- (FBE) Today, we're gonna have you react
to your YouTube profile page. - Oh... no.
(laughing) Why?
- (FBE) But not in the way you might think.
- What does that mean?
I'm stressed.
- (FBE) We used a website called the Wayback Machine...
- No!
- (FBE) ...to find your old profile. - Why?!
- (FBE) We went to the very first page that was available to view
on the site, and we're gonna show you
your YouTube profile from years back at an earlier part in your career.
- I'm ready.
- Are you trying to embarrass us?
- Oh my god. I am scared.
- I don't even look at my videos from a month ago.
I hate re-watching myself, so this is gonna be really fun.
- (FBE) All right, here we go.
- This looks so much like Myspace.
Oh my god.
- Oh, I'm so scared. - Here we go.
Here we go.
- Oh, yeah!
- Oh. My. God.
Ew!!
- Okay, all right, all right, all right.
- Oh, wow!
- (gasping and screaming)
Yep, yep.
- Going to Alex's. - We can just skip mine.
We don't have to watch it. - Let's do it!
- We don't have to.
Whoa!
- I never even used YouTube when it was like this.
"F the haters." (laughing) - Whoa-ho-ho-ho.
- Oh god, "GETTOxFABxFOREVER."
Just let that sink in.
- Okay, definitely-- I definitely don't like my choice of background.
It's kind of like putting a bunch of pictures of yourself
all over your own wall.
I definitely overdid it a little bit with the pictures of me.
- Oh, yeah, there's the Pokemon.
I was 20.
And I was still in college.
Not quite a million views. Interesting.
I'm an "aspiring screen and voice actor based in NYC."
I was going to school in New York at the time.
"In my theatre school"-- in New York.
"I am a member of the Pokemon League, Swing Dance Society,
Quidditch Team, and Zombie Defense League.
Y'know, all the important clubs.
Thanks for watching, Brizzy."
- I was 22 when I first started in 2006.
Wow, and I had no idea what YouTube was.
I didn't figure out YouTube until years and years later.
- "I'm Lauren and I love to make things my own.
I'm all about DIYs, style, and thrifting,
which you can find much more about on my website."
- (laughing) - Oh no!
February 2nd, 2013. - That's crazy.
- I started my channel when I was 19. - Oh my gosh.
- Wah!
- "I'm very thankful for everyone who has subscribed to me,
but I don't care how many subscribers I have."
(chuckling) Not true.
"Like my videos and subscribe, cool.
Hate comments make my day."
(laughing) So sassy.
I'm 14 years old and that's all you need to know.
Who hurt me?
Why was I so sassy?
- It looks like I'm 15.
My thing says "moving images straight from the mind,"
which I feel like I actually was genuinely trying
to be deep when I wrote that.
It wasn't a joke.
- This is what we used to be.
Look, most subscribed of all time.
We used to be in the top 50. - Wow!
- That's top 100. Now there's millions.
- 2007, oh my gosh. You're old.
- Hey, whoa!
Okay, let's edit that part out.
- (cutesy voice) Oh, 16,000 subscribers.
How cute!
- We had 2,000 subscribers?
- Whoa, this is going to make me emotional.
- That's what it looked like?
Ugh. Oh man.
Hey, this was back when I had 11,000 subscribers?
Started from the bottom.
- Oh, cute AF!
- Oh, there was no banners back then?
- There was no banners, that's right,
because we only uploaded a picture-- - Look, 25,000 subscribers.
- I'm weirded out.
Oh my god, I had 2,000 subscribers.
(laughing)
- 237 subscribers and I had a background?
I was really reaching for the stars.
I had a merch page when I had 237 subscribers.
- Channel views, 28,000.
I had 1,600 subscribers.
And I had 76,000 views on a video.
I was popping off.
Channel views, 5 million.
Total upload views-- is that total video views total?
Like 30 million. That's crazy.
Now I think I have 200 million.
- 16 subscribers.
They're probably all my classmates.
My editing teacher in college had us all sign up
for a YouTube account and I thought it was just a video sharing platform
that we could watch each other's projects in class.
I didn't realize that it was an actual platform
for creativity.
- A lot of these videos is me and my friends,
me doing YouTube mad libs, a lot of skits that didn't make sense.
- So the first one had a talk about sex.
You know, it was an educational video.
- (cringing) - Oh no!
- Look at your brunette hair!
Hey, who's that? - What?
- Who's-- what's the boyfriend tag?
What does that mean? - (squeaking nervously)
- What?!
- This was back before there was clickbaiting.
Nobody really cared back then, so it was just like,
you know, just put, you know, put a thumbnail
that kind of related to the subject and, yeah,
that was pretty much it.
"How to start drug dealing" and the sad part
is there's a little girl in the thumbnail.
That's horrible!
YouTube impressions over here, and then it got Jenna Marbles
over there-- I did a mean Jenna Marbles impression.
(imitating Jenna) "Bye, Spider-Man! We'll see you next time.
This is Marbles right here. Bye!
Wah! Woo!" That's what she did.
That was Jenna Marbles back in the day.
- Oh, look-- - "Chevy See the USA submission."
- Yeah, we tried entering a contest and we didn't win.
(laughing)
- This is just taking me back to college
and just-- I can't.
I would make videos, clearly, just about anything
and everything.
Even ItsKingsleyBitch-- I had to change my handle
to Kingsley because "bitch" wasn't friendly,
so (laughing) I guess just taking me back to when
YouTube was just like, I don't know the word,
just less controlled.
- Latest activity, June 30th, 2012.
So this was, I guess, right as my first Pokémon video
was going viral.
Two weeks ago, "Voice All the Pokémon."
700,000 views.
- All of these are all sketches from our college sketch show,
which is so funny.
I should text my friends.
That's what this reminds me. (laughing)
- (FBE) So you have the channels you chose to feature over there.
- Oh, yes! We got TheFineBros in there!
Number one, woo!
See, I knew it.
And now we made it here. Can I get a--
I used to say that in my videos, I'll just be like,
"Can I get a witness?"
And then, you know, people-- I would never get a witness.
- I love that people could comment on the channel.
I feel like they can do that now, but I just don't know
where the hell it is.
- Comments... "Um, no offense, but are you a guy or a girl?"
I like that a lot.
- "So I like some of your videos and, like, yes, I used
the same song on two of mine, but, like, calm your shit.
Our videos aren't even close and I didn't copy yours.
Me and my friends are just trying to have fun."
Was I coming for this girl?
The subscribe button's awesome.
Way better. Way better.
'Cause now you go to YouTube and it's like
the video right there.
You don't know anything about the person.
- Ew! Back when you couldn't control the thumbnail.
Oh my god!
It's just bizarre to see how much the site has changed,
and then how much my channel is different.
- I feel like this is more like a social media.
- Yeah, this-- - It reminds me of Myspace.
- In 2006, this was not a page where you upload videos
to get views and get fans and get-- it wasn't a job.
This was a storage site.
This is where you put your videos 'cause you had
nowhere else to put them, so that somebody else could go
to that website and watch it.
- This is when you did stars instead of thumbs up or thumbs down.
I remember being a shady bitch, being like,
one star on people's videos.
It's too businessy now.
I feel like people are more concerned about the brand deals
and that kind of stuff rather than, "I spent an hour
on this weird music video, check it out."
- I think this was back when you could like videos,
and then it would show up in people's sub boxes
if they were subscribed to you and stuff.
That's how I got my first group of strangers watching my video.
It didn't go viral, but before the Pokémon video,
the Nickelodeon impressions one, Dom Fera liked it
so his subs came over and started commenting
and I was like, "I don't know any of these people!"
It didn't go viral, but it was strangers
commenting on my video, which was kind of a first.
- Things definitely used to be different,
but also more similar than I would've expected.
- Back then, YouTubers were funnier, just as a whole.
It wasn't so much about the algorithm.
It was more so just about somebody who's actually funny
and who has good content, so, yeah, yeah.
I miss that.
- I like the old ranking system.
I feel like it was much more easier for people that were new
to be seen, to know what videos were actually truly going viral.
Other than that, I'd have to say that I prefer the layout
the way it is now.
(laughing) I am disgusted at this old tile background.
It's just nostalgic.
It makes me feel like I'm a grandpa.
- This is when I lived in Toronto and I was so away from everything.
I had never talked to a YouTuber.
I don't think I talked to another YouTuber
until I had a million subscribers.
- I want to see-- - And then our likes?
(gasping)
- (FBE) Those are videos that you guys liked.
- "Hip Hop Juniors Recital"? - What is that?
- (FBE) Do you remember having friends on YouTube?
- I don't remember having friends.
I completely forgot about that.
I can't with this.
- (FBE) If you look up here too, there's also a link
to the Myspace page. - Oh my god.
Wait, should I click it?
Whoa! Whoa! (laughing)
No!
Why was my name Grace Anne Helbig?
Did someone else have Grace Helbig?
- Can we skip ahead? - Yeah.
- In life? - (FBE) Skip what?
- Oh, and date? Oh, you can click this?
Whoa.
- Now you have 54,000 subscribers.
Oh my gosh.
I used to have this background on Myspace!
2011. - What?
You wanna go up again?
Oh, look at this little upgrade.
Little upgrade, we got a little design going on.
- With "ass" super purple. - (laughing)
- Oh, here we go!
"Once upon a time in a small town in North Carolina,
a couple of high school kids made videos to make
their friends and family laugh.
Now those high school kids are college kids
chasing their dreams and making the best out of their lives.
M'kay! - (both) Bye!
- This is blowing my mind, all this craziness.
- After a while, I was like I might as well just make a channel
and then just try it out, start uploading, you know.
It's free, so might as well do it.
And then, yeah, I just started making videos.
- I always say Shane is one of the first people
I subscribed to, and there he is.
Chris Crocker, Qaadir, Britney-- nothing's changed.
- There are some people that will tweet me and be like,
"Hey, I've been following you since before you even hit 10K."
And I'm like, first of all, why?!
Second, oh my god, thank you.
They watched me grow up.
That's so cool.
- I remember the very end of my "Voice All the Pokémon" video,
I shout-out to my subscribers at the time,
and I'm like, "Thank you to my 552 subscribers.
You guys are amazing and all that jazz."
And every time I go back to it, I'm like, whoa!
(laughing)
Oh, crazy.
- (FBE) Would you ever want to talk to some of your original subscribers
from this era? - I would love to be able
to talk to those people.
People who have would seen my first four and the dubbed videos
before Pokémon.
And say thanks for being cool and, I don't know,
being a hipster and finding me before Pokémon went viral.
- Thank God we didn't watch any of the videos.
I'm gonna actually, on my own, go back privately
and re-watch these and be like, "I had no idea that these
were still on my page."
I haven't gone back that far.
So I will go make myself a cocktail and just enjoy 2006,
what I thought was funny.
- This is crazy to see how far we've come.
It's 2,000 subscribers and now we have two million.
I remember being at this state in our YouTube channel
and it was our transition-- - It was so hard.
- Yeah, it was our transition
from moving from Missouri to California,
and I remember trying to make friends and stuff,
and being really insecure about our YouTube channel.
- We met Caspar Lee and Connor Franta,
and they asked us how many subscribers we had,
and we said 2,000 and Connor was like--
he was like, "That's great."
He was like, "That's good for you guys.
Keep going."
He said, "I remember when I had that many."
And then he was like, "You guys just keep going at it
and don't stop."
We post every single Tuesday and we've never missed a Tuesday.
- It's just so weird!
- I'm trying not to get emotional right now.
- I miss the old YouTube.
I think we should all work together to make it the old YouTube again.
- YouTube has definitely come a long way,
not just my page with the rampant background,
but everything is a little more neat.
- I just wish I knew what I knew now back then.
- It was nice, looking back at it, just because, you know,
you see where you came from and see how you progressed
as a creator, and as a person, as a man.
- Seeing these photos and these thumbnails are triggering!
I just feel like I've come so far, but other than that,
you know, it was cute.
- It's very humbling to look back and see how hard
we were working back then and how hard we're still working now.
Back then, when we were like, when we were feeling
like giving up, that it paid off in the end.
- Thank you so much for watching this episode of YouTubers React.
- For more current content from all the YouTubers you just saw,
links in the description below. Check it out.
- (both) Bye!
- Hey guys, Ethan here from FBE.
Thank you so much for watching this episode of YouTubers React.
A big thanks to all the YouTubers who came in for this episode
and took a trip down memory lane with us.
But what should we do with the YouTubers next time?
Let us know in the comments.