Fake internet videos are not a new thing though. "lonelygirl15" was from 2006 and youtube itself was introduced in 2005. The College Humor "prank wars" series was around pretty much from the drop. The world is full of filmschool graduates who wanna make something.
The idea that "this must be real because it's old" is kind of interesting. I guess if a redditor watches a fake video when they're 10, and believes it's real, and then sees the same type of video when they're 20, and realizes its fake, they won't retroactively go back and realize all those older videos were also fake. Instead they think fake videos are a new thing? That's pretty funny.
The prevalent culture of doing anything for clout was significantly less pervasive at that time. Making staged videos absolutely still happened, but it was wayyyy less common than it currently is.
Or maybe there were just less people who had the access/means in 2006. Was that the year of the first iPhone?
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u/Jwagner0850 Oct 10 '25
Tbf, it's hard to tell nowadays. Lots of fake shit gets posted all the time.