Before Youtube...

[Palamon]

To anyone who was online before Youtube, what was it like?

 

[Sheep]

I didn't watch many videos! that's all really. it didn't seem too bad, but it's one of the many instances where you can't miss something if you don't know about it at all. I'd use google to find music to listen to/download as a kid, spend time by playing CD or console/handheld games, and use the website albinoblacksheep to watch fan-made digital content. I think it still exists today but it used to be especially popular back in the day. 👍

 

[Tsutarja]

You had email attachments or Newgrounds XD

 

[Roni]

I was 6 and didn't have any access to computers lmao. Not much to talk about there.

If we're talking about before I discovered Youtube, let's just say that I had what was supposed to be a well-developing social life.

 

[Flowerchild]

iunno i probably had a life or something

 

[Cherrim]

Yep, Newgrounds for silly videos. They were often Flash videos. Otherwise you were downloading questionable files from file-sharing apps like Kazaa or Limewire. :v

The flash stuff went viral more easily, though, because you could embed it in web pages and share it much easier with a link than trying to send a video file over questionable internet speeds. There were some websites made for video streaming, but it wasn't at all common the way it is now.

But that's why more text-based media was so common back then. Forums thrived, Livejournal was, like, an actual thing, and longform blog posts were the norm. Now it's all link embeds and short commentary to fit a social media message because no one has the attention span for anything longer. :P

 

[stella]

I feel so old now...ahem 😅
Before Youtube?

Forums were a huge way to chat with people. It was also popular because most computers didn't have the best internet speeds to process videos aka mine. I loosely remember what life was like before Myspace, but it grew around when I became a computer user. I mention this because Myspace was the only form of social media.

Forums had a lot of power because people were very anonymous. Very rarely did people use their real names or link to things that irl people could find. Nowadays, everybody links to their social media accounts and whatnot. There was always a huge disctinction between life online and life outside the internet. Also even though Myspace was growing, people didn't actively link to their accounts in forums.

For video websites, if my internet was good, I would go to albino blacksheep, newgrounds, and even funnyjunk. I was a bigger fan of playing flash games because they loaded faster, which may be the reason why I am addicted to mobile games now. I would also download things on limewire and kazaa, y'know still extremely worried about viruses lol.

In terms of spreading funny content, we used a ton of image macros. This was before the word "meme" became widespread and instant. Also linking videos was a huge thing. People also chatted through those messenger thingies like Yahoo, Aim, Window's Live, etc. IRC was a big one too.

I may be forgetting a lot because I need to eat dinner and I'm very hungry. But in short, we used the internet to communicate via text a lot of the time. Those of us with better internet connections created flash content. But even still, it wasn't really like a social platform the way Youtube is now.

Also old Youtube was very short videos. I mostly remember lots of cat videos, songs from musicals, copyrighted content split into multiple 10min parts, etc.

Since you mention it, the internet was very different back then. I never realized that there is a generation of people who didn't know what life was like before Youtube. Strnage times indeed.

 

[DragonKing48]

The Radio! And BET/VHI/MTV, Cds, Limewire, and Stations on certain providers that just played endless music.

 

[shira rayu]

not even close to how it is right now, yet there were many other platforms