I imagine that 10-20 years from now, there will be a lot more young adults bonding over vague memories of videos that they loved when little, but that they can't find a shred of anymore. Creators will have risen and fallen through the years. Some will shut down their channels and retire, others will be demonetized, and yet more will simply disappear without a trace. There won't be a backlog of every kids' video on YouTube; it's not like PBS or Nickelodeon, where popular shows might get officially archived. Instead, people will be left vaguely describing plots they can't fully remember, all the while getting a weird look from those who don't know what they're talking about. They may even come to think, "Maybe I just dreamed it all up?" and give up on their search for nostalgic connection.

Until the day one person finds an old screenshot from whatever the show was and shares it. That's when everyone will flip out because, Holy shit, that's it! That's the show! At which point, they will collectively and slowly realize just how messed up the show actually was.

[–] skyspydude1@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm 29 and this is already the case. A lot of the early 2000s internet is already getting hard to find, and even a lot of early YouTube feels like it's been scrubbed clean, or had stuff auto-muted/removed due to copyright that drastically affects the content. Not to mention all the flash animations and whatnot that might not have made it to somewhere as big as Newgrounds. There's a lot of stuff I remember watching that seems to be utterly lost

[–] QueenHawlSera@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Early 2000's internet was best internet