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You have no chance to survive make your time.

2024-09-25 · story · John · 5:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion

John recalls that the first YouTube video he saw, in 2005, was the All Your Base Are Belong to Us meme video, traces it from Zero Wing's 1991 mistranslation through forum memes and a 2000 song, and argues it shows collaborative creation that capitalism can't capture; he finds meaning in 'make your time', links that spirit to Pizzamas and says he still loves the internet.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Reply to Hank's celebrity video; John's first YouTube video, shown by Carlos at Booklist in 2005

  • ★★ John loved Hank's video about the only time Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alex Trebek, George Clooney and Brad Pitt appeared together; it reminded him of the first YouTube video he saw. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ John sets the scene: mid-2005 at the American Library Association in Chicago; Looking for Alaska had just been published and he was a production editor at Booklist. — 00:00:00 · Chicago (city), Looking for Alaska (novel), United States
  • ★★★ His friend Carlos came to his desk to show him YouTube, and John's first YouTube video was All Your Base Are Belong to Us, a collection of memes set to music. — 00:00:30 · YouTube, All your base are belong to us

00:00:52 — Zero Wing's mistranslation, early meme culture, Something Awful memes, the 2000 song and the music video

  • ★★ The story starts in 1991, when the Japanese video game Zero Wing was imported to the United States with truly terrible translation. — 00:00:52 · United States, All your base are belong to us
  • ★★ In the game's intro the villain, a group called Cats, surprise-attacks the heroes and delivers the mistranslated lines that became the meme. — 00:00:52
  • ★★ The intro was posted on web forums in the 90s and became sort of semi-viral. — 00:01:22
  • ★★ As Hank pointed out, meme culture 25 years ago was vastly different: the internet was mostly text, static images and GIFs, while today asking for Pizzamas memes brings a cornucopia. — 00:01:22 · Pizzamas
  • ★★ Back then photographic memes were quite rare because they needed Photoshop or other editing software. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ Chasing internet points, people posted All Your Base memes, especially on the Something Awful forums, putting the phrase on iconic contemporary photos. — 00:02:05 · All your base are belong to us
  • ★★ In 2000 a band released a song mixing the game music with a propulsive beat and a synthy voice. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ People then made a music video of the song from Zero Wing clips and the Something Awful memes; that was the first video John saw on YouTube. — 00:02:34 · YouTube
  • ★★ In 2005 John loved the density of the jokes: he kept re-watching to appreciate each individual meme. — 00:02:34 · All your base are belong to us

00:03:20 — Why John loves it more now: collaboration capitalism can't capture, and the meaning of the words

  • ★★★ John has come to love it more as an extensive collaboration: online there are still moments capitalism can't capture, when people mash up many people's work across time and space into something better than anyone could make alone. — 00:03:20 · capitalism
  • ★★★ Even when the intellectual property can't be wholly owned or monetized, people will still make things together, which John finds lovely. — 00:03:50
  • ★★★ John says everyone knows the feeling the words name: the rug pulled out from under you, discovering that what you thought was your life and world is not yours. — 00:03:50 · All your base are belong to us

  • ★★★ John calls 'you have no chance to survive, make your time' the truest, most beautiful statement: time is not only had or spent but made, for ourselves and each other, knowing it is finite. — 00:04:19

    “time isn't only something we have or something we spend, it's something we make”

  • ★ John finds the mistranslated line lovely in a way no direct translation could have been. — 00:04:19

00:04:48 — Not nostalgia: collaborative projects like Pizzamas, and still loving the internet; sign-off

  • ★★ John doesn't want to be overly nostalgic: the old internet had all today's problems on a smaller scale, and today's rate of creative production is astounding. — 00:04:48
  • ★★ Weird, decade-spanning collaborative online projects are John's jam, so Pizzamas, an annual fever dream of too many videos and merch for charity, is his ultimate jam. (playful) — 00:04:48 · Pizzamas
  • ★★★ In spite of it all, John loves the internet, where we have no chance to survive but still make our time. — 00:05:17

In the description and comments

Humor (significant)

  • The villain group in Zero Wing is named Cats. — 00:00:52

    “sadly not composed of actual cats”

  • John relishes the game's mangled closing line. — 00:01:22

    “which is maybe my favorite run-on sentence in the history of the English language”

  • Asking for Pizzamas memes still yields plenty online. — 00:01:22

    “even on a dying website like Twitter”

  • After earnestly interpreting the line, John admits it is also funny. — 00:04:19

    “especially now that someone has spent several minutes explaining the joke to you”

  • John sums up what Pizzamas is. — 00:04:48

    “an annual fever dream where we make too many videos and sell gibbets for your crocs”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: All your base are belong to us · Internet

Also: People: Alex Trebek · Brad Pitt · Carlos · George Clooney · Sarah Michelle Gellar

Projects: Pizzamas

Works: Looking for Alaska (novel) · Zero Wing

Organizations: American Library Association · Booklist · Something Awful · Twitter · YouTube

Concepts: capitalism · cumulative culture · English language · intellectual property · Internet meme · nostalgia

Places: Chicago (city) · United States

Characters: CATS

Products: Adobe Photoshop

Only in the description or credits: The Laziest Men on Mars

Also centred on Internet: Watermelon Internet Trolls · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism · 19 Ways to Not Suck on the Internet · Is YouTube Good for Humanity? · Logging Off · History Is Happening

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