Friday, April 23, 2021

"Me At The Zoo" (The First Uploaded YouTube Video)

Me At The Zoo is the first video to be uploaded on YouTube on April 23, 2005. 16 years ago to this day and made by Jawed Karim, who is also the star. He was 26-years old at the time, and I suspect he knew that his video will be just as important as Thomas Edison’s first theatrical film, The Kiss, produced in 1896.  The Kiss and Me At The Zoo are both 19 seconds long.

Karim was the co-founder of YouTube. His video conveys an incident that is not important and has no drama or interest. The entire transcript to Me At The Zoo is 

All right, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants, and the cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that's, that's cool, and that's pretty much all there is to say.

The camera stays locked on Karim. As he is talking about the elephants behind him at the San Diego Zoo, there are no close-ups of the elephants whatsoever. The video is just him talking about what is behind him, and it could have been anything. The only important thing about this 19-second video is that it was uploaded on a channel or platform. Still, the video is probably one of the most influential works of the 21-st century. I find it fascinating that he obviously thinks he's more interesting than the elephants. One suspects that he didn't plan anything beforehand; he didn't read up on elephants or their history on Earth. No, he was more interested in the fact that he talked about something in front of a camera and then uploaded it to a new social platform. 

Aesthetically one can still see Karim's video as an influence on videos being made on YouTube regularly. For example, I have a YouTube show called Tosh Talks, and it's me talking about books or music without a script. To be honest, I rarely know what I'm going to say before the camera. I know the subject matter, just as much as Karim knew he would talk about the elephants behind him. I do the same process in that I have a book or music on hand, and I will talk about it. What happens afterward is almost a mystery to me. That's the best part of YouTube. It's doing something 'now,' without thinking of the past or future.