Ten years on, revisiting YouTube’s first viral sensation | Hacker News Reader

Ten years on, revisiting YouTube’s first viral sensation

theguardian.com

178 pointsbloat77 comments

The first YouTube viral video that blew me away, in terms of content and in showing the potential of democratized video, was the anonymous Korean kid shredding Pachelbel's Canon in D in his bedroom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8

The Times wrote a story about it here: "Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/television/27heff.htm...

I remember watching that, and now re-watching it, it's still amazing. This kid has serious skill, I could watch it over and over.

My father, a life-long musician and music teacher, always told me the hallmark of a good piece of music is that it can be transposed and arranged into any other genre of music and still sound amazing. I don't know if he was right or not, but this seems like decent evidence he wasn't all wrong.

I agree in some sense, an astonishing number of Bach pieces have been rewritten for a bewildering array of instruments and sound absolutely amazing. But Bach is kind of like Math, it's true regardless if it's written in chalk on a chalk board or in mustard on an umbrella.

Yet there's also plenty of great music that really only sounds good on the instrument, something about it is very "subjective" with respect to the particulars of the orchestration.

I'll sometimes spend hours digging into covers of favorite songs on youtube, and it really is amazing how different kinds of music can survive this kind of instrument shifting.

just some sharing

here's a well known Bach Suite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0

now on guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGipFrts650

on piano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhfxM5FOzjQ

flute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWKQevA68DY

on Nyckelharpa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3aUCM8BX8

electric guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsr0MyH-3IU

another electric guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8OVpjdBevs

Baritone Saxophone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXz67syyse0

Michael Hedges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg

Bass Guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-tzPu7e2pg

Recorder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAhkoATipk

Tuba https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neiTiiFp0bM

Banjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLyM4gCrn1k

Rock version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIo59bHw54Q

Bobby McFerrin (not quite the same, but still...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14LcvpXmb74

Pipe Organ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMrGo2UTH0

Marimba https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0eVALniBKE

Ukulele https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC230wdYl1c

Clarinet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTh4plaV9E

Dubstep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7qxeXNqCHw

Mandolin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdKGI5zfkE0

Harp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUWU4DdxdwU

Horn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNsdcmDoDY0

Chapman Stick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbWkDlPM8oI

Bassoon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMl7j-Q1DEE

Accordion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGE4l7ObPvQ

Trombone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqvapAxXsVE

It survives completely intact across instrument types, performance arenas, recording methods, synthesis, voice, octave...it's absolutely astonishing.

Great selection! I'll be working through those....

There's a CD of Pachelbel's Greatest Hit - The Ultimate Canon (2003), which has 14 different versions of the Canon. https://www.amazon.com/Pachelbels-Greatest-Hit-Various/dp/B0...

I also have a collection of CDs of Pictures At An Exhibition with all kinds of odd versions. These include ELP, Tomita, Mekong Delta, a brass band etc, as well as various solo piano and orchestral versions.

The wind instruments stand out a bit because the performers need to take pauses to breathe.

> Michael Hedges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfnm__lNNUg

Judging from his manners in that video, what a nice guy!

He passed away too soon. My favorite Michael Hedges song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTC7kPZZmuM

An absolute genius who probably pushed the art of the guitar ahead by two generations.

For anyone who wants to watch all the videos in this comment, I created a youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYMnBtxJ_oErE0qEFFxQS...

Thanks for the effort put into gathering all these different videos!

> the hallmark of a good piece of music is that it can be transposed and arranged into any other genre of music and still sound amazing

I would also make a similar claim, that almost any piece played on classical instruments sounds good. I would point out at Apocalyptica as an evidence.

That can only be true for melodic music. Genres like drone, techno, or ambient, which rely on sound design and often have no tonal content whatsoever, obviously can't be "played" with a music instrument or transposed to a different one.

I agree to a point, but sound design can still be part of playing musical instruments, especially electrically amplified instruments.

One of my favourite YouTube channels is Effectology, where Bill Ruppert pulls out a wide range of sounds out of an electric guitar and guitar pedals (Electro-Harmonix guitar pedals in this case):

https://m.youtube.com/user/Effectology

Beyond the sounds available from effect boxes, you can also trigger MIDI signals whilst playing musical instruments, so in that way there's no sound that can't be played in a live setting.

I've been to several drone music concerts where the the music was played either mostly or entirely on music instruments.

That video is legendary even in the guitar community.

I must have watched it a billion times by myself.

>a billion times

Can't be! The youtube video "only" has 92 million views.

> Can't be! The youtube video "only" has 92 million views.

Hey, you never know. It says 92 million, but YouTube view counts were int32 until 2014. http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/12/gangnam-style-overfl... Was Gangnam Style really the first to hit kint32max? ;-)

Yes, it was a big deal when it hit a billion views and when it "rolled over" the counter.

I remember Blaine getting blamed for that one too.

Why wasn't it an unsigned int?

Not all languages have unsigned ints (java for example doesn't).

Or he used somehting like youtube-dl.

So it counts as 1 view, and he watched the downloaded file a billion times. ;)

I'm pretty sure that video is what got me to signup for Youtube 2 days after it was released - amusing to see my uploads from then, 10 years later, still getting views (and annoying Youtube comment emails).

There were so many rival versions, it almost became a competitive sport. MattRach was also amazing -- better than the original, I think. He did several versions....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owAj5LiXG5w

I love the MattRach version - I tell people that that's what it's like inside my head!

Speaking of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, turns out it was originally a pretty good tune.

The insipid wedding version we all know has a completely botched rhythm and tempo.

Here’s an interpretation closer to the composer’s intent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1pEJ9n5-D4

That's... the same as it always is, just played a bit faster?

Sounds like it. I remember reading at some point that tempos changed significantly at one point, so that many of what we consider slow boring classics were originally meant to be as lively as this rendition.

Yeah thats the whole point of the period instrument performance movement. A lot of Early Music sounds different (better) to me when it's played with faster tempi and smaller ensembles with period instruments.

It's sad how much of the original spark that made Youtube interesting is long gone. I use to had a vlog myself where I would discuss issues particularly from a right-libertarian perspective (most of those vids are private or deleted now since I don't believe anything I've said back then anymore). I think the first thing that killed such vlogs at least in my opinion was the removal of the whole comment system. It wasn't the best thing in the world but you could actually setup reply videos which made conversations possible. It's weird how YT's dev team never though to reintroduce the reply system like that again. That was the best part of YT at least for vloggers even if they didn't like each other (Me and FringeElements/ConfederalSocialist didn't get along. Same with HannibalBarca/HannibalVictor.) because you could see if a thread going on via video replies. I doubt YT will ever reintroduce such a feature again since it led to weeks long flame wars that did eventually lead to some people getting doxxed like thunderf00t (I know a few others were doxxed well before him, but he's one that I remember in detail, especially with his spat against DawahFilms).

> It wasn't the best thing in the world but you could actually setup reply videos which made conversations possible.

I had completely forgotten about that system. I really enjoyed video replies. Not only did they foster discussion, it was a great way to learn, discover music, and the replies allowed a great collaborative humor to develop as well. I seem to remember that they were starting to become very spammy about the time they disappeared though.

>That was the best part of YT at least for vloggers even if they didn't like each other

I remember reading a scientific paper a while back that suggested social networks grew much better when they had [likes/eprops/upvotes/etc] than they did without, but allowing negative feedback (beyond comments) stifled growth. We naturally try to surround ourselves with like-minded individuals as well. Our natural tendencies coupled with incentive social networks have to censor information that we disagree with means we all live in bubbles where our ideas are rarely challenged.

The YouTube reply system made viewing content from the "other side" really easy. I'm pretty sure I watched more vlogs from people I disagree in a single month before that feature was taken away than I have in the entire time since, especially with the new changes to the "recommended videos". Which is a shame. It makes it much easier to demonize the other side.

As a side note, someone on Reddit made a snide joke about the Demosthenes/Locke story arc in Ender's Game and how unrealistic it was; the point being nobody gives a shit about two bloggers having a fight. That story arc might actually make sense on YouTube, given how much better we empathize with people in a video than we do with people who are hidden behind the written word.

Even without downvotes it's unsettling how much of an echo chamber my Facebook list has become. The only points on which I disagree with any significant number of my friends on are those aligned with the hard left (draw from that what inference you will) but talking to new people I meet out in the real world, I get a totally different picture of the what other people think.

Edit: The whole point about Demosthenes and Locke was that any sufficiently persuasive person could be widely influential in an anonymous online system. Putting it on YouTube with videos destroys a portion of the anonymity. Who would take Demosthenes seriously, knowing that he was a girl in her early teens?

I wasn't thinking of a video of an actual person, more of a visual representation of one. I remember a few of those older videos had people who always talked with masks on or something similar. Video is more compelling and easier to digest than mediums that only work via one sense at a time.

The reply feature was also being abused by linkbait-type spammers IIRC. Also one of the reasons why they made the video tags hidden.

Side note: Holy cow. I was initially posting to say I distinctly remembered Lazy Sunday coming out in 2004, because I remember posting it on my blog in my dorm room freshmen year. Then I remembered if it was in 2004 I was almost done with college, and so it couldn't have been from my dorm. Then I check the Wikipedia and realized he was right about the Dec 2005 date, which means I had already finished school. The mind is weird.

It's an interesting field of research - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory

Well at least you're not remembering sniper fire while watching the video!

I distinctly remember being 17 years old and being fascinated watching these videos on YouTube. It was really one of the first things to get me interested in logging into YouTube actively as opposed to simply being linked to the site from elsewhere. Nice to see that the actors didn't come out of it for the worse :)

I also fondly remember "The Show with Ze Frank" from back in 2006:

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvL6NITEozY (sadly the frame-rate in this reupload is messed up)

I know a lot of people (myself included) aren't huge fans of that frenetic, jump-cut-heavy style of vlog/video that's so common on YouTube but I'm pretty sure The Show was one of the first to really popularize it.

Still, I also loved The Show. At the time, I was used to IRC and forums and the comment sections of goof sites like Fark but it still felt like something really cool and unique when Ze would put out calls for submissions or contributions that would then be featured in episodes.

I'd done much smaller collab projects with forum friends in the past but his personality and fairly large fan base made it seem a lot more fun and like being part of a bigger crowd.

edit: it also led me to find the "pilot" for a show that was never produced: The Remnants. I'd watch that over The Walking Dead any day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQFv0Le2DyI

It looks like they might be doing something for the 10 year anniversary, as a new video was posted to the lonelygirl15 page today, the first in 7 years according to the comments: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwklfIbSAgA

What an amazing coincidence: The Guardian article and the new video right at the same time... :)

There are link hotspots in her eyes at some points. Check the comments on the new YT video.

So many articles from just ten years ago are dead links now. But I found this amusing:

"lonelygirl15 is the hottest thing on YouTube at the moment (18,222 subscribers, 1.5 million views)"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2006/aug/28/islo...

18,222 subscribers! And they're still talking about it a decade later.

Meanwhile rocketboom.com was serving up QuickTime that required a plugin to install before you could view a video and claiming 400,000+ downloads per episode. (Later investigated and disproved by BusinessWeek.)

Early web video was a debacle. So many shady companies. Cool times, though. Fun to watch the history get re-written. Note how CAA was in on it from nearly day one.

Pretty crazy to think some YouTube series like AVGN have been going on for ten years—only a few TV shows make it that far.

I'm glad the dude behind AVGN found success with that show. Seems like most YouTube personalities are broke.

I've been watching him since I was in middle school—I graduated college this year. It's pretty crazy and it speaks volumes about the power of the Internet and YouTube.

James Rolfe studied film in college and spent his whole childhood/teenagehood making home movies. It's probably a dream come true that he's able to entertain millions and got a "real" movie out. Pretty cool!

If I remember correctly, AVGN didn't start on YouTube

? AVGN started with a YouTube video he made for fun in 2004. Yeah he got help from ScrewAttack, GameTrailers, and he has his own site, but only after success in YouTube. I'd argue most of his watchers only watch him on there too.

OK then! I thought his videos were first on his website and not on youtube. You are right though

No problem ha, nice to see someone who watches (watched?) him on HN too.

The first video I remember downloading from the internet was The Spirit of Christmas in 1996[1] followed by Troops[2] the following year. 30MB takes a long time to download over a 28.8 modem. Streaming was out of the question.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Christmas_(short...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troops_(film)

South Park definitely set a precedent. There was also a very active community of sharing MPEG1 recordings of Futurama in the warez 'scene' from the very first episode which aired in March 1999.

I remember when VCD (subset of MPEG1) was the standard for releasing movies online. I was even in a group that converted them from VCD to MPEG4 for those for whom 2CDs (1400MB downloads) was just too big.

... and god help you if you were a 'scene' group and released a movie in anything other than a multi-part RAR set of 15MB files containing 2 x 700MB files. nuked!

Ahhh those days from 98-99, being a courier for the biggest releases was frantic! Getting a PRE on your box was like Christmas.

The funny part is that I remember downloading videos in various formats and then converting them to VCD because DVD writers were still pretty expensive and I was a broke college student but my cheapo DVD player played VCDs as well as DVDs so I could watch stuff on the TV without dragging my PC down to the living room.

There was also a point where said cheapo DVD player broke and I was converting to a specific VCD format that would play on my roommate's Dreamcast. I think I either needed to boot to one disc that loaded the player into memory and then pop in the special Dreamcast-compatible VCD to play but I could be wrong. It's been a while.

All this because DVD burners and blank discs were still just outside of my budget.

Classic soxmas.mov

Watching Lazy Sunday again made me go check whether Mapquest still exists. It looks weird now.

I was expecting Numa Numa for some reason.

That was pre youtube- it was on Newgrounds originally.

You might think this format died after lonelygirl15 was exposed, but there are plenty of moderately successful copycats, like "14 year old" Pupinia Steward https://www.youtube.com/user/Robloxobbystar/videos

All it takes is one good troll video landing you on top of reddit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYsi6Z6sXY8 (All about my Incest) hitting 1 mil views and you get the ball rolling. Throw in a plot twist of being madly in love with Trump (and into older men in general) and you have a success on your hands. Might even be Jimmy Kimmels long con for the election, like the Olympics wolf inside hotel video.

First video I ever saw in youtube[1] is still up, worse than I remember, and has less than 500k views. That strikes me as so strange.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVslAo8Cz8

Um, yeah, I clicked it and can't see how it got more than 10,000 views.

High production values, they even shot on location.

For me it was smosh pokemon theme song lip sync.

Unfortunately, Smosh were sued for using the theme song and had to take it down.

Here's a duplicate of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOX3OmUhQoo

Wow, I was watching YouTube from the beginning and I have never heard of this. I guess I was more in the sketch comedy and sudo public access side of it.

Does anyone remember those Darth Vader parodies? Those were pretty good but totally forgot the name of the series.

Do you mean Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGR4-SeuJ0

Yes!! Man those were great.

Man, times sure have changed. Right now people would kill for that extra shift.

so every social site lately required fake users?

this is not as direct as reddit own staff posting but pretty close

It was still user generated content. It was just telling a fictional story in a faux-realistic format...the vlog.

Not much different that the fake documentary style horror movies like Blair Witch. They just managed to keep the fantasy going for longer.

If I remember correctly what really rocketed youtube from being a website with nothing but crap to a site worth going to were the home videos from tourists caught in the the Tsunami in Thailand.

The earthquake/tsunami was in 2004 but youtube didn't launch until 2005. Unless you are talking about another tsunami.

No, I'm talking about the same tsunami and your dates are correct, but there no reason that video taken from the tsunami wouldn't be posted later once there was a platform for them, which is what happened.

In my experience, it was actually the Lonely Island video mentioned in the article that launched professional-quality video on YouTube.

That girl is super cute, but having been a Youtube addict back in 2006/07, I don't really recall her being that popular. As mentioned in the comments, the big one was Canon in D. Pokemon parody by Smosh. Evolution of dance. Urban ninja.

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