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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’

#171

Post by Apocryphon »

sublinear wrote: post #110

Is this a paid post or something? Weird and avant-garde compared to what? The reason most of this crap never got archived is because it was the purest of crap, not the death of flash or other silly excuses. Similarly nobody cares about the vast majority of YTMND or Vine. There absolutely was a certain type of "nerd" into the junk on Newgrounds and they were probably the same loud minority who flocked to Facebook unti…

> Nobody really wants to remember the internet between 2000 and 2015.

Literally all of HN wants that era of pre-FANG commodification of the internet to come back. Before so much of the web was siloed off into corporate gated communities and the death of personal websites, blogs, BBS forums, and the like.

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

#172

Post by fumar »

malingo wrote: post #159
slowhadoken wrote: post #20

“Weird YouTube” owes a lot to Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. It spawned shows like MTV’s Liquid Television.

Still remember seeing the first episode of Æon Flux on late night MTV when I was 13. Good stuff

The fly in the eye is forever burned in my memory.

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

#173

Post by nickf »

Legogris wrote: post #96
OliveMate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He primarily uploads publishes all his material, alongside with Jerry Jackson et al, to his own website[0]. I remember subscribing to it over RSS as a kid and his stuff would always drop there first. Might be some gems to discover if you haven't browsed it before (: Newgrounds, ebaumsworld etc were all reuploads [1]. [0]: https://www.fat-pie.com/ [1]: At least ebaumsworld was notorious for the bad kinds of piracy. al…

You are correct - I say this as the website ‘landlord’ (scroll right to the very bottom!)

The fun part was hosting this myself 20-something years ago and seeing traffic spike like mad. Rented cheap servers from Kimsufi or Ikoula and tuning apache as best I could without a real clue what I was doing…

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

#175

Post by Eater_of_food »

foota wrote: post #28
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…

Green is not a creative color? https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ?si=hPwd3zmnOx21ww1L

I'm fairly certain that played on British TV and was subsequently uploaded to YouTube (though the sequels did originate there).

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

#176

Post by matrix87 »

sidlls wrote: post #56
macNchz wrote: post #17

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.

I think there's definitely a qualitative difference, though. Salad fingers, at least, had better quality "stories", and the weirdness was less "basic." Skibidi Toilet is an excellent representation of the hyper-ADHD-ification of kids due to rapid-fire content consumption brought on by newer social media platforms.

> had better quality "stories", and the weirdness was less "basic.

I don't think the basicness is unintentional. It's like it's making fun of action movies for being excessively loud and violent

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

#177

Post by RankingMember »

willis936 wrote: post #120
epiccoleman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true - it's actually crazy how much of an art form YTP became. (Not sure how popular it is these days?). It was a whole style with its own conventions, memes, etc. And on the surface, it seems really stupid, but there's a lot of creativity and talent that went into those wild videos. This one is an old favorite of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTdxPliBdZs Also, the "Wow, It's Made" series: https://…

I love Hank of the Hill. Green Wedding and some of the Toy Story ones still get me too. https://youtu.be/Rf7MCiei9uI

Love the KOTH YTPs, gotta throw one of my favorite one-offs out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7WtkdLQ6PM

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

#178

Post by jimjimjim »

Apocryphon wrote: post #169
sidlls wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's definitely a qualitative difference, though. Salad fingers, at least, had better quality "stories", and the weirdness was less "basic." Skibidi Toilet is an excellent representation of the hyper-ADHD-ification of kids due to rapid-fire content consumption brought on by newer social media platforms.

Badger Badger Badger

Mushroom Mushroom

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

#179

Post by liamwire »

quacksilver wrote: post #149
afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this threw me too. Salad Fingers is absolutely pre-YouTube. I remember watching that, Weebl and Bob, Charlie the Unicorn etc etc, all as Flash videos.

Salad fingers and weebl and bob were both on weebl's stuff AFAIK http://weebls-stuff.com/ back in the day but got put on to youtube so that he could reach a wider audience. (and with the downfall of flash player). Edit: Reading up about it, salad fingers had a different author 'Badger! Badger! Badger!', scampi, magical trevor etc. were also from there. It was a favourite site of my friend group when we wer 12 and spe…

Magical Trevor never ceases to throw me straight back to memories of being 12.

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

#180

Post by matrix87 »

pjot wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What part of Salad Fingers could the author possibly be referring to that "looks and feels like a children's show"? Between the Hays Code (1968) and the Simpsons (1989), most Americans had no exposure to adult animation. So even in 2004, for a subsantial number of adults, animation meant children's television. Also, a lot of 90s kids' television played with the boundaries of what is and isn't disturbing.

“Courage, the cowardly dog” was horrifying.

I was looking for someone to mention this. When I saw the Ramses scene for the first time, it scared the living shit out of me for some reason. Just something about him slowly approaching from the distance was absolutely terrifying
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