

Having not watched any of it in well over a decade, I can safely say that the content contained within those tapes is unequivocally shit.Īll of a sudden you're everywhere and it's out of your control.
AAAH FUCK I CANT BELIEVE YOUVE DONE THIS FULL
I still have a box full of VHS-C tapes kicking around somewhere, which can only be viewed on one of those absolutely insane VHS adapters. Inspired by the likes of Jackass and Bam Margera’s CKY movies, our impressionable young selves set about ignoring all relevant safety warnings, hurling ourselves out of trees, riding scooters into curbs, and racing tyres down hills on skateboards.Īt the age of 14 or so, I had envisaged cutting the footage into a chaotic feature-length video of “stunts.” I’d probably have soundtracked it with music from the Tony Hawk games, alongside countless other homemade skate videos people made circa 2003 that probably featured a mix of Ace of Spades or Guerilla Radio. It began in mid-2003, when myself and a group of friends would have been in our early teens.


Having spent the best part of my school years filming stupid skits with mates instead of studying, there was something semi-appealing about the prospect of being able to put videos online to share with friends. To understand why, it’s useful to remember that the internet in 2007 was, for better or worse, a very different place. In recent years I’ve come to appreciate and even enjoy its bizarre status as an enduring piece of internet history, but my relationship with the clip in the decade that followed its inexorable rise hasn’t always been easy. Who was the guy who got punched? Why did he get punched? Who punched him? What was he thinking? Why did he react that way? Why did he leave YouTube? It’s been nearly 14 years since I uploaded the original video and to this day it still prompts questions.
