Hi. I'm going to assume you know who "Joel" is. If you do not, here's the basics: Joel is a Vinesauce member, which I think is one of two people; Joel and Vinny. He is the reason we know about 7 Grand Dad (which powers SilvaGunner, pretty much), balls over, the Memz virus... All that good stuff.

One of his most famous acts is Windows Destruction, a series where he heavily infects a system, then later on, destroys it with a Leurak-submitted Virus. It's a classic series with a lot of inside jokes, a lot of downloading shitty antiviruses, downloading malware, spyware, adware, every type of -ware under the sun... And it's all in a machine that can be deleted when he's done. It's well loved and spawned a lot of good moments, like Joel calling up one of the "registry fix" programs over the phone in a Kermit voice. Not really what you'd expect from somebody who does this kind of stuff, but still funny.

Joel is a genius, of course, this stuff is very funny, but he also isn't a professional. Among everything he does, he relies on random obscure google results, ads on websites, and music sites that are actually malicious. So of course, when he randomly stumbles upon some software, he accidently stumbles on stuff that's actually known, rather than malicious. Joel has done this a few times, and I've every once and a while recognized the programs he's making fun of.
So, fuck you, joel. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the software you looked at, that I knew by name.

XP Destruction

Not much really happens during the XP destruction. Most of the early portion of the video, since it's a very early era of this series, isn't very notable. He sets his XP theme to Classic with an ugly pink, listens to MIDIs of Doom, Slayer, and other metal bands, accidently stumbles upon somebody who turned the Bonzi Buddy domain into a porn website, and even installs Bonzi Buddy himself, a well known adware from the time.

Among that, he downloads random toolbars and other virus trash, but there's not really anything I recognize. He doesn't touch anything I recognize here, mostly just random "driver" updaters and the like. Let's move on.

Windows 7 Destruction

The fun really begins here. A story about when Joel was a child, pixelating a sample picture, a very sketchy download manager... The episode starts off right. And then, RegCleaner Pro.

RegCleaner Pro is a "registry cleaner". Why do I recognize it? My poor grandmother, who used it. My uncle too, he set that up on her computer and I think even bought a license for it... What a wonderful reminder. I didn't really use it myself, I thought it was mostly junk that's in my way, but just to let you know, My grandmother had it.
Joel also checks out DriverSupport, which I think was on my uncle's laptop, which I was gifted recently for personal use. Again, I didn't use it, but my older relatives did. I think it's a load of shit, it kept starting up on the laptop, so I killed it. It was kind of crap.
But if it makes you feel better, Joel gladly talks about a desktop stripper while he stares at their home page.

We browse around a little more with SmileyToolbars, free MIDIs, Softonic... Which I'm sorry to admit I used to use. I promise, I've been better recently.
And that's kind of where the notability ends. We recognized some junk I used in the past, some junk my relatives used, but nothing much notable. That's sad, let's move on.

Windows 8 Destruction

As a quick side note, I really like 8's design. Stay mad, it has good window frames.

We start off again with a cat desktop, more softonic, and a MP3 to MIDI solution... I've used it before, it's terrible. Don't do MIDI converters, kids. Unless if it's MIDI to Wav or something.
A little later, we get into 3D text screensavers (which I love playing with), vaporwave (which I want to take inspiration from Joel's steps), Nightcore... We browse around some MP3 sites, MS paint drawings (a classic if you were a kid!), PC Optimizer Pro (another software I recognize but didn't use), and the classic Kermit call I mentioned before. And on the downloads folder... uTorrent. Oh boy, we're going to talk quite a bit about that one.

uTorrent was a torrenting software my stepdad used. While I use qBittorrent to keep up with modern amenities, uTorrent takes me back because it's all my father uses, I think. uTorrent has infamous issues revolving around ads, among many other problems. They were accused of bundling crypto miners in their installers. For those reasons, uTorrent is an abhorrently software you should avoid unless on a very specific, outdated version (which is horrible advice practically, but if you want to avoid ads in uTorrent, sorry, you have to deal with it!). It's the rise and fall of a Giant, but what can you do? At least we have new, open source alternatives. A great place to continue.

Anyway, that was 8's destruction. Past here, we see more software we recognize.

Windows 10 Destruction

What a wonderful piece of spyware! Free sex for visting an antivirus webpage, being recommended to update to Windows 10, and the diet coke bonzi buddy herself, Cortona. I just want to say right off the bat that I miss that old Chrome UI...

Anyway, we discover ice chewing forums, random WikiHow tutorials, cash scams, and the lord Memz itself.
Unfortunately, nothing really entertaining... It's a typical destruction video. I don't recognize or have anything notable to say about the software here, so we move on again.

Windows Vista Destruction

Ignoring the fact that Solitaire bluescreens the computer (which is a VMWare issue, by the way), Joel downloads more software I don't recognize. Sketchy download.com stuff, malicious video games, a program claiming to be on Discovery Channel, and what would become one of my favorite memes. Protegent Antivirus 360 (not to be confused with the Furry Species, lol), an anti-virus that steals the main character of Super Why, flipping it's colors. They even made a rap for you and I's enjoyment!
Yeah, it should be obvious why Protegent is shit.

A man claims to look like Obama, and that's it. Not much software to recognize here.

i'm running out of things to say

Windows 98 Destruction

Windows 98 is not compatible with much anymore, so this is a very easy skip. It's mostly about playing with a speech recognition tool that preceeds Vista's speech to text, more foreign speedup tools, and an ice cream brand's flash game, bass boosted the fuck out of.
We move on again. Oops.

LONGHORN DESTRUCTION.

This is the destruction that made me want to write about this. I recognized software even I've heard of and tried. There's mentions of IOBit (which a tech developer I trust talked about), ClamWin... Lots of juicy stuff to talk about

Let's start with Superantispyware first. My stepfather used it. It's efficiency is what I can only describe as a watered down Malwarebytes -- It's detection was similar to MB, but also picking up Browser Cookies. If you see the problem, you see how junk the scans were. And how bloated.
Anyway, Joel downloads it thinking it's crap, and manages to crash Longhorn. Several times. The crashing is likely a Longhorn thing, everybody knows how unstable Longhorn really is. But as for the website looking like a scam... Yeah, I leave that to you to decide. My stepfather used the free version.

Next is ClamWin. Clam was a really good antivirus from the 90s and very early 2000s. With the rise of other antiviruses, and now Windows Defender, you really don't need another antivirus anymore. Clam was from an era where you needed to pack one, since Windows didn't come with one. That's why you needed one then, silly! Windows Defender is the only antivirus you need today, stop defending avast!

So we have a program my Dad used to use, a program that Danooct1 and many people in the 90s used... Glorious.

From some destruction...

Now, I can't remember what destruction this came from, since it only appears for a second. But for just a second, Treesize appears in one of the destruction videos. Talking a little bit about that -- It's not as malicious as it is. Joel probably got there from an ad or something, that's on the ad companies, not TreeSize.

TreeSize is a program that shows what the size of all of your files are, in a tree view. In this view, you can see what's taking up your space and hunt down stuff you don't need that's really massive. It's a great tool. Of course, WinDirStat (imo, inferior, it's super slow and as somebody who stores everything on an HDD, it's not really reliable if I need to do a check and don't have time to wait around) and WizTree (a better alternative that's miles faster, but people complain about it being closed source and begging you to donate, but it's better than nothing? the only other alterantives are a pay-to-use-forever model and a slow, free alternative, what do you want me to use?). TreeSize is an option too though, again being used by the tech guy I mentioned with IOBit. But of course, since Joel got there by some kind of ad, he just clicks and clicks his way into that software. All standard stuff.

Closing notes

Joel isn't really doing it to be malicious? I do recognize he's not a know-it-all, which is why I'm not trying to hold him accountable for shittalking any one software. This is just me trying to say I saw a program he downloaded, recognized it, and lit my face up like "Oh my god, I heard of that!". There's a good reason why a lot of those speedup tools got recognize by Joel time and time again.

But honestly? It's not Joel's fault that these softwares will get a certain rep because Joel downloaded it among a bunch of other junk. Modern ads are intrusive (which is a thought for another time), so it was bound that among malicious ads, maybe a gem or two would appear genuinely. In a world where you can't trust a single company or things appear just to get your attention or data, it was bound these apps would appear on a series like Joel's. That's just saying something about the modern web, we can't say much about that.

But at the least, when we watch these things, we can always point at the screen and say "my dad used that!". At least, hopefully you can. Not everybody will be a professional and know everything about the programs they use. Sometimes, they don't want to learn.

It's not their fault. To them, it's clumped with the same junk in the ads. No point trying to change that. Let people believe what they want.

Let's just be happy it appeared on a famous video at all.