A closer look
YouTube was originally conceived in 2005 as a video-based dating website named Tune In Hook Up, designed to let singles upload clips of themselves talking about their hobbies to attract potential partners. The founders even desperately offered women on Craigslist twenty dollars to upload videos of themselves to the platform, but literally nobody took them up on the offer. Faced with complete failure in the romantic matchmaking space, they quickly pivoted to letting people upload whatever random videos they wanted, leading directly to the very first upload titled Me at the zoo. It is frankly hilarious that the colossal platform now dictating global pop culture, generating billions in ad revenue, and hosting an endless sea of unboxing videos began as a deeply pathetic attempt to secure dates for isolated tech bros. We narrowly avoided a universe where you had to swipe left on a buffering video of a guy awkwardly holding a fish
