Yes, it’s been that long
I was trying to picture how I passed the time online before YouTube came along and more often than not, I drew a blank. There were websites and blogs I would regularly visit but it seems nothing equaled the video-sharing platform’s ability to reduce lazy afternoons to a blip. Before we posted photos of our outfits and our lattes on Instagram, we passed around links to YouTube clips of cats playing the piano or of Internet comedians such as Happy Slip and KevJumba sharing snippets of their lives as Asian-Americans. This year, just like that, YouTube turns 10.
When former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim first hatched the plan for a video-sharing site a decade ago, the founders probably had no idea that their startup would become what it is today. From the site’s very first shared video, an 18-second clip uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005 called “Me at the zoo,” 300 hours of video now make it onto YouTube every minute and the site, a Google subsidiary, enjoys the support of over one billion users.
JUMPING ON OPRAH’S COUCH
2015 is a good solid number from which to count back in five-, 10- or even 20-year increments and celebrate anniversaries. During the year YouTube went live, Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch while declaring his love for then-wife Katie Holmes, a viral TV moment that somehow diminished his reputation; 2005 was also the year TMZ launched its brash — actually, vulgar — take on celebrity culture; Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as gay cowboys, was to become a film that challenged people’s perceptions of romance. It’s also been 10 years since Fall Out Boy’s Dance, Dance and Sugar, We’re Going Down, from “Under The Cork Tree,” graced the first-generation iPod Nanos of teens everywhere.
While there are lots of other significant pop culture milestones in 2015 — Saturday Night Live turns 40 and The Breakfast Club hits 30 — it’s hard to be nostalgic for a past you never experienced. Released on July 19, 1995, Clueless remains a sentimental favorite for many ‘90s kids. Amy Heckerling’s Jane Austen-inspired classic, a launching vehicle for Alicia Silverstone and a handful of catchphrases, has aged remarkably well and has even inspired Iggy Azalea’s video for Fancy.
FOND MEMORIES
Those who grew up with Woody and Buzz Lightyear will most likely celebrate Toy Story’s 20th. Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone, meanwhile, still ranks as one of the top holiday movies of all time, 25 years after its debut.
For something to get full nostalgia treatment, appreciation of it needs to be rooted partly in fond memories of one’s youth. Come 2020, it’s likely that fans will mark the 10th anniversary of One Direction’s debut on The X Factor, or look back on the 2010 release of Inception and The Social Network. Others perhaps will recall the time the polarizing Fifty Shades of Gray became a box office smash in 2015. That crucial year, which many associate with visual acuity, is a mere five years from today. When that time comes, as with every other year that passes, I can imagine everyone saying, “Has it really been that long?”
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