A machine for inducing nostalgia for a brief period not too long ago.

November 29, 2024 4:39 PM

IMG_0001: "Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives. [...] I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly."

(Ben Wallace initially wrote about digging through this material, which inspired Riley Walz to build this page.)

(Note: the date-stamp — or the view count — is a link to the current video's YouTube page.)

posted by nobody (24 comments total)

So. Many. Babies!
posted by rongorongo at 4:47 PM on November 29

I've been using these as writing prompts with my 12th grade English class. Call up a random video (you may skip a baby or an equestrian video) and explain, in fictional terms, why this is not what it seems. This is not a woman goofing around in her car; this is a woman who has been sprung from prison and is tasting freedom before she realizes that people who sprung her want revenge. This is not a family eating a meal on a patio; the is the president's family having their last meal before they are executed.

It works well. Forcing a writer to make material out of the most banal banalities of worldwide life is good exercise.
posted by argybarg at 5:25 PM on November 29 [26 favorites]

Previously on the blue was a website called defaultfile.name that searched YouTube for videos uploaded with the default filename the camcorder gave it. These unedited home videos were a window into ordinary people's lives. It was absolutely incredible, but the website seems to have moved to neocities but no longer works.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:56 PM on November 29 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I saw a link to this somewhere else.

And it is sort of creepy as foretold, (like browsing for videos from random home security cams and such, which was totally a thing). I guess it still is.

But, OTOH, seeing people's real life, has a heartwarming charm these days.
posted by Windopaene at 7:56 PM on November 29 [2 favorites]

Holy fsck. This is the kind of footage they play in a montage right before the meteor hits. I love you all. You're all doomed.
posted by metametamind at 8:48 PM on November 29 [10 favorites]

This is not a family eating a meal on a patio; the is the president's family having their last meal before they are executed.

You doing ok?
posted by Literaryhero at 8:56 PM on November 29 [3 favorites]

like browsing for videos from random home security cams and such, which was totally a thing

There used to be a website (I'm sure there was more than one, but I spent some time on one) where you could view a selection of random unsecured camera feeds from around the world. It was actually kind of great, like WindowSwap but not curated.
posted by limeonaire at 9:17 PM on November 29 [1 favorite]

This is the kind of footage they play in a montage right before the meteor hits. I love you all. You're all doomed.

Given the dates on these videos? We were. These are all pre-COVID.
posted by wanderingmind at 9:26 PM on November 29 [6 favorites]

So many kids, babies, pets, and inanity.
And they look so, so, so dated for being <15 years ago.
posted by stormyteal at 9:59 PM on November 29 [1 favorite]

My version of this is you search for "trim" plus 4 random hex digits, like this example. All kinds of videos, often with zero views and 10+ years old.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:09 PM on November 29 [2 favorites]

The second video I got is footage of a Russian woman ballroom dancing in public with a female military service member, while a guy plays guitar and sings what sounds like a romantic song. They appear to part of a larger crowd of people assembled in a public square. The date on the video is June 11, 2013.

So I googled the date and what did I find? This article about the Russian parliament banning "gay propaganda" on that date.

I guess it's not all dogs, cats, and babies.
posted by awfurby at 10:11 PM on November 29 [4 favorites]

also just hold down a key and search for that, like this. (You'll also get a bunch of videos that little kids like because I guess they hold down a button to search too!)
posted by Rhomboid at 10:12 PM on November 29

Mod note: [lol! Excellent randomness; thank you, nobody! We've added it to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:31 AM on November 30 [1 favorite]

awfurby, please share if you can.
posted by Johnny Lawn and Garden at 2:06 AM on November 30

See also astronaut.io from a few years back which does much the same thing. Absolutely mesmerising and, weirdly, incredibly sad
posted by muggsy1079 at 2:29 AM on November 30 [1 favorite]

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any way to share the video you’re watching
posted by awfurby at 5:21 AM on November 30

What if, just by chance, you witnessed a murder through this thing?! /frantically taking notes for a new story/
posted by newdaddy at 6:43 AM on November 30 [1 favorite]

That is what happens at the beginning of The Peripheral. Sort of.
posted by Windopaene at 9:10 AM on November 30

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any way to share the video you’re watching

Timestamp/viewcount display is a youtube link you can share (but I guess there's no way to share a link that'll go to that video inside of the interface, which would be nicer, yeah.)
posted by nobody at 9:11 AM on November 30 [1 favorite]

Some curiosities:

A team of dogs pulling(?) an all terrain buggy(?) with a child(?) at the wheel?

A dozen or so people crowded around a family of stray cats, with at least three separate people taking photos.

Not sure how this one ended up with a default phone camera naming scheme: montage of stills of grocery workers, set to Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop (Believin'), with comic sans motivational overlays ("Our team is our greatest resource").

A joke about a giraffe lying on a pub floor, with missing/mangled punchline.

Blurry shot of an aquarium, anxiety about the bugs(?) on the glass, narration about the various magnifying lenses in front of the phone, interruption from offscreen: "are you talking to me?"
posted by nobody at 9:24 AM on November 30

Great stuff but I'm reminded of a reason I find NextDoor so annoying (or the videos thereon) - quite waving your phones around while filming video, people! Try to keep those cameras steadier; you're making me nauseous. And quit cutting away just as the action becomes interesting! So frustrating.

And the astronaut.io is more of the same, I guess, but those seem to be limited to/truncated at some arbitrary, too-short length; while these IMG_0001s can just go on and on, glad you can easily skip to the next one.
posted by Rash at 10:20 AM on November 30

So frustrating.

I call this "I am the great cinematographer!" disease. Symptom is most often people using whatever janky zoom feature their phone or camera has to grainily zoom in on some completely inane detail (which they rarely capture anyway) when the overall scene is the only thing remotely interesting about what they're filming anyway.

(My parents didn't die of this disease but were chronic sufferers.)
posted by maxwelton at 2:23 PM on November 30 [1 favorite]

I caught a scrap of a Social Distortion show, and a reveal in which a mom and dad break the news to their kids that the family is going to Disneyworld! ("EEEEEEEEEEeeee!!!!") Good stuff.
posted by Tuba Toothpaste at 4:42 PM on November 30

"The Dogs and a Visitor"

Sounds like a silent movie reel. Except it sure ain't silent. Good doggos!
posted by mazola at 2:45 PM on December 3