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Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

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Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#11

Post by OliveMate »

wkjagt wrote: post #7
flashback2199 wrote: post #2

I always thought of salad fingers as like one of those weird flash videos but as a YouTube series. Anybody remember albinoblacksheep.com? I'm sure there were others too, maybe ebaumsworld but I'm not sure if those were as weird

Isn’t that also where Burnt Face Man is from?

Much like Salad Fingers, Burnt Face Man was created by David Firth - https://www.youtube.com/@davidfirth

I don't remember where he originally uploaded each series, but his Jerry Jackson series (a personal favourite) were first uploaded to Newgrounds as a series of troll animations.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#14

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Important to note that the paper the article is referencing [1] is titled:

"Salad Fingers: Pre-YouTube digital uncanny and the ‘weird’ future of animation"

So, the actual data is about PRE-Youtube weird internet. Baffling why they chose to focus on YouTube instead of Newgrounds like the original paper does

I think I'm reacting like this because I'm actually unaware of anything that originated on Youtube that fits into this category. Youtube just reposted stuff from elsewhere (it's the biggest pirate site on the internet probably).

Edit: The key point is that there is a huge network of weird internet that predated and continues outside of YT. The Absolutely[2] Produced stuff is the standard bearer here

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565231208569

[2] https://absolutelyproductions.com/

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#15

Post by Loughla »

jihadjihad wrote: post #13

Outside of YouTube, the dawn of "weird web" for me is Homestar Runner [0], and Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected [1]. 0: https://homestarrunner.com/main 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSb-nV8l2QY

Jesus Christ, nothing makes me reminisce about college quite as much as homestar runner.

That site was the beginning of my love affair with all things weird and esoteric on the internet.

I got scroll buttons as the day is long.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#16

Post by at_a_remove »

flashback2199 wrote: post #2

I always thought of salad fingers as like one of those weird flash videos but as a YouTube series. Anybody remember albinoblacksheep.com? I'm sure there were others too, maybe ebaumsworld but I'm not sure if those were as weird

Right, I think Flash was first. Before they hooked up with Quiznos, remember those rodents who "love da moon"? Or someone would take a mashup of Ol' Dirty Bastard ("Shimmy Shimmy Ya") and The Cure ("Close to Me"), then make a clunky video of the instruments (xylophone, but also humanoid skulls) played by various animals and sung by a tiger in that Monty Python-like jaw animation.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#17

Post by macNchz »

I recently heard about Skibidi Toilet being the latest sensation among teenagers and had a very old person "what is wrong with kids today" moment when I watched some, before remembering that 20 years ago my friends and I were all watching Salad Fingers, Sick Animation, Homestar Runner and other dumb flash cartoons on albinoblacksheep.com.

Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

#18

Post by epiccoleman »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

Important to note that the paper the article is referencing [1] is titled: "Salad Fingers: Pre-YouTube digital uncanny and the ‘weird’ future of animation" So, the actual data is about PRE-Youtube weird internet. Baffling why they chose to focus on YouTube instead of Newgrounds like the original paper does I think I'm reacting like this because I'm actually unaware of anything that originated on Youtube that fits int…

Maybe MeatCanyon[1], or Joe Cappa's stuff[2], could fall into the modern "YouTube weird" - but I think a lot of the particular "weird" vibe of the early days of the modern web is pretty much dead - or at least not mainstream enough for me to know about it. There was a much more amateur bent to a lot of the old viral flash stuff, which I think just wouldn't stand out today.

These two are a sort of new kind of weird - MeatCanyon is based largely around gross-out body horror parodies of pop culture, and Joe Cappa is ... I'm not sure what it is, but I love his stuff.

If you like either of these videos the rest of their work is well worth a look. Especially the Joe Cappa "Haha You Clowns" series is just the weirdest kind of hilarious.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3BJpO59F4g

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUQckI_NqgY

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