The New York Times wrote recently about the first video ever posted on YouTube. Here’s Jawed Karim telling us that he’s standing in front of the elephants. Further, he explains that the “cool” thing about elephants is that they have really long trunks. Karim would later update his video to show an annotation that points out the goat sounds on his “meet at the zoo” video.
Jawed posted this on April 23, 2005, and would later receive $64 million in Google stock for his contribution to YouTube. He was last seen two years ago in Hawaii. (actually to be fair, Jawed signed in as recently as four days ago).
Says NYTimes Writer Virginia Heffernon:
When this technique of redundancy was used in the films of Godard, it was considered the height of sophistication, a comment on the way movies pile on information: they show, they narrate and they describe. The elephants are unmistakable to viewers, and yet Karim identifies them. Then he names the iconic shape right in front of us — “long trunks” — lest anyone miss that long trunks equal elephants equal long trunks.
If we didn’t believe Heffernon was disguising disdain with subtle sarcasm, we would have thrown up in the back of our throats.
You know, I’m not sure why Jawed picked that username when he presumably had any other option available. It sounds like a b-grade beach movie. I’d have chosen the username Fred or Smosh or Nigahiga or something.
P.S. Here’s my first video (Scary Santa), posted 9 months later than Jawed’s. It has not earned me $64 million dollars yet.
FIRST!
I want my 4 years back.
I picked the best YouTube name EVER!!!!
Nalts, you make it sound like he earned $64 million for posting that silly video. He was one of the co-founders of YouTube, not just some random dude who happened to post the first video.
Interesting. I heard that what they wanted to do with YouTube when they started was to provide a site for people to showcase items they intended to sell on eBay. They didn’t even plan to have search included originally. Now look at them, over a billion videos watched everyday and the #2 search engine overall. Crazy.
Scary Santa may have been the first video you uploaded to Youtube but I remember seeing at least a dozen of your videos before Scary Santa. Still have your pre-Youtube videos?
Lol, BrB, I want MY 4 years back, too!!
@6 There are some pre-YouTube (well, not really pre-YouTube, but before Nalts posted Scary Santa on YouTube) Nalts videos available on Revver. That’s probably where you saw them.
Did the first comment on that video contain the word “First”? If so, that man should win an award.
That’s a Epic 1st lol
@6 Thanks! Coming from you, that’s high praise indeed.
I finally just watched Scary Santa, and I watched it over and over again because I thought it was totally hilarious.
@8 The first three comments on this video were as follows:
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COBALTGRUV (4 years ago)
Interesting….
mike0tron (4 years ago)
i can tell you why elephants are cool. Two words: BIG POOP
slvgdvg (4 years ago)
dude.. umm… ? ok I’ll be nice..
———————————
And there you have it. What an epic beginning!
Willvideoforfood backrow denizen JimmerSD sings about my critter problem and why I had to shave my dog’s butt (photo included). See it here first:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlPSZyIkv4w
It smells like cat piss in my office.
ooohhh! I’m a denizen! Sounds creepy!
you are a youtuber and you are clueless
hes a founder of youtube that means he took part in the invention
ofc he got money from google
Jawed is subscribed to Nalts.