My opinion on YouTube's layout history as a whole + some talk about my experience on the internet during the 2000s.

About YouTube

As someone who's been visiting youtube since 2006, the first major change youtube made that mildly upset me was in 2010 when the video player became wider and white, which was also around the time the nicktoons logo changed to just the word nicktoons in all lowercase letters (Gross)

The first 'full layout' change that actually made me extremely upset was when cosmic panda came out and then pretty much every layout change after that has just gotten gradually worse and worse especially with the removal of the old related videos algorithm, channel wallpapers, annotations and of course the removal of the dislike count.

After every update since december 2011, I found myself constantly saying "It can't get worse than this" and then being proven wrong again and again.

I'm to the point where I really miss layouts that I HATED when they first came out and I bet my very soul that in a few years, people are going to be trying to 'get the 2023 layout back' and that honestly just saddens me. Personally if you ask me what era of youtube I think was peak youtube, I'd say 2010-2011 was peak youtube. If anyone reading this wasn't around on youtube during that era then we definitely don't need to debate about it (browsing the wayback machine or using remake sites such as bitview, vidlii, wevidi, utue, yt2009, or subrocks doesn't count as having the true experience of using old youtube)

Also don't get me wrong. The layouts from 2012-2016 are LEAGUES better than the recent layouts and especially better than today's layout. However I'll still personally consider 2010-2011 as peak youtube. This is just my honest opinion as someone who's been there since pretty much the very beginning and I won't change my opinion for anyone.

About the internet during the 2000s

I got my first computer in 2005 when I was just 6 years old. It was an HP Pavillion with Windows XP installed onto it. I first was interested in paint, pinball and minesweeper but after we got broadband internet, my life changed forever.

I was introduced to google, yahoo, ask jeeves, gamesgames, y3, maxgames, etc.
During this time I was 7 years old and would often look up games and pictures of cats and other stuff but I would also pick up a hobby.
Any time I would have a question about anything that a normal kid would ask their parents, I'd instead ask google. My questions varied from "why is the sky blue" all the way to "why are good things good and bad things bad" and pretty much any question you'd find on a vsauce video title. 

I didn't only want to find the answers but I also wanted to research more on why the answers were what they were. My brain was like a sponge soaking up tons of information about all kinds of things. It made me one of the most intelligent children in my entire elementary school although my personality was quite strange and I was very antisocial. 

Eventually though I found YouTube and whenever that happened was when I realized "hey.. I don't have to wait for something interesting to show on tv. I can just search for things to watch any time I want on youtube" (I know doing this on tv is normal nowadays but during the 2000s it was pretty unheard of especially for children so YouTube was like this amazing gift for me to use.) 

The kind of videos I would watch were based on the things that interested me during that time and what interested me the most were ninjas, ghosts, cats, ufos, and space.
I would watch parkour videos, ghost sightings, bigfoot sightings, ufo sightings, alien abduction stories, science stuff like outerspace and how planets and stars form, mythbusters clips, conspiracy theories, etc.

Another thing that I was REALLY obsessed with as a child online during the 2000s was google earth and google maps. I was addicted to satellite imagery and streetview. It fascinated me more than anything else for some reason. I spent hours a day for weeks, months, and even years trying to find a way to get live real time satellite imagery of my house (I was too young to realize that's not possible lol) but I kept at it for so long before eventually giving up.

How it felt to browse YouTube in the 2000s

Well first of all it was NOTHING like today and I don't just mean the layout.
During that time, you could find so many strange and obscure videos that make todays "strange and obscure" content seem like normal every day stuff.

Going down a youtube rabbithole in the 2000s was actually a TRIP...
You could be watching a cat video and then see a related video about a demon cat and then click on that and then see a related video about real demon sightings and then it becomes ghost sightings, alien sightings, alien theories, illuminati theories, etc. It was THAT easy to fall down a rabbit hole back then.

As for the strange and obscure videos? I remember a video of a baby playing with a cobra (yes it was real) and I also remember a video of a guy stretching his lower lip over his nose easily (yes it was real) and I also remember lots of clips of weird creatures found washed up on beaches and many many more weird videos that I honestly can't even describe. Like I said, it was trip.

The best part that I remember of how the related videos algorithm worked though was that each video had their own set of related videos that stayed the same for years and so it was very easy to remember paths that you took to find videos if you forgot the titles and didn't have an account and that was absolutely amazing and I miss it dearly.

Also because each video had their own set of related videos rather than youtube recommending garbage to you, browsing youtube felt like a treasure hunt and the treasure was endless. You'd come across very interesting and strange content that felt special to you because it would often be so obscure that almost no one else knew about the content other than you.

The 2000s was a really REALLY great time to use the internet and today's internet doesn't even compare. Sure there are lots more websites today and better technology but the internet of the 2000s was a time of uncharted territories and digital adventures that made every click feel like a journey into the unknown and because of that, I'll forever miss it...