You may have heard a lot about "Sir Fedora" over the last few days. If you haven't, he's the kid whose excitability after having received a single "like" on one of his YouTube videos made him a viral sensation when it was posted on the front page of Reddit. It's a sweet video and one of the not too uncommon examples of Reddit's ability to perform a collective, random act of kindness.
The emergence of a new meme -- a status to which Sir Fedora has already been reduced/elevated (depending on how you feel about internet fame) -- is interesting, but perhaps more interesting is the collective of YouTube explorers that have now emerged following his exposure. After Reddit user dragonboltz submitted the video, many people left comments querying how he found something so obscure. "It's so hard finding original content on YouTube lately," explained dragonboltz in a comment on his own Reddit post. "Most [of] the big channels have a kind of monopoly now. It is very difficult for new people to gain views/subs." So in search of the little guys, dragonboltz tirelessly browses by "date uploaded" or simply searches for "vlog" or a random string of numbers. "It lets me find unheard of YouTubers with no views or subscribers."
This backlash against certain content creators' alleged monopoly over the YouTube community is something we've covered in-depth before. "Almost all big Youtubers [are] selling out and being forced to copy each-other and use the PewDiePie/Tobuscus/Smosh model and video style," despairs dragoboltz. "When was the last time we saw anything original out of the big channels?"
To combat this, and in response to high demand from other users of Reddit, dragonboltz created a separate subreddit called "YouTube Explorers" to showcase the internet's unwatched videos.
Inspired, Wired.co.uk had a stab at finding some of our own obscure gems, which turned out to be a much more enjoyable experience than we anticipated. Here are some of our favourites.
We don't know what this is or why it exists. The name "tmpqjyiOb" gives no clues and the description field is left blank. We also appear to be the video's first viewer. The really weird thing however, is there are over 68,000 similar videos -- each one beeps, has a series of floating blue and red bars and is exactly 11 seconds long. What could it mean? Leave a comment if you think you might know.
So this is basically Sir Fedora, except with cookies. This young man is incredibly excited to discover his channel has had over 400 hundred views in total and would love it if you could click the thumbs up and subscribe. "I like cookies. Really, I like cookies.
Do you like cookies? Of course you do! Who doesn't like cookies?" the man has a point.
Unlike the beeping bars, which are just strange, this video seems more true to dragonboltz's original vision for his YouTube explorers: "I think if there's anything that I want people to take from this is that all over the world, be it online or real life, there are people reaching out and trying to find [a] connection with others. These people sometimes feel isolated, or lonely and something as easy and simple as a smile, or even a Youtube Like can completely brighten their day, and then they are more likely to do the same to others. The potential cause and effect chain from one good deed can be huge, as we've already seen with Sir Fedora." Go on, give him a like.
How to get the Rescue Safari app
We're back in weird territory again. Are you having trouble downloading the Rescue Safari app? Relax. Sang Jun has provided some clear instructions, "oh no The Fluffs Friends Rescue™ has been deleted It crash might be having a problem sorry you hate the seen ever once over Again you hate the forgot you here what the Dang I hate 2010...".
If that's not clear enough, the video demonstration will surely help.
If you fancy a go yourself check out the new subreddit, or the more established DeepIntoYouTube for inspiration and to spread a little internet love. Be warned though, it can be a scary, peculiar and unsavoury world out there.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK