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Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
91–100 of 215 posts
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#92Outside 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
To me it's a crime to not mention Group X / Mario Twins in this sort of article.
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#93I 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.
I’ve watched all of the skibidi toilet episodes. It’s really the same as 2000s or 2010s gmod YouTube poop, it just managed to find a larger audience.
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#94Pre-YouTube internet largely didn't exist anymore. Flash is gone and one-by-one the old sites fall with no usable archive.
A lot of the old culture is just GONE. It is now myth or legend. The stories only exist verbally. Stile, Encyclopedia Dramatica, LiveJournal, Geocities. Much of the culture content from the early internet is just gone.
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#95Tangentially related, but as someone who watched Salad Fingers when it came out (I was ~20) I have the feeling it didn't age well.
Somehow much of the stuff I found really funny in the 00s seems kinda pointless to me now. I rewatched Scary Movie and thought it was disgusting.
People say, yes that's because you're old now, but it's not true for everything, and especially not for stuff that came before the 2000s.
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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].
[1]: At least ebaumsworld was notorious for the bad kinds of piracy. albinoblacksheep, newgrounds, and somethingawful, were the major hubs outside of other individual creator sites like weebls and lemondemon otherwise IIRC. Firth did publish himself on NG, and later on YouTube. But I think he only appeared as himself on YouTube like a decade or so after Salad Fingers first went viral. https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/276616 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBaum%27s_World#Copyright_infr...
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#97Earlier 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.
♫ The man in gauze, the man in gauze. ♫
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#98Important 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 -…
It may not be as aberrant as MeatCanyon, but I would say that Felix Colgrave is defining his own genre enough to be considered weird.
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#99Outside 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
To me it's a crime to not mention Group X / Mario Twins in this sort of article. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeOULX79VA
They look the same!
Re: Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 -…
> but I think a lot of the particular "weird" vibe of the early days of the modern web is pretty much dead I take it you haven't had a 12 year old talk your ear off about Five Nights at Freddy's lore or "SCP" then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation
Oh, I see you've met my godson...