01
Shoes
“Oh my God, shoes.” One character’s full-volume footwear emergency became early YouTube vocabulary.
Archive score96
Internet archive / 2006
Internet moments from 2006
Backdrop
The Internet in 2006
Year reference
The twttr concept sketchA tiny status box foreshadowed real-time social media.
Source: Jack Dorsey via Wikimedia Commons- Twitter launched with a 140-character constraint that made live reaction, running jokes, and link-sharing feel native to the web.
- YouTube’s early viral-video era was turning creators and accidental clips into shared reference points.
Follow the thread
Trails from 2006
Archive order
Archive picks
02
Evolution of Dance
A six-minute routine became one of YouTube’s first enormous stars.
Archive score95
03
OK Go — Here It Goes Again
Four people, eight treadmills, and choreography that grows funnier as the risks become clearer.
Archive score95
04
Animator vs. Animation
A stick figure fought its animator using the tools of the Flash interface.
Archive score94
05
Diet Coke + Mentos
One hundred and one bottles, five hundred Mentos, and a backyard fountain that inspired widespread soda-and-candy experiments.
Archive score93
06
Natalie Raps
Natalie Portman showed up for an interview and immediately made it everybody’s problem.
Archive score93
07
Will It Blend?
A lab-coated blender founder built a series around a simple question: will it blend?
Archive score91
08
Laser Cats
The effects were bad, the cats shot lasers, and that was apparently enough for a franchise.
Archive score91
09
Bo Burnham’s My Whole Family...
An early creator-controlled upload reveals the comedy voice before it became a larger internet rabbit hole.
Archive score90
010
Tales of Mere Existence: Procrastination
Lev had a lot to get done, which naturally required buying cereal, oiling a chair, and watching The Twilight Zone.
Archive score90
011
Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager
Darth Vader’s less imposing younger brother runs the day shift at a grocery store.
Archive score89
012
4chanDuckroll
A link promised something exciting and delivered a duck on wooden wheels.
Archive score89
013
Metal Gear Awesome
Arin Hanson compressed Metal Gear’s stealth drama into loud voices, rough drawings, and escalating nonsense.
Archive score89
014
lonelygirl15
A bedroom vlog asked early YouTube viewers to decide whether they were watching a real teenager or a carefully built fiction.
Archive score88
015
Sneezing Baby Panda
A baby panda sneezes; its mother jolts backward; eighteen seconds became a complete comic scene.
Archive score88
016
Dick in a Box
A velvet-suited R&B ballad turns a very bad holiday gift into an aggressively sincere love-song premise.
Archive score87