Before billion-view vlogs, viral pranks, hours-long ASMR videos, crazy meme reviews, and of course, 10-minute apology videos, there was just a guy standing in front of some elephants. Yes, that was YouTube’s first-ever video. Now, more than two decades later, YouTube’s very first upload has found a new home.
You can now see YouTube’s first video in museum
The 19-second clip, featuring a dark-haired guy standing in front of the elephant’s enclosure, managed to quietly launch a digital revolution, showing the power of YouTube. Now, this video is actually being treated like a piece of internet history. It’s reminding us how far things have come since 2005, and how quickly the online culture upgraded. This video also reminded viewers about the quality and types of videos that were once uploaded on the global platform.
According to Dexerto, this video, titled “Me at the zoo”, was deeply shocking for YouTube fans around the world. It was uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2005. And it showcased YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. It has been 20 years since this video made its way online, and it has since deservedly garnered over 382 million views, 18 million likes, and literally millions of comments spanning all the way from April 2005 to February 2026.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is now honoring this piece of the internet. They have literally displayed a reconstruction of how the video looked back in 2005. It also showed how much YouTube has grown, including the glaring white hue, star-based system for rating, and the extremely wide description box. This is one of the grandest ways this video has been honored in the past 20 years.
