truly being lost now that the tireless (and often thankless) work of video archivist has restored many of those videos that were wiped from existence for reasons that those responsible for it would never have to explain. You can also accurately say that the demise of these companies closed a really ugly chapter in the history of content creation, freeing thousands of people from their illegal, unenforceable contracts and from the stain of having their names associated with some of the most disreputable names on the platform... and I won't argue with that because it's genuinely a good point. I personally lost all sympathy for Machinima's plight after learning that they had put ads on the video of a partner mourning the death of his beloved pet, and then went out of my way to avoid them like the plague after reading the kind of hell they put Ross (and countless others) through.
Look at this! It's a ghost town! Someone paid upwards of $100M for the privilege of killing this thing... Why?
But I still miss the "ritual" those helped me perform during those cold nights when all I had was a couple of videos to watch in-between merciless rounds of adulthood sweeping me from all sides, pausing to read funny comments before sleep overtook me in a way that felt earned and relaxing, not consequential and automatic.
And while I know that these are selfish reasons to even bring up a name (and era) that had caused nothing short of nightmares to so many people, one has to draw the line somewhere.
We live in a world in which the gratuitous destruction of media is seen as something so normal as to be accepted without batting an eye, even though those actions permanently screw anyone who's ever worked said destroyed (effectively "lost") media and that paying customers are rarely compensated for their loss. A world in which a continent-wide initiative is even needed to prevent companies, copyright holders and IP owners from performing the modern-day equivalent of a book-burning rally. A world in which someone had to buy back something he had spent decades growing with the intent to sell just to prevent its complete destruction at the hands of one of these uncaring juggernauts.
That's some properly dystopian shit, and something that I couldn't have even imagined when I decided to hit "play" on the videos of a huge aggregator proceeded by its shiny reputation as I sat on my sunken mattress, across the room from the glow of my underpowered laptop while the "borrowed" WiFi signal pushed the quality as high as it would go without buffering or stuttering the piecemeal offerings I was consuming by the dozens while taking mindless sips from a steaming cup of coffee whose black interior threatened to spill all over the bed with every hearty laugh I subjected it to.
And by God, I miss that beautiful mess.
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