The streaming giant YouTube would set things right these days. “Me at the zoo” is still the oldest YouTube video to circulate as a new one due to a bug. However, now the company is fixing the problem according to reports.
‘Me at The Zoo’ is the oldest YouTube video
Let’s get into the story of what actually happened. “Me at the zoo” is one of the old videos uploaded on April 23, 2005. The video actually shows YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, which is undoubtedly an important piece of internet history. It is of great significance as it marks the oldest video on one of the most influential video services in the world. However, a YouTube video went viral earlier on Thursday which had an even earlier upload date: April 5, 2005.
It was titled “Welcome to YouTube!!!”. It’s basically the 48-second video that looks like something that could have been used to test a mid-century video website. It only has one image: a low-resolution image with a YouTube logo that says “Welcome to YouTube!!!!”. The notable point here is that it’s credited to Chad, Steve, and Jawed, which is probably a reference to co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. In addition, the video is supported by Van Halen’s iconic song ‘Jump’.
The fact is, if you watch the (now unlisted) video on the YouTube website, you’ll see some suspicious red flags. For example, you may have noticed the “Live chat is disabled for this premiere” message below the video. Let me tell you that at the premieres, people could pre-schedule videos to play at a specific time using features like live chat, and that was definitely not a thing on YouTube back in 2005. Furthermore, you could also see that the video was uploaded by a mysterious account named enn who joined YouTube in September 2005. It is quite obvious that time reflects months after this supposed earliest video was posted to the site. The account goes on to claim that the join date was actually “reset during a database update”.
YouTube spokesperson Kimberly Taylor stated:
“We are aware of an issue that caused the upload date of this video to change and we are working on a fix. Rest assured, the oldest video on YouTube will always be ‘Me at the Zoo’ uploaded on April 23, 2005 by one of our co-founders and helped kickstart more than 17 years of creativity on YouTube.”
Some reports claim that the uploader has been contacted on Discord for comment, but they don’t accept friend requests or DMs from people who aren’t their friends yet. So let’s wait and see what comes next. Stay tuned!!
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