By Jack Haigh
on Tue Apr 14 2020
Something I’ve been toying around with for a while is documenting my journey online over the last decade and a half. I’m hoping to do it a little justice here in giving a little context and background into what it was like to be producing videos online as an eleven year old in the early days of YouTube, all the way up to entering university.
YouTube was a really interesting space in the mid-2000s. Particularly in Ireland. I specifically remember first being exposed to the realm of ‘online video’ when going onto Google Videos and watching the Karate Cow video.
Now, for a 10 year old child on dial-up, this was a big deal. I would hook our family laptop up to the phone line (god forbid someone had to use the phone), and wait a half hour for a 2 minute video to load. Something that you don’t get now is the lead up to loading the video and then the outcome of watching it and getting a good laugh. After this, along came classics such as Keyboard Cat, Evolution of Dance, Canon Rock, & Dramatic Chipmunk. If you don’t recognise these, please spend a little time to watch them. Internet. Gold.
Around 2006-2007, I signed up to YouTube. This was around the time Google purchased it. A lot of my time was spent repeatedly watching some of the videos mentioned above. In hindsight, it’s oddly satisfying and ageing to know that I was on the YouTube Box while some of the most historic online videos were being published.
Here comes the ‘when suddenly, on that fateful day‘ moment…
It was around this time that Cory Williams (SMPFilms) & Ryan Higa (NigaHiga) came up. A lot, and on quite a regular basis. This was my first run in with a career ‘YouTuber’. It kind of clicked that, ‘wait, you can actually do something with this platform, and these guys are doing it!’. I didn’t have a camera, I didn’t have content, but I wanted a bit of that.
So I did what I could.. I edited together the Windows Vista Sample Videos. You know? Those annoying ones that take a bit of space in your Videos folder. It was pretty easy to figure out in Movie Maker, and I got a fun result from it. I likely uploaded it at the time with some sort of comical punchline at the end. Though what comedy can anyone truly derive from marrying together a video of a jellyfish and car scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
That all being said, my first sense of YouTube fame was when I downloaded a trailer for the Eragon film and bundled it together with some DragonHeart footage and called it a sequel trailer for the cancelled sequel, Eldest. Due to the popularity of Eragon at the time, it triggered around 15,000 views in the first couple of months. Yes. I was a ‘Fan Trailer’ person for a while.
Something I was beginning to find around this time, as well as my growing interest in Web Development and Coding (post coming soon), was my general curiosity and learning with what I was doing on our little family Gateway Laptop. I would learn something, or come across a problem and find an article on how to resolve it and go, ‘well it would have been super handy if I had a video to watch of something going through this’. In tandem with this, I was also watching Technology YouTubers like Mark Watson (SoldierKnowsBest), Jon Rettinger (Jon4Lakers) & Chris Pirillo (LockerGnome).
So, I downloaded Camtasia and started to record my own tech tutorials. Real simple stuff. ‘How to Make a Widescreen Video for YouTube’ (yup, this was topical at the time), ‘How to get a Mac Dock on PC’ etc.
It was also around this time that I had started secondary school and had gotten pally with a friend of mine Ultan Casey, who was also doing the same thing. He had a Mac at the time, and while I was doing Windows based videos, we decided to team up and create TheCompuGeeks. The idea here being that we would both upload Windows & Mac based tutorials for our viewers. You can see a pretty old Marques Brownlee video where he gave us a neat little shout out. This actually tied us over for a good few years, and we continued to upload content to it on a regular basis, right up until 2012. It was in this time we also achieved a place on the YouTube Partner Program. We actually started to make money from making videos. It was pocket money, even more-so when we had to divide it between the two of us. This didn’t really matter though. We were making money.
While on YouTube, we were quite regularly on the top lists for Irish YouTubers. As with today, it was nearly impossible to break into the top lists as the likes of Vevo, Warner Brothers & IGN always get the most traffic. What I loved during this time though was the beginnings of an online community in Ireland. We would watch from afar as we saw YouTube Live bring together a lot of our favourite American YouTubers, likewise when we saw VidCon Meetups with Philip DeFranco, Charles Trippy & ShayCarl being in the same videos.
A shorter stint across the pond, we also saw the rise of Charlie McDonnell (CharlieIsSoCoolLike) & Alex Day (Nerimon), specifically when they teamed up to make a Doctor Who tribute band.
So where did that leave us on this little Island? Well there were a few of us, but not a Community of big hitters. It was something that was pretty important to me to be able to say ‘hey, we can just be as good as the rest of them if we bring our audiences together’. Early signs of this was when Ultan and I attended a meetup with Anna and Jonathan Saccone-Joly (LeFloofTV) in a little Cafe in Cork City. There were around 10 of us there, just chatting and comparing video ideas and chatting about this very same topic. It was really great to see and meet other likeminded people. What really proved things though was when a few years later Philip DeFranco packed out the Dublin Convention Center. Job Done. YouTube was in Ireland.
As I mentioned above, I moved away from YouTubing very shortly before starting University in Limerick. That being said, it opened me up to some really interesting career opportunities and experiences. What is interesting, however is the changing attitude around YouTube and what it means to be on that platform. At the beginning it was very much shunned. The phrase ‘Oh I make videos on the internet’ was usually met with a ‘Huh? That’s cute, you little ten year old’. Over the years it was still the same, right up until University. Particularly when you mention that you spent most of your childhood locked up in your room making videos for strangers. Recently though this has changed alongside the changing attitude towards the Internet, and what it means to be using it as a revenue stream.
For now though, TheCompuGeeks is still there. Some guy in India decided to hack us a couple of years back and change the branding, and we no longer have access to it. The videos are still there, which is the most important thing to me, and a small win also is that the stats are intact. We’re currently working on a way to regain access to this.
Out of all of our videos, we’ve just over 1 million views. #Win
This is the first of a three part series where I discuss a little about myself and my background as an digital content producer in the remote countryside of West Cork.If you’re interested in seeing more, or finding out a little more about this particular topic, feel free to reach out to me!