10 years ago today on April 23rd, 2005, YouTube received its first ever video upload. Titled ‘Me at the zoo’, the 18-second clip featured YouTube founder Jawed Karim describing how elephants had “really, really long trunks” whilst visiting San Diego Zoo. At this point Karim probably had no idea that within the next decade the video sharing site he had founded alongside Chad Hurley and Steve Chen would revolutionize the way we view video content, creating a platform that would some day stand to rival television, along with offering an outlet for amateur video-makers to create legitimate, lucrative careers for themselves.
Alongside giving content creators an avenue to earn themselves money through the creation of a channel, YouTube has also had more than its fair share of one-hit wonders. There are many clips on the site that have managed to go viral from out of nowhere, attracting millions of views and garnering a worldwide audience, taking the individuals who uploaded them by surprise with their unpredictable popularity.
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Let’s take a look at the videos that have sneaked up on us over the course of the past 10 years, and have helped to make YouTube the boiling pot of greatness, awfulness and downright weirdness that it is today:
Charlie Bit My Finger
Upload Date: May 22, 2007
With 817 million views, ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ is the only video in YouTube’s Top 40 most viewed that is not a music video. Showing English brothers Harry Davies-Carr and Charlie Davies-Carr engaging in a humorous exchange in which, yes, Charlie bites Harry’s finger, in 2012 it was reported that the Davies-Carr family had made £300,000 off the video, with them signing a partnership with video management company Viral Spiral that has seen the video be placed in advertisements for brands such as Sprint.
CBBC recently revisited the boys, who are now 11 and 9 years old, to see how the viral success has impacted their lives. It turns out that it hasn’t, really:
LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!
Upload Date: September 10, 2007
During the height of Britney Spears’ ongoing media crucifixion, avid Britney fan Chris Crocker uploaded a video onto YouTube defending his idol. Unfortunately, the message behind his emotional, hysterical monologue regarding the media and general public’s treatment of Britney was lost in the bizarreness of it all, with Crocker appearing shrouded in some sort of white blanket/curtain, his eye make-up running down his face and his blonde hair becoming increasingly dishevelled as his rage increased. Crocker later stated that the video was “pure performance art.”
After the video went viral, Crocker expressed an interest in wanting to pursue an acting career, though this wish went unfulfilled. He did, however, feature in Weezer’s music video for their 2009 track ‘Pork and Beans’, and also starred in two porn films, though would later claim that they had proved detrimental to his acting career.
It seems that Crocker is now focused upon a career in music, having released three albums titled The First Bite, Walls Down and More Than Three Words. He also looks remarkably different:
Keyboard Cat
Upload Date: June 7, 2007
Back in 2009, two years after the original video had first been uploaded to YouTube, it was difficult to browse the ‘net without eventually watching some sort of variation of the Keyboard Cat playing off another unfortunate soul.
Titled “charlie schmidt’s cool cats” when it was first uploaded to the site in 2007, the video we now all know as Keyboard Cat was actually filmed in 1980 by Charlie Schmidt, who puppeteered his cat Fatso in order to get him to mime playing a short jingle using a keyboard. On February 2nd, 2009, YouTuber Brad O’Farrell purchased the rights to the video in order to use it at the end of a “Best of FAILS” video. The Keyboard Cat was being used to signify the unlucky people featured in the clip being “played off” the “stage,” and it wasn’t long before many video creators began using it in their videos, too. Soon the internet was awash with the Keyboard Cat, though this still remains the funniest use of the clip:
Unfortunately, Fatso the Keyboard Cat died in 1987. Bummer.
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