Ive been looking through old youtube videos that I made when I was young and strange things are happening that I don’t remember

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Napsterblock2 on 2024-11-18 04:47:39+00:00.

When I was a kid, around twelve or thirteen I used to make youtube videos. I think It's somewhat of a universal experience for my generation to try to replicate what our favorite creators were doing with the vague allure of “making it big” as the carrot on the stick to keep us moving. In the same way the children of past generations aspired to be astronauts or adventurers, this is what we did. Somewhere along the line, most of us realized how slim our chances were of ever being noticed and quit. Some people deleted their videos and pushed them out of their mind; while others, myself included, forgot about them entirely leaving them to fall into the sea of thousands of other channels just like it, never to be seen again. 

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my parents for the weekend when my father offhandedly mentioned all the old youtube videos that I used to make and asked what happened to them. I might be misremembering this but I could swear I saw both my parents tense on the mention; but that would make too much sense. Before he asked about them they were totally gone from my mind, and when she did the memories came flooding back to me. I remembered all the hours I spent adding shitty transitions in Imovie and running around in my backyard acting out skits for the audience of none. I couldn't believe that such an important part of my childhood was just gone from my mind like that, so I decided to look at all my old videos to see what the young me was getting up to back then.

I found the login information for my old account scribbled into a notebook that was tucked away in the attic of my parents house and I took it home with me. When I got home the next week, I logged in to the old account and looked at the old videos. They were all still public after all these years, but still maintained the same lack of engagement I remember being sad about so many years ago. I went back to the oldest video and started watching it. It was an old video of me playing in my yard titled “Super Spies”. The video started with a bad title that read the name of the video that then cut to me in my yard. There was a black and white filter over the whole video that I'm pretty sure I used when I recorded the raw footage. I acted out a skit where I was all the characters, I never had any friends or siblings to make these videos with and my parents refused to be a part of them. I acted out what I thought an old detective movie looked like; a man (played by me but with a hat) came in and asked me to help find his missing brother. The entire hour and a half long odyssey of a skit took place entirely in the office which was just my yard and consisted of this detective somehow figuring out that my client murdered his brother to give himself sympathy points to help him win the election for mayor. It was a cute video that I remember some parts of making. I somehow sat through the entire thing, I was kinda impressed by my own improv skills at such a young age.

 After that, I went on to the next oldest video, called “Minecraft”. In this video which was a much more approachable fifteen minutes was my playing Minecraft pocket edition on my mother’s phone. I didn't know that you could play minecraft on a computer at the time, or at least that's why I assumed I was using a laptop to record a phone screen in some glare filled disaster of a video because I had zero memory of making any videos about video games. I started a new world and started to play. I built a small wooden box with a fence post for a window and stayed the night there. I waited for the entire night with zero commentary at all, just my own breathing into the microphone. When the morning came, I went mining for the rest of the video; from the way I was talking it looked like I was making a tutorial for how to play the game. At one point I said something that I found a little strange. I said that I would soon figure out how to play multiplayer and I would be able to play with my best friend Tanner. I found it a little cute that I didn't know that there was no multiplayer yet; but I found it strange because I don't remember ever knowing anybody named Tanner, and I wouldn't have had a best friend because when I was a kid I didn't have any friends. When I was watching all of these videos it was pretty late at night but that one line inspired me to dig deeper and find out who this Tanner was, and I wouldn't have to look much deeper to do so.

I was going to go to bed, but the next video piqued my curiosity; It was titled “Lego with Tanner”, and so I had to press on. This video was another gauntlet to get through, clocking in at an hour, fifteen for length, and it didn't make up for it with entertainment value. In this video, I was sitting in my room playing with Lego. The camera was looking at a base plate where the Figures were and my hands were seen playing with the pieces. But there was also another set of hands that I assumed belonged to Tanner, whoever he was. We both acted out some skits that we were making up as we went along, each voicing our own characters. I used my regular voice for my character but the other child used an exaggerated voice the whole time. I thought about how much dedication it took to keep it up for that Long. We were each trying to make our own character the coolest one, despite the efforts of the other one. It was a ridiculous video full of new powers made up on the spot and impossible challenges. I didn't care much for the video, I only really wanted to find out more about this kid. I still don't remember any of this happening, which wouldn't be a problem if I didn't remember clearly that I had absolutely no friends when I was young. It might seem sad but that's besides the point, I never had any friends and I was hated by anyone I tried to befriend. So who was this kid? At this point, it was late and I was tired; I decided to go to bed and watch more of these videos the next day.

I wracked my brain all through the next day, trying to remember there being anyone from my childhood who didn't hate me, and found nothing. At one point I texted my mother to ask her if I had any friends when I was young, she said that she couldn't remember me ever having friends. She asked why and I told her that I had been looking through the old videos that I made and In them, I was with another kid my age. She seemed to get upset with me after that and told me to stop using my phone when I should be working; she didn't reply when I told her I was on my lunch break.

When I got home later that day I tried to call my mother to no avail, so I went and started to watch the next video. This one was titled “The Battle”. It was three hours long, (a new record for length) and consisted of me and Tanner acting out a fight scene in my yard. This video was particularly momentous because it was the first time I was able to see tanner fully. He was a regular looking kid, darker skin then my own and black hair that was spiked up with an ungodly amount of hair product. Seeing his face and hearing his real voice continued to not ring any bells. I don't know why but  felt a strange feeling seeing him so close to me; I had no reason 

 In this video we were acting out a fight between two characters that we made up. It was less of a skit and more of the both of us play-fighting in my backyard. It made me happy however, to see my young self happy, most of my memories from my childhood were not as nice so it was good to see that It wasn't all bad. One thing stuck out to me that I still can't get out of my head as I write this, Tanner was so nice to me. Every time he hit me a little too hard he would ask if I was okay and I don't know why but it touched me. I'll spare you readers any trauma dumping, but I was never liked much and I still don't have any friends. It made me really happy to see someone being nice to me, even if I still don't remember it. I don't know why I can't remember this and It makes me mad that I can't, I deserve to have happy memories too, don't I?

After the video ended, I noticed that my eyes had been a little bit. I wiped my eyes and then saw that I missed a call from my mother, how focused must I have been on that video. I called her back and she answered. I greeted her but she started on something immediately. She seemed angry. She said that she had been thinking and that she didn't want videos of her child to be on the internet, she wanted me to delete them. I told her that I would unlist them and explained what that meant to her. She refused to accept that and started yelling at me for not doing what she said. She continued to berate me and told me to delete them, she wanted them gone and said she didn't want anybody to see them, not even me for some reason. I told her I deleted them and that satisfied her, I tried to turn the conversation around and ask her how she had been doing, but she hung up abruptly without an answer. I obviously didn't delete the videos, my parents have never been very good with technology and wouldn't know if I did or didn't. I unlisted all of the videos just in case she searched for them. This is nothing special for her but I got some similar feeling to when I saw the other boy in the video, that strange feeling that I was in immense danger.

Today was a rough day, I don't want to watch more of the videos. I do but It would just take so much energy to do so, energy I don't have. I know I would feel even more like shit if I did nothing to unravel this mystery, so I'm writing this. I will see if you know anything, I don't know what you could know but anything more than I do would do.