YouTube 5th anniversary -- best videos of the past half decade
- — 25 February, 2010 15:00
Susan Boyle not included
It's been five long years since YouTube first appeared in our browser windows. By Internet standards, that makes it something of an elder statesman. Its influence on society and the World Wide Web is so great that it feels like the site's been with us forever. (Seriously, can you remember a time when streaming YouTube videos wasn't part of your day?) Like the Internet itself, it has truly changed life as we once knew it.
The phenomenally popular video-sharing site began life as an impulsive start-up company, replete with a cluttered office located between a pizza parlour and a sushi restaurant. Within a single year, the overachieving website rocketed from posting the first YouTube video (founder Jawed Karim talking about elephants at the zoo) to becoming an "independent subsidiary" of Google. Its incredible growth over the past half-decade has changed how we live, play, and do business — and now it's time to celebrate a well-deserved milestone.
Over the following pages, we've collected a technicolour potpourri of YouTube's Greatest Hits. In addition to all the usual suspects (Dramatic Prairie Dog FTW!), we've also included a few obscure gems and some our own personal favourites.
Numa Numa (2005)
Sometimes, all you need to be happy in life is a webcam and a Moldovan pop song. Bless.
It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time! (2006)
As made famous by Brian the dog on Family Guy. (No, we have no idea what the relevance of the banana is either.)
Chavs get owned (2006)
The end of this video is almost too horrific to be funny. Almost.
Fainting goats (2006)
That's fainting goats. Although farting goats would be quite funny too.
Star Wars Kid (2006)
In 2006, a Canadian high school student made a videotape of himself wielding a golf ball retriever in a highly uncoordinated manner. Tragically, his classmates then found the tape.
