The YouTube Graveyard

So I came across this YouTube video today: Exploring “0-view YouTube” Until I Get a Bingo

It reminded me of the fact that I’ve always enjoyed getting glimpses or exploring these corners of the internet—by that I mean, randomly coming across some of these random videos with no views whatsoever. Or scrolling through random people’s Reddit profiles, especially those with a long post history.

I just think it’s super interesting to get a small glimpse into someone else’s life, it’s nice to think about how others might live sometimes. There’s like this feeling of mystique, you get to wonder what their struggles might be. If it’s in an old video or post, you might wonder what they’re up to now, or even if they’re still here with us…

I think this is also part of why I find blogs so interesting. They’re a place where people are willingly sharing parts the parts want to with others and it ends up immortalized for decades. Finding old blogs is always a treat—new blogs too.

Modern social media just doesn’t have this same effect on me, it all feels too curated for it to be intriguing or anything like that. Modern social media profiles and posts don’t give you a glimpse into what the author really is like… it’s hard to put into words but it feels too algorithmic even when you find it all by yourself. I guess what it could be is that, modern social media is more focused on getting clicks and engagement than actually sharing that part of yourself that you want people to see—not for validation but because you want people to also be interested in what you like. While I don’t think most people on social media strive to be “influencers” with lots of engagement and internet points, I do think that subconsciously it affects what people tend to post about on these sites.

That’s why I really like the premise of the YouTube graveyard (or recycle bin as the guy in the video calls it). It’s what YouTube was meant to be originally. A place to share videos.

After watching that video I ended up trying to use the method he used to find the videos as well. It actually worked and I had a pretty fun time scrolling through these old and new videos that all seemed so random without any context to why they were even uploaded in the first place. Some are pretty obvious—events and gatherings people want to remember. Others weren’t, especially the ones in languages I couldn’t understand… I think I even ended up finding an ad for a school in Uzbekistan or something lol.

You can also try it, refer to the image below to see what you need to search in order to find these videos.