The Egyptians believed the most horrible thing was to be forgotten by history. By being forgotten and lost to the obscurity of time, your soul would die as well, for when people remember you your soul lived on in the afterlife. This was the case of Pharaoh Akhenaten who the Egyptians hated so much for his forced religion and ideologies that they tried to scrub him from history after his death, so that he may die forever and never be remembered.
There's a certain dehumanization that comes with the passing of time and I think that videos like these that discuss not "important" or "grandiose" events in history but regular, average people at the time finds a way to bridge the gap and reminds me that they're far more similar to me than I realize.
on that topic, seeing old recolorized videos from the late 1800's or like WWII is so insane. What feels like old memories of long gone people, are totally transformed, and it becomes so intimate and relatable. Like people from the past really did exist not just as a flickering black and white image, but had the same sort of hopes and dreams and fears as any of us might have.
@@applesauce_0743 I'm not the "good old golden days" type, but thinking about life even just a few centuries back from these so grandly discussed times is very interesting. So similar to us, yet so different in other ways. Makes you wonder how people in the future'll view our era.
@@sasdagreat8052 Yeah no telling how all of us will be looked back upon in a few hundred years. Can you imagine learning about video games and tiktok in the ancient history books?
The Washington Post did a podcast series a few years ago called "Presidential" where they profiled each president in succession, by talking to historians and other experts. And what was striking about the series was that even though we tend to think of US presidents as a group of men who have been researched to death, there are actually a handful of presidents about whom little substantial research has been done, because they're just not that important or interesting. Some presidents have never had a in-depth biography written about them (at best, just a fairly superficial one written ages ago) and today have no living, recognized "experts" on their presidencies. It made me realize that political fame, even at that level, can be very fleeting, and helped me understand how historical obscurity evolves, and is in some ways both rational and inevitable.
that's crazy, we don't even have 50 presidents and the country has existed for hundreds of years. we've had that much time for niche history nerds to pour over less than five dozen men and there are still things people just didn't care enough to find out. damn
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx sorry to be pedantic, as I agree with your point, but it's fewer than four dozen... So yeah. Less than five dozen is also technically correct although the extra dozen only serves to everso slightly weaken your argument lol
I clean biohazard scenes as a job, recently I cleaned a suicide. The condo association said they had no family, we cleaned him off the walls and removed all his things. The thing that really hit me though was finding his youtube channel with a few dozen views at most, of the man sad, alone, playing his guitar months before I took it with my own hands, smashed it, and threw it into a dumpster.
This video has reminded me of an experience I had last year. I'm a high school student who has done a school project about the life in my local town during 19th century. During my research, I was granted access to my town's historical archives and I spent hours upon hours reading hundreds of documents. Among these documents, there was one that particularly caught my attention, not because of its major historical significance in comparison to others, but because of the opposite, because of its mundanity. It was lawsuit from the year 1811 made my a woman who apparently ran into another woman who she did not see eye to eye with while going to buy some bread at the bakery. The two women then proceeded to have an intense verbal dispute inside the bakery, (which made me laugh out loud once I read the hilariously antiquated insults they threw at each other.) and it all led to one of them suing the other . It made me reflect on how for these women, this incident was probably nothing more than an insignificant dispute which they would most likely end up forgetting not long after, but little did they know that silly fight would be the evidence that would preserve the memory of their existence over 200 years into the future and that a teenager from the 21st century would be laughing at them in a time long after themselves or anyone they would ever interact with had passed away.
@@alejandropetit6573 One of them called the other a "public whore" and the othed one retaliated by saying "drunken whore" and "devilish lying witch". I took a photo of the document, so I still have it with me. Apparently, there was also a little girl present at the bakery who had been sent to buy some bread by her grandma and she was later called to the Town Hall to serve as a witness when the lawsuit was being written. The woman who got sued was a widow and she lost the case because the little girl confirmed she was the one who started throwing insults first. I sadly don't know the reason behind the two women's dispute, but it sounds like something straight out of a sitcom.
Being an archivist, it's impressive how WRONG the "everything is on the Internet" idea is. Even if you discard the old, unknowable stuff of history, take just 1980 to the present which is... nothing, on the grand scheme of Humanity. There is SO MUCH missing, so many libraries and museums just waiting to have the funds to scan their collections, so many cities and historical buildings about which you find not a single line written at all online despite there being books and books and books on their history on local libraries. It's actually really inspiring to work at the Internet's "Frontier", and to know it isn't some finished, ready-made, all-knowing thing, but one we need to - and easily can! - cultivate and keep improving. That's why i love working with obscure media. This video is excellent, really touches on many of those points.
Yea as someone who has lost thousands of amazing wallpapers that are definitely not on any searchable parts of the internet anymore it was always weird that people imagine the internet is forever. It literally isn't at all. Someone has to pay to host stuff the second that stops its gone forever. It's actually quite easy to lose things off the internet forever. Hell I even have songs on my iTunes that aren't downloadable online anymore, as in I grabbed them online ~decade ago and now those musicians music is no longer there. My iTunes could be the only place to find some songs.
In design, my class got an assignment where each of us had to make a map. It didn't matter how small the map was. I made mine about a kitchen cabinet, labeling mugs, plates, glasses and bowls that were particularly significant only to my small family. The assignment made me realize that there's probably an infinite amount of maps through an infinite amount of lenses, physical or within our minds, that will be known by little to no people. Forever ʘ‿ʘ
I remember seeing a post on Tumblr were somebody went to a museum on Native American art, and naturally, a lot of the artwork didn't have names for the creators. But instead of putting "Name Unknown", the museum put "Name Once Known", and I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it. Even if we don't know them, they existed, and they left something behind.
Stuff like this always reminds me of the quote from a bomb defuser who was asked if he was ever scared he would mess up and said "I'm either the hero or its suddenly not my problem anymore". Always stuck with me.
This is a big reason why I love art. Theres nothing else I could listen to someone drone on and on for hours. And those same people tend to be as entertaining to listen to about anything.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the oldest person whose name we know: A sumerian person named Kushim, who probably managed some kind of barley storage. They're also responsible for the oldest known math mistake
@@skyler948 He made a tablet recording how much barley they shipped out in a 37 month period. On the front, there were the amounts of the individual shipments they made, and on the back, he wrote the total amount. Except he forgot one of them, and turned up 15 units short.
That talk of the tiny traces of routines reminds me of something that happened to me once on a dig. I'm an archaeologist, and we were excavating the remains of a bronze age hut. As we did so, we distinctly noticed a buildup of pottery shards near the front door, at the outside. The lead professor realised that these were the remains of a benine routine much like the ones talkd about here. Whenever a pot would be dropped or fall or break, they'd sweep it out the front door so its out of the way. Just a tiny one if those insignificant routines, noticed from thousands of years in the past
That's the shape of the road of wisdom. Plato thought of it as a cave, where we imagine the shadows on the walls to be all there is in the world, and laugh off the idea of anything being bigger or more important than those shadows. Then, eventually, if we seek greater understanding, we stumble out of the cave, and find a whole universe bigger and brighter than anything the cave could have possibly allowed us to imagine.
We all grown up now 😭😭 just like his content being more catered to more older audience. Kinda sad but Sweet at the same time, it's like seeing something grow up and it'll never be the same since you like something different and mature now, and so on.
I went walking with my mom around the river, where I found a ton of stuff had been thrown away into the tiny trashcan at the start of the walk. I got curious and poked around, found a few old printed off photos, not on glossy photo paper but just plain printer paper. They were old ass Vietnam photos. Just young looking guys standing in front of a somewhat sloppy tent, smiling at the camera. Nothing gross or scary. I looked through some of the paperwork and found what looked like a listing of awards. Someone got a purple heart, along with other awards I don't remember. Someone kept that roll of photos until they could just cheaply print them off on some paper to keep. And then that person died and someone else just threw it all away. I couldn't help but feel conflicted about leaving them there, even though I didn't even know the person.
I’ve had similar experiences with this feeling too. The neighborhood that I live in was made by IBM in the 60s-70s, and as a result, many of the people who worked there also lived in this neighborhood. Now, very few people are left who would have been engineers or workers there. Usually through their (likely) passing, is how I’ve managed to remember some people. When I would walk to school, I would pass by houses that had thrown out “junk” in boxes for recycling. I would occasionally take a look, but one day I happened to see that this family had thrown out what I could only assume to be their relative’s college and high school yearbooks. From the 1950s no less. Even some unreturned library books about mainframe computers, also from the 50s. Even his high school diploma with his photo was thrown out. It struck me as kinda disrespectful (?) to just throw these kind of things out. I took a few of the books and the diploma with me and currently have them on my bookshelf. The concept of throwing out these kind of personal artifacts always gets to me, like seeing a family album with photos at a thrift store or something. Sorry for the rambling, but I completely understand what you felt when you found those photos.
I find it insane that people just throw out pictures of people after their death, or awards they got, or their valued possessions. Even if they don't have family to take it, it needs to go somewhere.
"In dearth or in excess / both the slave and the empress / will return to the dirt, I guess / naked as when they came" - Fleet Foxes, Montezuma, one of my favorite song lyrics.
My grandma once said she wanted a "stone", by stone she meant a ring. So my grandfather being who he is thought it would be funny to get a big boulder and put it next to her driveway, and that would be her stone. That boulder remains there, with meaning. If I had not told you, any other person would look and see that as a meaningless boulder, and if I had not had told you, that boulder would just become meaningless forever. Knowing how many people there are in the world, there are probably tens of billions of instances of small things like this which will go forgotten forever. -sincerely Uel
we all have our own little boulders. tiny physical instances that we mark the world with, knowingly or unknowingly saying "i was here" to a deaf listener. the fact that no one will ever see or hear or truly know those little pieces of ourselves we leave behind doesn't detract from their value, in my opinion, because i don't think an audience is necessary for our works to matter and mean something. so long as it meant something to at least one person, it has a meaning forever etched into this world.
I recently deleted a very old tiktok account of mine from around 2019/2020 and before I did I went through my old liked videos, and out of the few I bothered to look through only about 4 of them were still up, the rest deleted, so many things once there just gone and i’m sure no one would have even noticed
@Catherine Poteat ah yes, that story is amazing. Poe has been one of my favourite writers for years, and it makes me very happy to see others who at least know about his work, going about online and commenting about it just because something reminded them of it. :)
reminds me in a way of a plane crash that was discovered on the highway between winnipeg and the nearest city in ontario, it was a small plane, that crashed only about 100 or more feet from the side of the highway. but since the highway is so sparse with human habitation and is almost all the same combination of shieldrock, trees, and rocks, the planecrash wasn't found for over 20 years, despite being a short walk (sub 2 minutes) from the side of the highway.
The part about art no one ever sees made me remember the pipes screensaver on my dad's old pc. I always loved watching it create these random shapes but there must have been thousands of arranmgements - beautiful and random - that were never seen because no one was present at that moment. Like a tree falling deep in the woods or that pile of pots and pans your flatmate left in the kitchen that spontaneously caves in at 4am
Imagine dying and being uncovered hundreds of years later and the society that digs you up has this really cringe trend going on that just happens to match your unwilling pose. I empathize but do not envy you, dab mummy 🙏
I had an online friend who died in January 2011. I was 16, she was 17. Her TH-cam is still there. I know its login, she gave it to me before she died, and I logged into it one day, only to find out that nobody had commented or seen any of her videos since around 2012-2013, despite her being moderately popular and receiving hundreds of condolences when I had to break the news she had done herself in, as I was asked to do so if she was able to go through it. I tried to stop her, of course, but it was too late. Finding out she had died a second time... it was haunting. I was one of the only people to remember her. Her mother had her brain blasted by addiction and did not even know her own daughter anymore. Her father was a self-absorbed bigot, her stepmother was about as cartoonishly evil as they came. She went to a special ed class of 5 people, and two of the friends she made there have since died, so of people who remember the REAL her, the pale waif-thin scene kid with pink and black hair, who swore like a sailor, drank too many Monsters, was as gay as the day was long.... well, I'm one of the only ones who remember her at all, and it sucks to know I bear that burden. I went looking for pictures of her the other day and found out that the album I'd saved them in was deleted by Dropbox due to inactivity. It was the only place I had them that I remember. I have no more pictures of her. She had no other social media besides Facebook and that's been deleted for over a decade now. Jane, I miss you. A lot. I hope you're dancing to MSI and Celldweller, and straightening your hair with that stupid Garnier stuff I told you about in the afterlife, if there is one. You didn't think there was. I don't either. But maybe you just live on in my head now. A memory of another era that's long gone except for the few nuscene kids I see out and about.
I actually kind of find being doomed to be forgotten somewhat comforting. It lets me focus on the impact I have on those around me, and on living life my own way
Its very poetic honestly. I just think of life as a series of stories told over and over again, through different times and people. It starts to become more clear that we are more similar than we thought, and I find that comforting.
i’m at peace with being forgotten by name as long as i have some positive effect on someone that they can pass on too. it sounds cheesy, but being good to people is one of the simplest and most meaningful ways to be remembered
Considering that any chaotic system exponentially pertubates even the smallest form of disturbance, it will be hard not to have an effect on the future.
@@Currywurst4444 Yeah your actions will constantly affect the future no matter what but at some point people won’t be able to look back and get the slightest glimpse of you. The person who discovered fire changed the world and they still affect it but only thing we know about them is that they are lost in the past.
I’m with you on that, no matter how cheesy it may sound. We never know if whatever we do is gonna turn out good or bad. After all, you might eventually help a person who will do a lot of evil in future. Or it may turn out that what we consider good, like wealth or stability, only does harm to us. But some things we should forget, even if we cannot escape them in the end
I agree with this comment and all of its replies so far. While I'd like to have a positive, anonymous impact on the future, I accept and welcome the fact that over a long enough span of time, the consequences of every action I've taken or evidence of my existence will be gone, whether it happens first because there is no one left to understand the evidence or because the evidence is completely eroded by time. Even the atoms that make up the debris orbiting Earth will be completely irrelevant to the physical world at some point, no?
it’s always so strange when you search for something and there is absolutely no google results at all for it. it’s happened to me several times. also i wanted to learn about a member of a band i like and they just.. didn’t have a wikipedia page. multiple platinum records and the (albeit new) lead singer doesn’t have a wikipedia page.
There was a initiative on Wikipedia where editors went to libraries and museums to document their things. There is a lot of rare information on those places, specially on the small ones.
In a sense, we're all doomed to obscurity. It's a thing we cannot avoid. So, the next time we artists feel unappreciated and obscure, we should remember this: It doesn't matter if people don't pay attention to our work that much. We should do this to express ourselves and let it go.
Solar Sands gives me the exact feeling that Vsauce USED to with his philosophical topics. The term "existential crisis" is very overused but I can't think of another way to describe it.
3:39 - You didn't mention this, but you are also forgetting lost silent films who were not doomed to obscurity out of being bad or not popular, but because of accidents and a lack of foresight. It is estimated that 90% of American silent films ever made (by Criterion) in the Silent era are lost today. Popular silent era films whose generation knew and saw are now completely forgotten and lost. The infancy of an artform, most of it gone. Silent Films were not often complex and were often very short, as films were not really considered art at that time and more of an attraction, but it was still work that had some message or intent behind it which a whole team organized, showed up to film, and invested days/months of thought, imagination, and planning into making. Only for it to serve it's momentary purpose then be lost to time. That work inspired a whole slew of film makers in the speakies era (particularily horror) and we will never see it again, and today there are nobody really alive to tell you what even those films were about. The good and the bad, the unique and bold takes that some might have taken which would still be interesting and unique today. Sad, really. I am more upset by lost films because they weren't doomed to obscurity out of lack of value (like a bad VHS exercise tape shown on BOTW), nor did they have to be lost out of time which will eventually make all art "lost" (even statues in the rock, whittled away after thousands of years). They were lost for no reason, and could not have been had the right precautions been taken.
And even the most famous silent films have had significant amounts of their footage lost. Numerous scenes from Fritz Lang's Metropolis were considered lost for the better part of a century, until somebody stumbled across them in a museum archive in 2008, where they had been collecting dust for 40-odd years.
Although not a silent film by any means, the lack of a home release for the Phantom Blood 2007 movie [made by the same group behind the Stardust Crusaders OVA, which faced controversy the previous year in Egypt] and being limited to just the movies has one wonder where the original film went. Character concept art and a trailer seem to be all that remains, due to the company seemingly folding in, and hence few storyboards are found of the cancelled Battle Tendency one.
There was a silent film about the sinking of the Titanic made within a month of the disaster. It was called "Saved From the Titanic". It starred a real Titanic survivor who happened to be an actress, and was told from her point of view. She even wore the same clothes she wore on the night of the disaster. Sadly all copies of this film were destroyed when the place they were stored burned down.
I could see a similar thing happening to video games. With the fast increase in technology and the dozens of different game platforms, the idea of game preservation being taken seriously is a recent one, and especially in the 70s-90s it seems like the obsolete technologies were just forgotten and left behind. Also because the idea of video games being an art form is more recent. Game preservation should be taken seriously, otherwise the early years of gaming could meet the same fate as those silent films.
Thinking about how most things are so obscure yet hide so much value is what has kept me up at night since childhood. Almost all of my other anxieties or melancholies I've come to terms with but this gets me down every time I consider it.
I once saw a huge pile of shredded scrap metal sitting in a harbor waiting to be put on a ship and taken somewhere to be melted down. Each shred a torn and twisted piece of iron, maybe 10 cm long. And of these millions of pieces, every single one would have a completely unique shape, unlike any other piece in that pile. Or the hundreds of other piles that have been in that place before, or will be there in the future. And all the thousands of similar piles that sit in ports and recycling plants all around the world. Every one a unique human artifact. Almost every single one of them never held in a hand and looked at before it went into some furnace to be molten down weeks, months, or years later.
It’s funny… I never thought of myself as a historian in anyway. But one time, during the start of covid, my friend had come over and pointed out that my movie collection had gotten so large he was considering giving me his small movie collection cause, as he put it, “he wanted to help the film preservation library I was building.” I never saw myself as anything like that and simply chuckled. But then, also during the beginning of covid, I started modding my game systems (my Wii for example) to own digital games I had never played and ones I did (as backups). That same friend pointed out again “Man you could start a library in here with all these.” Then, after one day of watching Red Letter Media, I realized… he was right. I just loved films cause I loved acting but I also wanted to preserve things for my future kids or friends or someone I love and I saw how easy it was lose to something to negligence and time… but maybe if I build something, maybe a library, one large enough, idk…. I don’t know what it is I am exactly saying, but I suppose what I am getting at is this video resonated with me. So much art and history are lost to time but if there was a way to preserve them, even if it’s at some dude’s house in The US, …idk, shouldn’t you try? That meant something to someone… Each time something is created or made, it meant something to someone. I wanna preserve that and show people what it was: a film, a game, a story. Just something to appreciate. Thanks Solar.
ive always respected the people still running dvd/blue-ray rental places; these guys know every movie in their store, and it's likely that they are some of the last people who might know of a bunch of obscure films which would otherwise be lost to time forever.
I remember reading Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere,” which is essentially a book about obscurity, and, ironically, even though Neil Gaiman is a famous writer, his book “Neverwhere” has a very tiny following and very few people have read it. I wanted to look up fan art just out of curiosity, and there were only like, 3 pieces of fan art for the book on Google images. But for reasons that this video goes into, there was something strangely comforting about that.
I know this book because it was on a reading list in my high school English class back in 2010 or so. It was the first Gaiman story I'd read, and after following that up with American Gods and Coraline, he became one of my favorite authors
I googled that book because it intrigued me and I though maybe it would be a fun read and to my surprise, I actually already read it. I got it for my birthday a long time ago.
"Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” ―Anonymous Greek Proverb "Real living is living for others." ― Bruce Lee
Sometimes I think people who promote this point of view, and the people who ultimately ended up sacrificing themselves in wars and such, were people who were just really depressed and loathed themselves, so they tried to find meaning in life by being "useful" to others, even if at cost of their own life (which meant little to them anyway). And then we romanticized this for generations.
It's ironic since you've long since proven you're incapable of coming up with anything nearly as profound, nor ever following the advice these haphazardly pasted quotes posit. Probably didn't even watch the video, Imao.
I absolutely love stuff like this. These kinds of discussions, these kinds of plots. Stuff that connects the distant future with the distant past. Stuff like Tom Scott's video on the uranium waste storage facility, storytelling in adventure time, or even when I found a rusty car in the woods with a tree growing through it's broken windshield. The ruins of Chernobyl is a form of beauty I enjoy. Failing human infrastructure being taken over by moss and decay
This kinda vibe is why I love the first fallout game so much because there's so much of that in there, which I as a modern person and understand and decipher, but someone living in the post apocalyptic wasteland would barely even notice, nevermind understand. Like how a gang of Raiders settled in an abandoned mall named themselves "the blades", after an advertisement on the wall of the building for a barber's shop.
This video reminds me of "Toto Forever", an art installation in the Namibian desert made by German-Namibian artist Max Siedentopf. It's a set of 6 pedestals with speakers on top of them, connected to an mp3 on a central pedestal. The speakers and the mp3 are charged via small solar panels, and the mp3 is playing Africa by Toto, until the earth undoes this strange exposition. What intrigues me about this installation is what kind of artpiece it is. It's more of a metaphysical artwork. To me, it's the best attempt at making a representation of obscurity, a deliberate attempt at making art for nothing and nobody, and it facinates me deeply. People have complained that the installation will never exist forever, some giving it a max lifespan of 3 months. To me however, that adds to the message I see in the artwork, obscurity. It will be there, until by chance, it will be destroyed by nature itself.
That's also what draws my interest during the Public Art classes I take during art school. They're best experienced as something you just stumble into without really looking for it. Check out Anthony Gormley's human statue installations for sth similar to Toto Forever.
One of my favorite things to discover is old communities like an old subreddit or old discord server and still see it thrive with a little bit of people there, expressing their interests till the end of time. It's refreshing to know that even if something is obscure, there was still probably a group of people talking about it at one point. It doesn't matter if that group was small, just to know that life's limitless probabilities led them to that moment.
And then one of the saddest things is a once thriving forum that has slowly decreased in posts until where each subforum hasn't been posted on for months or even years. Makes you wonder if each of those users realized that this would be the last time they would post on or even look at the website.
I've been on the internet a long time, and I always felt a profound sadness when I saw communities dry up and die. As I went from a child, to a teen, to a young man, and now slightly-beyond-young-man, I've perhaps become more jaded to that feeling. There's a very deep sense of loss, with these kinds of things. Like walking into an old home set to be demolished that over it's long life housed several generations of people. At one point, their home was the central point around which their lives revolved, and now it's .. nothing. A forgotten husk that once held meaning, and very soon, will cease to even exist, and not long after that perhaps, cease to even be remembered.
I remember seeing a facebook post about a fundraiser to help restore an old MIDI keyboard that only had roughly ~15 produced, most of which being lost or destroyed. I'm not quite sure why, but it just captivated me. Seeing a somewhat small facebook group dedicated to restoring this old piece of technology that could have easily been swept under the rug in seconds. What caught my attention more was the mystique, and how there were only 2 recordings of the MIDI that had the original sound.
The Vsauce vibes are strong and I mean that in the best way possible. I somehow find it calming to think about being forgotten. We put so much meaning in every little thing and occasion and that’s not bad. But sometimes we get too obsessed.
Current: "Fortnite sucks!" Future: "In this record, a person proclaims disdain for an antiquated period of time, equal two two weeks. He must have hated it so much that he misspelled it as well."
Ah a primitive ape is making a statement from which we can infer that that ape must've hated the word "to" so much _to_ have misspelled it -Signed, 2356 AD
@@unlimited8410 human, whatever you are, whoever you are, past or future,we must have 3 misspell the "to". We shall, as we name ourselves ; must thrive off such consistencies.
My “mentor” once gave me a bunch of old pirated albums he’s passed away uncle that had a big influence on him had I didn’t just get his uncles movie taste, music taste and politics but I understood who he was as a person which was fascinating and saddening at the same time.
Chester A Arthur actually had a pretty interesting life/presidency. He did a lot to end the practice of cronyism, despite that being how he got basically every professional position of his life.
as an artist, this reminds me that in the storage rooms of museums, galleries, and warehouses, there are artworks only the VIPs (donors, close partners, famous people) have seen at an auction or private show. they have and will probably never be photographed for the internet for the sake of exclusivity. i would love to get into archiving at some point, and have quite a few works that are obscure already and ready to be shown to the world :)
When I was a teen, the thought of being forgotten when I die disturbed me so much I had this nagging thought in my head that I had to do something memorable, good or evil. I'm glad I don't feel that anymore, but every so often I'm conflicted on how to feel about the thought of insignificance and being forgotten. Sometimes it's comforting to know that in the grand scheme of things and after enough time goes by, your actions ultimately don't matter, sometimes it's existentially crushing. I really like your videos, they make me feel things. Those are the best kinds of videos. I don't necessarily believe in the concept of souls and all, but I'd say your videos touch my soul.
This is why I hate current day TH-cam; it doesn't matter how many weird, obscure videos I watch, I don't get any similar recommended anymore. It used to be a game to pick out the strangest thing in my recommendations list and go from there
The internet in general has become that way. Everything used to feel personal and passionate to the people putting it out there. Discovering new things was fun before the algorythm, now it feels like a series of closed loops.
Ya, reccomended + video replies used to have a lot of 1000 less viewed videos that was actually related to what you were watching. This is how YTPs became so big, because you watched one YTP, and several others would be in the related tab. You can still find these videos but it's getting harder.
This is certainly surreal to watch as an alumni from Union College (NY), since Chester Arthur is the one US President that came from our campus and is known by Dutchmen as one of our most distinguished alumni. There’s even a statue of him near the student campus center, which I remember being decorated from time to time. Just goes to show how the definition of “obscure” always depends on who you ask.
Amen! Theres this artist I used to love that abruptly deleted all of her art. I have spent countless hours trying to find any scrap of information about where she went and why. It's been years, but I still think about her art and how I'll likely never see it again.
@@maicey_t. yeah it's sad that artists can't understand the impact their work has on their fans, that's why i archive every underground song that i like because i know they'll be deleted
Another brilliant video! The idea makes me think of Percy Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias and the idea of entropy. “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
@@sortagoodish8491 although, do we? Surely if a mountainesque statue had eroded to sand the plaque would have been long gone as well. I like to think that the writer of the plaque was trying to piggy-back on the greatness of this ancient ruin that had withstood time.
Sometimes I wish I could start civilization from the beginning and just write down and document every item or event that happens, from the start of the world, universe, civilization or whatever my mind wonders off to to the end and restart over and over until everything is documented
This video was 20 minutes long yet it felt like it went by so quickly. Another great video Solar! It always feels so strange to think about what future life will be like and to grasp one's own insignificance sometimes. I have my own complex and different life and yet you and I will likely never know of each other but what we put out on the internet.
@@RyanTosh scary to think that. For every comment is bit a fleeting moment. That our only contact with each other in this 1 comment that will be forgotten
commenting to leave my mark as a human being on this earth in north america, in the united states, in a state that starts with an i, in a pretty big city.
Sometimes I forget the "statues" from Pompeii aren't people sleeping but people literally boiling, bursting and burning alive. Their legacies are not what they did during life, but their last agonizing moments
my hobby is investing in really small indie games, its so fun being part of tiny fanbases like that just because of the sheer amount of interaction you get with game devs. and when the game finally comes out, you play it, and you see a part you suggested, thats awesome. i made that happen.
Hmm. Something that I consider to be “the most unknown” are dreams, actually. Like, the ones you have at night. You may have elaborate stories play out in your head at night, that make you sad or happy or scared or angry or… any other emotion, but chances are, no one will ever be able to understand them the way you did in the hours you spent within them. Including yourself, if you’re someone who doesn’t remember your dreams upon waking and doesn’t write them down. I think about that a lot. My dreams are typically very elaborate, with worlds and stories and characters that would be amazing to share with the world. But then I wake up. And all I can remember is “something interesting happened but *I don’t know what*.” I think that feeling makes dreams even more unknown then things that absolutely no one truly knows about.
Oh, and I encourage you to throw any cool dreams you’ve had down here, in the comments. Perhaps it will help them be preserved for others to see… if you even remember them.
I've been keeping a dream journal for a few years now and here's the last one I wrote down. I had a dream where Christopher Watkins was was my father and for some reason I felt animosity towards him because he disappeared for a long time. My aunt anjeanette was there too. We went to a gala to support various people, and I chose to support "sammy wong" because it was the offensive thing to do. For some reason my aunt anj sat about 20-25 feet from me. She told me that she was thinking of getting steak and peanut soup (or something like that) and I said "if you want to mess with your stomach go ahead, idc" but I had to yell it because she was so far away. This happened several times where I'd have to yall to respond to her. Each time I was agitated with her. I looked around the flat rectangular table I was sitting at and saw an empty seat, so i moved the plate to invite her over. That's when, I dont know if it was Christopher Watkins (my long lost father), a stranger, or my own subconscious, but I heard something along the lines of "do you really want to invite her over?" And I said no, not really, she's okay where she's at. (She was acting as crazy in my dreams as real life) so the voice/stranger/father asked me why I was going to invite her over and I said something to the effect of, "well I feel guilty" (she was sitting by strangers, not talking to them) the gala ends and we're all walking up a hill except christopher walkin had won a moped. I asked him if he had fun and he replied, "I'm a national treasure" that's when I woke up.
Omg I just had the exact same thought! Like- you barely ever remember them and if you do you probably don't remember all the detail and I also doubt that dreams that aren't lucid dreams would repeat themselves or as I said you'd just forget them. And even the ones you remember will be forgotten quite quickly unless you either write them down or tell someone about them but even that way they'll be forgotten sometime it's just- dreams are so unreachable and you will never be able to exactly document them it's like another universe and even when everyone experiences them the individual dreams are so unknown and unreachable
I keep a dream journal and some dreams really are like that. They make you think that it's an interesting and complex story when in reality it just portrays the feeling of it.
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
@@oracle8192 And therein lies the other problem of legacies; If one manages to leave any legacy at all, it will probably be misappropriated, mis-remembered, corrupted and maybe destroyed in other ways other than just being forgotten about...... as Julius Caesar once remarked regarding the problem of digital data storage over the coming centuries.... ;)
@@goldendeagle1914 You're absolutely spot on. I've noticed that happening with archeology; someone finds some remains of a person who died many many centuries ago (or an artifact) and automatically assumes that person/artifact lived or was produced there and that they/it had always lived there and yadda yadda yadda, when in fact they could just have be a transient and just happened to have unfortunately died there or brought there as a one-off, but they, the archaeologist, then bases their whole narrative about how that person lived etc. etc when in fact they can't say any of that with any reasonable certainty.
I recently read a novel in which the main character didn't want to be remembered because after they die, they lose the control of the memory that people will have of them. Somebody could write a Tribute or Memoir of that person and make it seem like they were a complete different character...forever. Especially famous person's will be remembered through the works that other people make about their lives from their perspective to that person. The perspective that you yourself had about yourself will vanish immediately with your death.
@@Yora21 I'm dumb and did the math in my head and got it wrong. Here's the actual math: 31 day presidency, that's 744 hours. 1h 45min speech is 1.75 hours. 1.75 hours is ~0.24% of 744 hours
I usually never leave comments. But somehow this one makes me feel compelled to do so. I want this video to reach as many people as possible. Simply incredible.
One idea that terrifies me is that there could have been genocides in the past that we will never know about because their perpetrators succeeded in wiping out all evidence of the people’s existence
I think about the topics in your videos frequently. Many times before you even put out the video. Its refreshing to see someone cover such enigmatic and obscure topics in a way I can relate with. Not a lot of creators do that. These thoughts and ideas sometimes plague me and I don't know how to put them into words or interpret them, thanks for being able to do that for me.
Exactly my thoughts, it makes us feel a tad less alone You should also try watching Micah Tewers! He made a film and it made me feel the same way as watching a solar sands video
For years I've been trying to put words to that feeling of how much unknown there is, and how in another perspective, we're the unknown. Thanks for the work man.
I actually find it really comforting, the thought that I too will be forgotten one day. It means that no matter what mistakes I make, they all pale in comparison to the grand universe.
Even if your name is long forgotten in the sands of time, the actions you'd made, the wakes you'd created on the metaphorical pond that is existence, will continue to reverberate long after you are gone. Even though you might be forgotten, your actions, no matter how minute, will reverberate endlessly and irreversibly. Because of you, people will be held up or ahead of schedule. Some people will experience things they never had before, because they interacted with you. Their entire lives and the people they influence after that point are in flux, because of your influence.
Rebecca Black once had the most disliked video on TH-cam, and was arguably the most ridiculed person on the internet in 2010. And yet, I don't think I've stumbled across a single reference to her in the last 5 years at least, if not more.
For as long as humans have been around, we've had a desire to be remembered for as long as we have known the concept of remembering. We see it everywhere. Graffiti of names on the sides of walls. Mother's and children's handprints in moulding clay. Even handprints in caves, with small handprints of children higher above the adults, where they were lifted so their print could be placed and remembered. "I was human, I was here." It's such a bittersweet reality, to know that you'll most likely be forgotten, but at the same time, that cosmic insignificance means we need to do our best. It's ok to be a little critter called a human, just be a good human while you're here.
Beautiful...and there will come a day where your post...and my comment tied to it will fly away into oblivion like a kite into the starry void above. But even so, the stories and principles that make us human will never vanish...there will always be people reaching out with flailing hands and saying "I was human, I was here."
It’s even scarier to remember even the most famous and most infamous will also be forgotten in time. Ghandi and hitler will be long forgotten aspects of history one day just as insignificant as the average man for their actions. In the end there is no real reason to be good or evil or anything in between but for the most part the majority of people try to what they view as good despite this due to some innate part of human nature though one man’s good actions are another’s evil so people can only do so much as what they view to be just
just yesterday i attended my grandpa's funeral, and a little bit before it started i began to wander the graveyard with my sister. while i was looking at the different tombstones, reading the names, birth/death dates and just information in general, all i could think about is what their lives might've been like. what family did they have? what were some hobbies did they have? what was their childhood like? etc, etc. and then i realized that my grandpa would soon become one of those people. just a simple tombstone on the ground with thousands of others, and passerbys having no understanding of who he was. soon to be forgotten. the realization hit me really hard tbh, knowing that someone you know a lot about with great significance in your life will forever be unknown to those strangers.
if you really care about persevering someone's memory, know that with our technology it's possible to archive data forever. just look at tutankhamon for example
This, this is the horror that really hits me. All the jumpscares and creepy things in the world will stop being scary after I've seen them a few times, but this is something else. Maybe it's the realization that everything I do just adds onto a pile of meaninglessness. Maybe it's knowing that the possibility that none of us here today will have any impact on the world in the long run. Many before us have lived, and been forgotten, and at some point it will end for all of us, and the same will happen again. We have a limited time to be alive, for some of us it could be a century, and for others, maybe even just a few minutes. Nothing is certain, I could be hit by a car tomorrow and everything I've ever done will be put to waste. What I'm getting from this is even if there's nothing I can do to improve the world, I can make it better for some people, and push aside this existential dread for just a few moments, and that could be all someone needs to achieve their goals. Another thing I'm realizing is making this comment is like throwing a stone into a pile of gravel, it's possible that nobody ever sees this comment, and I'm personally fine with that. If you are seeing this, go make someone's life just a bit better, you would never know what they might be going through
I don't think you Even Realize How Embarrassing you are right now Obessing over being Remembered and Being overwhelmed By such a thing that it takes you over like the Primal instinct of Lust
“Ah, this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps in the whole Western world, and it’s without a signature: Chartres. A celebration to God’s glory and to the dignity of man. All that’s left, most artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked radish. There aren’t any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand, choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish. “Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life. We’re going to die. ‘Be of good heart,’ cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced - but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.“ - Orson Welles
This is why i love finding my ancestors. It is like bringing them back to life. They have been forgoten, died. But they still live in my mind and my records. So they are very alive to me.
There’s a huge cemetery like a five minute walk from my house and the oldest part, from around the 17th century, is toward the middle of the cemetery. It is sectioned off with its own gate, like a smaller graveyard inside a cemetery. Sometimes I go there and leave offerings or libations at the graves. Idk, it just makes me sad when I think about nobody visiting or caring for the graves anymore.
I loved this video. Obscurity and notoriety are things I think about a lot after creating my channel. I basically made it just to make History memes and shitposts, I never expected to get almost a million views on one of my videos, or to be approaching 10,000 subs. I am grateful for the attention of course, but I don't know how to process it really. The idea that several stadiums full of people have viewed something that I created just hasn't sunk into my brain in a meaningful way. It seems like something that should effect me in my daily life, but it doesn't nearly as much as you would think. The idea that I could pass someone on the street, a complete stranger, who has viewed my memes, and we would never realize it, is so strange to me. I want to use the fact that an audience of people who want to see what I make has suddenly fallen into my lap to spread ideas I care about, but I don't know where to start. I guess you could say I am both obscure and well-known at the same time, depending on how you draw the boundaries of the box of people you include me and my work within. The most interesting aspect of this is that, even though thousands of people have seen my creations, it is still meaningless. My work will fade. The bounds of what constitutes fame have greatly expanded with the proliferation of the internet. In a way, I find this comforting. It doesn't matter if we are remembered after our deaths. We will be dead, we will have no stake in this world any longer after our demises. I take inspiration from the philosophies of Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in this regard. Reality is absurd, but this gives us the absurd freedom to create our own meanings relative to human experience in an ultimately meaningless world. When studying history one comes across so many small threads and tid-bits that could lead to a lifetime of research and exploration. The scope of what can be experienced is so great, and yet so small at the same time. I guess you could say that the human condition is...Uncanny. Thanks for reading :)
I always chuckle thinking of the ridiculously unlikely scenario that in thousands of years, humanity is almost gone and one of the only surviving pieces of literature is that book, a fictional recount of the future of humanity. It’d be very confusing to find and read that.
A thought I’ve had for every single name I’ve seen in history class is that I will never know them as a person. Not in the obvious way that I’ll ever meet Andrew Jackson out for tea, or see Shakespeare on bench, but in that whoever they were as a person we’ll never completely understand. When you create, you’ll never be perfectly satisfied with something, but whether or not you were proud it’s unknown whether that creation may live on for thousands of years past you, regardless of quality. Shakespeare isn’t remembered as a person in my class, he’s remembered as a name on a book. It’s unlikely anybody in every single one of my classes cared about who we were discussing for who they were, and isnt that just as bad? This comment is just kinda clueless rambling but it’s an idea I’ve been sculpting and studying in the back of mind.
i think i know what you mean. sometimes when i'm in a car ride or on the bus, i see all these homes of people, with so much personality in them. every house is different in every small detail and you can tell so much from the person. the person that lives there, they know that place so well, it's familiar to them, but to me it will become just a shadow in my memory, to be forgotten soon. all that personality, all that life that the simplest things hold. can you imagine how easy they are to forget? it kind of makes me sad. there's a whole story behind everything we see, but we may never know about it. we probably won't. ever. all the memories of the people that pass you by on the street, they all had happy moments, sad moments, families, friends, things they were proud of, likes and dislikes.. and one day everything that makes them.. *them*, will just fade away with time. that's sad.
This very topic always comes to my mind whenever I get nostalgic over something. The fashion, the TV and movies, types of technology that existed, the greater social/cultural climate, the trends, the overall aesthetic, the people you knew and the different person you once where once comprised a world different to this one which now no longer exists and so when we reflect back on another time period we experience that bittersweet emotional sensation where we feel warm while reminiscing about better time and place but are also faced with the reality that the world we once knew and loved (at least more than this one) doesn't exist anymore and never will and whose only remnants are old artifacts, photographs, digital media and memories.
As someone who knows my Presidents pretty well (having at least a good stockpile of trivia on almost all of them), I would have to say that Franklin Pierce is the most unknown President, because even I don't know anything about him, except that his campaign nickname was "Handsome Frank". And whenever I think to myself maybe I should go learn more about him, I just experience this feeling of a black hole opening up, like "No, there is nothing to find out."
I lived in a party house after high school with a group of guys. When I moved out, I printed off hundreds of little pictures of my face and hid them everywhere in the house. This accomplished nothing and made everyone very uneasy
For those interested, there are exactly 2 articles ever written about Silbannacus by academic sources. The first is "L' empereur Silbannacus: un second antoninien" by Sylviane Estiot from 1996, the second is "A New Roman Coin" by H. Mattingly from (1940). They say exactly what Solar said, but thought somebody might like knowing that.
That "cave of hands" reminds me of a time that I walked on a footpath in a estuary, and I realized that that path could have... MUST have... been used by people for thousands of years. I tried to fathom all the footsteps that helped tamp down the soil, how day after day, month after month, year after year, people carried on, surviving, thriving, within the bounds of Nature...
This channel, Solar sands is a great example of doing something others love, getting popular, and then with that popularity and fame, you feel comfortable in spreading your opinions, your thoughts and what you love. Even this very comment can be lost under obscurity *doomed to be buried under others* but hey! Maybe not?
I made a mod for a game called Overgrowth. The mod changes the attack animations of characters and some of them have superpowers and bizarre abilities that haven't been made into a thing because the community has a more gritty and grounded taste when it comes to mods. I'm a pioneer of sorts but, no one will care, no one will remember me, and no one asked but, that's alrriiigghtt!
Before they changed the algorythms, when google was still highly accurate, page 3-10~were still worth the effort. now often times, even page 1 isnt related to your search in the slightest
It's fine if you're specific. It's a craps shoot if you type a handful of words vaguely related to that thing you barely remember and it's been bugging you for, like, three weeks now.
I just realized halfway through this video, I literally think about this topic of just sheer obscurity very very frequently. Like even today a few hours ago I was thinking about human obscurity. In the shower just thinking to myself that my great great grandfathers are literally entirely lost to history. Their names entirely forgotten, their lives entirely forgotten, their very existence as human beings has been entirely forgotten. Every daily routine they had, every single word they ever spoke in their lives, their thoughts, emotions, memories, possessions, lost to time. And furthermore, that I myself will likely suffer the same fate. It is not as depressing as I make it sound though, I don't necessarily argue with the point in itself nor even rebel against it, but it's interesting to consider at a shallow level nevertheless. The interesting point about it though is that one cannot say that "it is almost like they never existed" because their existence directly led to our very existence. I am in some way convinced that we carry on the essence of our forefathers within us somehow. Maybe a partial transfer of human spiritualness or something in this way, quite metaphysical and unprovable. But still, I feel strangely connected to a life of which I've never personally lived. This same elaboration you provide in this video is something I tell myself everyday, and I'm not pretending at all- "One day I will be dead, literally no one will ever remember anything I did, much less my failures, even my successes. That means I should do absolutely anything I want to do in this world so long as it doesn't hurt anyone directly or indirectly. It does not matter at all in the end."
worse than a half-hearted praise, worse than the meanest comment someone could say about your work, justified or not, the worst gesture that could happen to a piece of art is absolutely nothing, perfect silence, because it defeats the whole purpose of art: to define and impact culture
If you could edit out humanity, you could see only the creation left behind. We are machines of expression, expression that is to be enjoyed by the living
If you want to study someone’s impact on the internet, try the legacy of Neil Cicierega. I can guarantee that you’ve seen/heard some of his work before and you may not even know it. Apart from his videos, I don’t think his musical act would’ve become as popular as it is (or even my biggest niche interest) if it wasn’t for the preserving power of the internet. You can listen to his start in making midi files, to when he first took up the moniker Lemon Demon in 2003, all the way up to his polished Spirit Phone which was eight years in the making, and in both areas of content he’s still chugging along!! Even on the internet, once big names fade away and become obscure, Fred is a good example. He had various rolls on children’s shows due to his internet fame but now if you mention his name your brain immediately snaps. Even the internet’s preserving powers fail against the human memory + strings of events.
Oh, I remember Lucas Cruikshank. I just don't look him up because he was kinda a one-note comedy act. Turns out he's doing ok for himself. Still on the platform.
@@hollykeiser7258 I got into Lemon Demon around 2019, learned about his giant portfolio in 2020, and seriously fell into the rabbit hole about two months ago
“The Man From Earth” is a movie that takes the idea of a lone man who has lived long enough to see most of human history. I recommend to check it out if you thought this was interesting
I've been trying to fight obscurity with varying degrees of success for basically my entire life, and it reminds me a bit of Sisyphus. We can keep pushing the boulder up and up the hill, but eventually we have to go to sleep and the boulder runs down. No matter how far we push it up the hill, it will eventually reach the ground. Some people's boulder reaches the ground in a few seconds while others keep rolling down for thousands of years, but there always is a ground. Even the most famous person ever will eventually be forgotten.
Another thing worth noting is that a lot of interurban cars and streetcars have been completely forgotten and lost. A lot of interurbans and streetcars have no photographs of them, no blueprints, or don't exist anymore. They are only known by their number in one or two books, and maybe what company manufacturered it and when, but we do not know what it looks like. Only former employees or riders would have remembered these pieces of equipment are employees of that line and the people who rode them. Most of them have passed, and now, they are gone. Most streetcars and interurban cars have been almost forgotten.
I make chiptune as a hobby, and this video has touched me in a very vulnerable spot that I think most artists can relate to. My work is known to maybe a thousand people- which is a lot to me (I got lucky), but in the grand scheme of things, not a lot at all. The work I post is only fragments of what I've been making though... in the end, when I die, how many things will I have created then discarded, or simply let rot on my hard drive? How much work and effort will die on this computer when it succumbs to entropy, and how much will be wiped on the next? When I die, will anyone look at my creations on my computer, or will all of my data be wiped away and given to the next person? Even the things I've uploaded will only last as long as the TH-cam servers, or even earlier, if my channel is deleted for some reason.
Perhaps though, someone will like something that you have made so much that they may incorporate it into their own work. Perhaps it will be a background track or they may have extended/added onto one of your creations but however it is done you will live on through them and their work, if they have decency you'll even be credited. And in time whatever they produce may inspire someone else to create so a roundabout way you and your creations will carry on beyond you or your singular life, diffusing into culture itself.
I think about that a lot too, thats why I have a SoundCloud account I shitpost everything on. Only has 20ish followers but it’s relieving to know the advancements I made in music will at least be SOMEWHERE.
Pre-2010 I actually used to go sometimes as far as page 7. The relative importance often slowly degrades, but occasionally I see something I was looking for that just wasn't as popular as the front pages. Sadly, nowadays I think there is a "cliff" of relevance after page 1. Their old page rank algorithm, while flawed, wouldn't have had a hard cutoff. It's so ridiclous that sometimes if you search an exact phase without the quotes, it won't even appear on google search, but plenty of irrelevant stuff will start appearing on page 2. I don't like the current system.
"I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away." ~Percy Shelly. I think the most unknown thing will always be the future.
The Egyptians believed the most horrible thing was to be forgotten by history. By being forgotten and lost to the obscurity of time, your soul would die as well, for when people remember you your soul lived on in the afterlife. This was the case of Pharaoh Akhenaten who the Egyptians hated so much for his forced religion and ideologies that they tried to scrub him from history after his death, so that he may die forever and never be remembered.
Yep, they failed.
the Egyptians were so ahead of their time, they invented cancel culture too
@Brandon Tran Akhenaten Effect
The definition of the Streisand Effect.
Shoulda done a better job lmao
There's a certain dehumanization that comes with the passing of time and I think that videos like these that discuss not "important" or "grandiose" events in history but regular, average people at the time finds a way to bridge the gap and reminds me that they're far more similar to me than I realize.
on that topic, seeing old recolorized videos from the late 1800's or like WWII is so insane. What feels like old memories of long gone people, are totally transformed, and it becomes so intimate and relatable. Like people from the past really did exist not just as a flickering black and white image, but had the same sort of hopes and dreams and fears as any of us might have.
@@applesauce_0743 I'm not the "good old golden days" type, but thinking about life even just a few centuries back from these so grandly discussed times is very interesting. So similar to us, yet so different in other ways. Makes you wonder how people in the future'll view our era.
@@applesauce_0743 Makes me feel like we are basically in the Early Internet and Space Exploration age. That's our timeline so far
@@sasdagreat8052 Yeah no telling how all of us will be looked back upon in a few hundred years. Can you imagine learning about video games and tiktok in the ancient history books?
That's what is so fascinating about preserving and studying history. The past will always be relevant to the present
The Washington Post did a podcast series a few years ago called "Presidential" where they profiled each president in succession, by talking to historians and other experts. And what was striking about the series was that even though we tend to think of US presidents as a group of men who have been researched to death, there are actually a handful of presidents about whom little substantial research has been done, because they're just not that important or interesting. Some presidents have never had a in-depth biography written about them (at best, just a fairly superficial one written ages ago) and today have no living, recognized "experts" on their presidencies. It made me realize that political fame, even at that level, can be very fleeting, and helped me understand how historical obscurity evolves, and is in some ways both rational and inevitable.
Hey i like your channel
that's crazy, we don't even have 50 presidents and the country has existed for hundreds of years. we've had that much time for niche history nerds to pour over less than five dozen men and there are still things people just didn't care enough to find out. damn
@@feluk- likewise. Some super fascinating obscurity showcased by JJ for sure.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx sorry to be pedantic, as I agree with your point, but it's fewer than four dozen... So yeah. Less than five dozen is also technically correct although the extra dozen only serves to everso slightly weaken your argument lol
@@Tom_Bee_ k
Solar Sands is like a solar eclipse: It doesn't happen often, but when it does, you know it's gonna be special!
Yeah
Deep
But if you look directly at his videos you'll be blind for life.
that’s honestly one of the most perfect description of this channel
Joining the rebellion huh
I clean biohazard scenes as a job, recently I cleaned a suicide. The condo association said they had no family, we cleaned him off the walls and removed all his things. The thing that really hit me though was finding his youtube channel with a few dozen views at most, of the man sad, alone, playing his guitar months before I took it with my own hands, smashed it, and threw it into a dumpster.
Jesus that's dark. You very well might be the only person who remembers his existence.
This is one of the bleakest things I've ever read.
damn..
This actually hurts me.
Poor dude....bless his soul.
...you got a link to his TH-cam page?
This video has reminded me of an experience I had last year. I'm a high school student who has done a school project about the life in my local town during 19th century. During my research, I was granted access to my town's historical archives and I spent hours upon hours reading hundreds of documents.
Among these documents, there was one that particularly caught my attention, not because of its major historical significance in comparison to others, but because of the opposite, because of its mundanity.
It was lawsuit from the year 1811 made my a woman who apparently ran into another woman who she did not see eye to eye with while going to buy some bread at the bakery. The two women then proceeded to have an intense verbal dispute inside the bakery, (which made me laugh out loud once I read the hilariously antiquated insults they threw at each other.) and it all led to one of them suing the other .
It made me reflect on how for these women, this incident was probably nothing more than an insignificant dispute which they would most likely end up forgetting not long after, but little did they know that silly fight would be the evidence that would preserve the memory of their existence over 200 years into the future and that a teenager from the 21st century would be laughing at them in a time long after themselves or anyone they would ever interact with had passed away.
yo that’s deep
That's amazing.
@Jar Jar Binks, lmao
Please tell me what insults they used
@@alejandropetit6573 One of them called the other a "public whore" and the othed one retaliated by saying "drunken whore" and "devilish lying witch". I took a photo of the document, so I still have it with me. Apparently, there was also a little girl present at the bakery who had been sent to buy some bread by her grandma and she was later called to the Town Hall to serve as a witness when the lawsuit was being written. The woman who got sued was a widow and she lost the case because the little girl confirmed she was the one who started throwing insults first. I sadly don't know the reason behind the two women's dispute, but it sounds like something straight out of a sitcom.
Being an archivist, it's impressive how WRONG the "everything is on the Internet" idea is. Even if you discard the old, unknowable stuff of history, take just 1980 to the present which is... nothing, on the grand scheme of Humanity. There is SO MUCH missing, so many libraries and museums just waiting to have the funds to scan their collections, so many cities and historical buildings about which you find not a single line written at all online despite there being books and books and books on their history on local libraries. It's actually really inspiring to work at the Internet's "Frontier", and to know it isn't some finished, ready-made, all-knowing thing, but one we need to - and easily can! - cultivate and keep improving. That's why i love working with obscure media. This video is excellent, really touches on many of those points.
"data that is loved tends to survive"
Wow, that really puts it in perspective. To think of all the books and artifacts tucked away in some corner.
DUUUUUDEEEE literally tysm for your work- not enough people see how important it is
Yea as someone who has lost thousands of amazing wallpapers that are definitely not on any searchable parts of the internet anymore it was always weird that people imagine the internet is forever. It literally isn't at all. Someone has to pay to host stuff the second that stops its gone forever. It's actually quite easy to lose things off the internet forever. Hell I even have songs on my iTunes that aren't downloadable online anymore, as in I grabbed them online ~decade ago and now those musicians music is no longer there. My iTunes could be the only place to find some songs.
i look for lost media in my free time, especially old japanese games, and this is very true
In design, my class got an assignment where each of us had to make a map. It didn't matter how small the map was. I made mine about a kitchen cabinet, labeling mugs, plates, glasses and bowls that were particularly significant only to my small family. The assignment made me realize that there's probably an infinite amount of maps through an infinite amount of lenses, physical or within our minds, that will be known by little to no people. Forever ʘ‿ʘ
you just demonstrated how to take the ideas of this video and apply it into an aesthetic banality. Thanks for the new writing idea.
That's nice
Very true!
how the fuck did you type that emoticon
At least 856 people know now :)
I remember seeing a post on Tumblr were somebody went to a museum on Native American art, and naturally, a lot of the artwork didn't have names for the creators. But instead of putting "Name Unknown", the museum put "Name Once Known", and I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it. Even if we don't know them, they existed, and they left something behind.
Stuff like this always reminds me of the quote from a bomb defuser who was asked if he was ever scared he would mess up and said "I'm either the hero or its suddenly not my problem anymore". Always stuck with me.
If you hear mortars hitting nearby it means you can still hear.
@@ralphfiennes3797 If you hear a gunshot, it means they missed.
@@Tubeytimenot at all, most shots aren't instantaneously deadly.
@@libero2711_What about a headshot?
@@Htleveryday then you wouldnt hear it
This is a big reason why I love art. Theres nothing else I could listen to someone drone on and on for hours. And those same people tend to be as entertaining to listen to about anything.
Becoming part of a community aye
same here
Haha, drone.
Solar Sands could talk about a shit he took, and I’d be absolutely captivated.
Well i guess watching my favourite video murder drones is one thing and for another is playing with it.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the oldest person whose name we know: A sumerian person named Kushim, who probably managed some kind of barley storage. They're also responsible for the oldest known math mistake
Lmaooo
“It’s ok to make mistakes,” the teacher said, “you shouldn’t be embarrassed about making mistakes the teacher said”
what was the math mistake lmao
@@skyler948 He made a tablet recording how much barley they shipped out in a 37 month period. On the front, there were the amounts of the individual shipments they made, and on the back, he wrote the total amount. Except he forgot one of them, and turned up 15 units short.
Hahaha people have literally always been screw ups
That talk of the tiny traces of routines reminds me of something that happened to me once on a dig. I'm an archaeologist, and we were excavating the remains of a bronze age hut. As we did so, we distinctly noticed a buildup of pottery shards near the front door, at the outside. The lead professor realised that these were the remains of a benine routine much like the ones talkd about here. Whenever a pot would be dropped or fall or break, they'd sweep it out the front door so its out of the way. Just a tiny one if those insignificant routines, noticed from thousands of years in the past
Ah yes the universal feeling of dropping a plate and sighing... time to clean it up!
somewhere, a few thousand years ago, a husband is berated by his wife for not being thorough enough with his sweeping. Ah ,the circle of life.
Out of curiosity, can you share the site name or location?
@@mamaharumi knocknashee, county sligo, Ireland. I don't belive they've published their findings yet though
Solar Sands 4 years ago: haha deviantart art is so cringe
Solar Sands now: here’s your monthly *existential crisis*
That's the shape of the road of wisdom. Plato thought of it as a cave, where we imagine the shadows on the walls to be all there is in the world, and laugh off the idea of anything being bigger or more important than those shadows. Then, eventually, if we seek greater understanding, we stumble out of the cave, and find a whole universe bigger and brighter than anything the cave could have possibly allowed us to imagine.
Tbh I miss the deviantart stuff.
@@cinderheart2720 i dont, i was raised well, i mean, i dont even have a twitter account
@@zaikolebolsh5724 You're not missing out on much, trust me.
We all grown up now 😭😭 just like his content being more catered to more older audience.
Kinda sad but Sweet at the same time, it's like seeing something grow up and it'll never be the same since you like something different and mature now, and so on.
I went walking with my mom around the river, where I found a ton of stuff had been thrown away into the tiny trashcan at the start of the walk. I got curious and poked around, found a few old printed off photos, not on glossy photo paper but just plain printer paper. They were old ass Vietnam photos. Just young looking guys standing in front of a somewhat sloppy tent, smiling at the camera. Nothing gross or scary. I looked through some of the paperwork and found what looked like a listing of awards. Someone got a purple heart, along with other awards I don't remember. Someone kept that roll of photos until they could just cheaply print them off on some paper to keep. And then that person died and someone else just threw it all away. I couldn't help but feel conflicted about leaving them there, even though I didn't even know the person.
I’ve had similar experiences with this feeling too. The neighborhood that I live in was made by IBM in the 60s-70s, and as a result, many of the people who worked there also lived in this neighborhood. Now, very few people are left who would have been engineers or workers there. Usually through their (likely) passing, is how I’ve managed to remember some people. When I would walk to school, I would pass by houses that had thrown out “junk” in boxes for recycling. I would occasionally take a look, but one day I happened to see that this family had thrown out what I could only assume to be their relative’s college and high school yearbooks. From the 1950s no less. Even some unreturned library books about mainframe computers, also from the 50s. Even his high school diploma with his photo was thrown out. It struck me as kinda disrespectful (?) to just throw these kind of things out. I took a few of the books and the diploma with me and currently have them on my bookshelf. The concept of throwing out these kind of personal artifacts always gets to me, like seeing a family album with photos at a thrift store or something. Sorry for the rambling, but I completely understand what you felt when you found those photos.
I find it insane that people just throw out pictures of people after their death, or awards they got, or their valued possessions. Even if they don't have family to take it, it needs to go somewhere.
“Slaves and masters die together” is the most humanizing phrase in the world
true man. we are all made from the same dirt
"The only thing all humans are equal in is death."
-Johan Liebert, Monster
"In dearth or in excess / both the slave and the empress / will return to the dirt, I guess / naked as when they came"
- Fleet Foxes, Montezuma, one of my favorite song lyrics.
@@nowhereman6019 Dank reference.
@@nowhereman6019 nice reference
I got instant 2015 Vsauce flashbacks
wow, true!
It was the petittube part right? Michael talked about that in at least two videos that I can remember of the top of my head.
Solar sands is the new vsauce 👀
This vid felt more emp lemon to me
Solar Sands def has Vsauce vibes
My grandma once said she wanted a "stone", by stone she meant a ring. So my grandfather being who he is thought it would be funny to get a big boulder and put it next to her driveway, and that would be her stone. That boulder remains there, with meaning. If I had not told you, any other person would look and see that as a meaningless boulder, and if I had not had told you, that boulder would just become meaningless forever. Knowing how many people there are in the world, there are probably tens of billions of instances of small things like this which will go forgotten forever. -sincerely Uel
I'll remember this and I'll probably never, ever, see that boulder with my own eyes
"It's not just a boulder... it's a rock!!" -Spongebob
@@stahppls2293same
we all have our own little boulders. tiny physical instances that we mark the world with, knowingly or unknowingly saying "i was here" to a deaf listener. the fact that no one will ever see or hear or truly know those little pieces of ourselves we leave behind doesn't detract from their value, in my opinion, because i don't think an audience is necessary for our works to matter and mean something. so long as it meant something to at least one person, it has a meaning forever etched into this world.
@@janier.5674 "I like that boulder. That's a nice boulder." - Donkey
It kills me whenever I go back through a playlist only to see deleted and privated videos.
That reminds me, I should download my favorite, lesser known videos to back them up in case that ever happens.
Sameeee I hate it so much
Yep for that reason I have written a little program that downloads every video I like and also all comments and everything
I recently deleted a very old tiktok account of mine from around 2019/2020 and before I did I went through my old liked videos, and out of the few I bothered to look through only about 4 of them were still up, the rest deleted, so many things once there just gone and i’m sure no one would have even noticed
“You could hide a dead body within these black spines” - your storytelling has progressed tremendously and fantastically, I love it
And many people have, I have seen videos about obscure mysteries and crimes discovered on old video tapes.
Gives me Cask of Amontillado vibes
How did we come from browsing DA to this!? I think about this every day.
how many people have I seen with this exact pfp
@Catherine Poteat ah yes, that story is amazing. Poe has been one of my favourite writers for years, and it makes me very happy to see others who at least know about his work, going about online and commenting about it just because something reminded them of it. :)
reminds me in a way of a plane crash that was discovered on the highway between winnipeg and the nearest city in ontario, it was a small plane, that crashed only about 100 or more feet from the side of the highway. but since the highway is so sparse with human habitation and is almost all the same combination of shieldrock, trees, and rocks, the planecrash wasn't found for over 20 years, despite being a short walk (sub 2 minutes) from the side of the highway.
The part about art no one ever sees made me remember the pipes screensaver on my dad's old pc. I always loved watching it create these random shapes but there must have been thousands of arranmgements - beautiful and random - that were never seen because no one was present at that moment. Like a tree falling deep in the woods or that pile of pots and pans your flatmate left in the kitchen that spontaneously caves in at 4am
the pots and pans example seem suspiciously specific... clean up periodically dude
@@ChemySh that happens even when the kitchzn is tidy
Imagine dying and being uncovered hundreds of years later and the society that digs you up has this really cringe trend going on that just happens to match your unwilling pose. I empathize but do not envy you, dab mummy 🙏
he died crankin' that soulja boi
Legend
zoomers are going to demand to be buried like that I swear
The thing about that particular corpse was that it was discovered more than a decade before dabbing existed.
@@dashiellgillingham4579 My point still stands, puts one arm across its face, and one arm back.
I had an online friend who died in January 2011. I was 16, she was 17. Her TH-cam is still there. I know its login, she gave it to me before she died, and I logged into it one day, only to find out that nobody had commented or seen any of her videos since around 2012-2013, despite her being moderately popular and receiving hundreds of condolences when I had to break the news she had done herself in, as I was asked to do so if she was able to go through it. I tried to stop her, of course, but it was too late. Finding out she had died a second time... it was haunting. I was one of the only people to remember her. Her mother had her brain blasted by addiction and did not even know her own daughter anymore. Her father was a self-absorbed bigot, her stepmother was about as cartoonishly evil as they came. She went to a special ed class of 5 people, and two of the friends she made there have since died, so of people who remember the REAL her, the pale waif-thin scene kid with pink and black hair, who swore like a sailor, drank too many Monsters, was as gay as the day was long.... well, I'm one of the only ones who remember her at all, and it sucks to know I bear that burden. I went looking for pictures of her the other day and found out that the album I'd saved them in was deleted by Dropbox due to inactivity. It was the only place I had them that I remember. I have no more pictures of her. She had no other social media besides Facebook and that's been deleted for over a decade now. Jane, I miss you. A lot. I hope you're dancing to MSI and Celldweller, and straightening your hair with that stupid Garnier stuff I told you about in the afterlife, if there is one. You didn't think there was. I don't either. But maybe you just live on in my head now. A memory of another era that's long gone except for the few nuscene kids I see out and about.
Including myself, 45 other people now know about her
Do you think you could link the channel?
100 people now know about her
I'm terribly sorry that that has happened to you
can you link the channel or at least where we can see her youtube videos
I actually kind of find being doomed to be forgotten somewhat comforting. It lets me focus on the impact I have on those around me, and on living life my own way
Same. It's natural to fade away and be forgotten. It forces us to live in the present, and appreciate the strong bonds we form with others.
Kurzgesagt calls it optimistic nihilism.
I feel the same way. My life is for me to enjoy, not for others to look at and judge.
Its very poetic honestly. I just think of life as a series of stories told over and over again, through different times and people. It starts to become more clear that we are more similar than we thought, and I find that comforting.
@High Priestess of Our Lord God UwU how so?
i’m at peace with being forgotten by name as long as i have some positive effect on someone that they can pass on too. it sounds cheesy, but being good to people is one of the simplest and most meaningful ways to be remembered
Considering that any chaotic system exponentially pertubates even the smallest form of disturbance, it will be hard not to have an effect on the future.
@@Currywurst4444 Yeah your actions will constantly affect the future no matter what but at some point people won’t be able to look back and get the slightest glimpse of you. The person who discovered fire changed the world and they still affect it but only thing we know about them is that they are lost in the past.
I’m with you on that, no matter how cheesy it may sound. We never know if whatever we do is gonna turn out good or bad. After all, you might eventually help a person who will do a lot of evil in future. Or it may turn out that what we consider good, like wealth or stability, only does harm to us. But some things we should forget, even if we cannot escape them in the end
i'd rather plant a tree and have people take shade under it, than have my name be known in their minds.
I agree with this comment and all of its replies so far. While I'd like to have a positive, anonymous impact on the future, I accept and welcome the fact that over a long enough span of time, the consequences of every action I've taken or evidence of my existence will be gone, whether it happens first because there is no one left to understand the evidence or because the evidence is completely eroded by time. Even the atoms that make up the debris orbiting Earth will be completely irrelevant to the physical world at some point, no?
it’s always so strange when you search for something and there is absolutely no google results at all for it. it’s happened to me several times. also i wanted to learn about a member of a band i like and they just.. didn’t have a wikipedia page. multiple platinum records and the (albeit new) lead singer doesn’t have a wikipedia page.
There was a initiative on Wikipedia where editors went to libraries and museums to document their things. There is a lot of rare information on those places, specially on the small ones.
I like how solar's new videos are extremely obscure yet informative.
Yeah
@@juliusnepos6013 Yea
Very good video from someone who take shots at deviant art
@@TheFalseShepphard they do have a point tho, let mcyt ppl live their lives please omfg - non mcyt fan
but its obscure, because its doomed to be, therefore, it shall be. And if it shall be aposteriori, then it is.
Man I miss BA philosophy...
still can't believe this guy went from making fun of deviant art, to making full on video essays, it's awesome
He also made "undertale in a nutshell" and "phineas and ferb in a nutshell"
Cannot believe that this guy went from laughing at fetish art to making me question my existence
The rant - > Commentary -> video essayist pipeline is real.
@@lavenderlaceration There was no laughing, he was in pain.
@@rojoscostanada8685 can i ask, what did you mean by him being in pain though?
In a sense, we're all doomed to obscurity. It's a thing we cannot avoid. So, the next time we artists feel unappreciated and obscure, we should remember this: It doesn't matter if people don't pay attention to our work that much. We should do this to express ourselves and let it go.
Solar Sands gives me the exact feeling that Vsauce USED to with his philosophical topics.
The term "existential crisis" is very overused but I can't think of another way to describe it.
existential musing/contemplation c:
@@Whoopsie_woggzy Exactly. I don't think of it as a crisis, just something to think about.
You should check out the channels Exurb1a a d Pursuit of Wonder. They both talk about similar, existential topics
@@psychomanatee3459 did exurb1a do some..questionable things?
@@safeforwork8546 did he? I have no knowledge of that
“What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?” - Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
Hey omahdon, old fan that remembers you since godlimation games. 👌
@@thesadbot Ha, speaking of lost media!
This comment needs more love.
Says the man, the myth, the legend, the villain, the Reap- uh, the great voice himself!
@@Omahdon lol, for real, also mini request because I assume I'll never have a chance like this again, but do you mind if I ask you some questions?
3:39 - You didn't mention this, but you are also forgetting lost silent films who were not doomed to obscurity out of being bad or not popular, but because of accidents and a lack of foresight. It is estimated that 90% of American silent films ever made (by Criterion) in the Silent era are lost today. Popular silent era films whose generation knew and saw are now completely forgotten and lost. The infancy of an artform, most of it gone.
Silent Films were not often complex and were often very short, as films were not really considered art at that time and more of an attraction, but it was still work that had some message or intent behind it which a whole team organized, showed up to film, and invested days/months of thought, imagination, and planning into making. Only for it to serve it's momentary purpose then be lost to time. That work inspired a whole slew of film makers in the speakies era (particularily horror) and we will never see it again, and today there are nobody really alive to tell you what even those films were about. The good and the bad, the unique and bold takes that some might have taken which would still be interesting and unique today.
Sad, really. I am more upset by lost films because they weren't doomed to obscurity out of lack of value (like a bad VHS exercise tape shown on BOTW), nor did they have to be lost out of time which will eventually make all art "lost" (even statues in the rock, whittled away after thousands of years). They were lost for no reason, and could not have been had the right precautions been taken.
And even the most famous silent films have had significant amounts of their footage lost. Numerous scenes from Fritz Lang's Metropolis were considered lost for the better part of a century, until somebody stumbled across them in a museum archive in 2008, where they had been collecting dust for 40-odd years.
The people who find and restore lost films are doing God's work.
Although not a silent film by any means, the lack of a home release for the Phantom Blood 2007 movie [made by the same group behind the Stardust Crusaders OVA, which faced controversy the previous year in Egypt] and being limited to just the movies has one wonder where the original film went. Character concept art and a trailer seem to be all that remains, due to the company seemingly folding in, and hence few storyboards are found of the cancelled Battle Tendency one.
There was a silent film about the sinking of the Titanic made within a month of the disaster. It was called "Saved From the Titanic". It starred a real Titanic survivor who happened to be an actress, and was told from her point of view. She even wore the same clothes she wore on the night of the disaster. Sadly all copies of this film were destroyed when the place they were stored burned down.
I could see a similar thing happening to video games. With the fast increase in technology and the dozens of different game platforms, the idea of game preservation being taken seriously is a recent one, and especially in the 70s-90s it seems like the obsolete technologies were just forgotten and left behind. Also because the idea of video games being an art form is more recent. Game preservation should be taken seriously, otherwise the early years of gaming could meet the same fate as those silent films.
Thinking about how most things are so obscure yet hide so much value is what has kept me up at night since childhood. Almost all of my other anxieties or melancholies I've come to terms with but this gets me down every time I consider it.
I agree, but I need to give a quick *shad* out to your pfp
I looked up the definition for melancholy, and it pointed to this video.
It is a curse and a blessing. Things happen. It just does
I once saw a huge pile of shredded scrap metal sitting in a harbor waiting to be put on a ship and taken somewhere to be melted down. Each shred a torn and twisted piece of iron, maybe 10 cm long. And of these millions of pieces, every single one would have a completely unique shape, unlike any other piece in that pile. Or the hundreds of other piles that have been in that place before, or will be there in the future. And all the thousands of similar piles that sit in ports and recycling plants all around the world.
Every one a unique human artifact. Almost every single one of them never held in a hand and looked at before it went into some furnace to be molten down weeks, months, or years later.
wtf is your pfp
“Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back”. - Marcus Aurelius
"Smile for me now, brother."
he's wrong, we can frown back too
@@aadarshroy3216 Or fight it, overcome death and the human condition.
It’s funny… I never thought of myself as a historian in anyway. But one time, during the start of covid, my friend had come over and pointed out that my movie collection had gotten so large he was considering giving me his small movie collection cause, as he put it, “he wanted to help the film preservation library I was building.” I never saw myself as anything like that and simply chuckled. But then, also during the beginning of covid, I started modding my game systems (my Wii for example) to own digital games I had never played and ones I did (as backups). That same friend pointed out again “Man you could start a library in here with all these.” Then, after one day of watching Red Letter Media, I realized… he was right.
I just loved films cause I loved acting but I also wanted to preserve things for my future kids or friends or someone I love and I saw how easy it was lose to something to negligence and time… but maybe if I build something, maybe a library, one large enough, idk….
I don’t know what it is I am exactly saying, but I suppose what I am getting at is this video resonated with me. So much art and history are lost to time but if there was a way to preserve them, even if it’s at some dude’s house in The US, …idk, shouldn’t you try? That meant something to someone… Each time something is created or made, it meant something to someone. I wanna preserve that and show people what it was: a film, a game, a story. Just something to appreciate.
Thanks Solar.
ive always respected the people still running dvd/blue-ray rental places; these guys know every movie in their store, and it's likely that they are some of the last people who might know of a bunch of obscure films which would otherwise be lost to time forever.
I remember reading Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere,” which is essentially a book about obscurity, and, ironically, even though Neil Gaiman is a famous writer, his book “Neverwhere” has a very tiny following and very few people have read it. I wanted to look up fan art just out of curiosity, and there were only like, 3 pieces of fan art for the book on Google images. But for reasons that this video goes into, there was something strangely comforting about that.
Really fitting for that book, haha
Is that the one where they live underground?
I know this book because it was on a reading list in my high school English class back in 2010 or so. It was the first Gaiman story I'd read, and after following that up with American Gods and Coraline, he became one of my favorite authors
I googled that book because it intrigued me and I though maybe it would be a fun read and to my surprise, I actually already read it. I got it for my birthday a long time ago.
i also read this book! i didn't think much of it though lol.
"Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
―Anonymous Greek Proverb
"Real living is living for others."
― Bruce Lee
The Zen concept of Artless Art.
"Amogo sussey" -me
pretty similar to the "Legacy, what is legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you'll never get to see" line from Hamilton
Sometimes I think people who promote this point of view, and the people who ultimately ended up sacrificing themselves in wars and such, were people who were just really depressed and loathed themselves, so they tried to find meaning in life by being "useful" to others, even if at cost of their own life (which meant little to them anyway). And then we romanticized this for generations.
It's ironic since you've long since proven you're incapable of coming up with anything nearly as profound, nor ever following the advice these haphazardly pasted quotes posit.
Probably didn't even watch the video, Imao.
I absolutely love stuff like this. These kinds of discussions, these kinds of plots. Stuff that connects the distant future with the distant past. Stuff like Tom Scott's video on the uranium waste storage facility, storytelling in adventure time, or even when I found a rusty car in the woods with a tree growing through it's broken windshield. The ruins of Chernobyl is a form of beauty I enjoy. Failing human infrastructure being taken over by moss and decay
This kinda vibe is why I love the first fallout game so much because there's so much of that in there, which I as a modern person and understand and decipher, but someone living in the post apocalyptic wasteland would barely even notice, nevermind understand. Like how a gang of Raiders settled in an abandoned mall named themselves "the blades", after an advertisement on the wall of the building for a barber's shop.
This video reminds me of "Toto Forever", an art installation in the Namibian desert made by German-Namibian artist Max Siedentopf. It's a set of 6 pedestals with speakers on top of them, connected to an mp3 on a central pedestal. The speakers and the mp3 are charged via small solar panels, and the mp3 is playing Africa by Toto, until the earth undoes this strange exposition.
What intrigues me about this installation is what kind of artpiece it is. It's more of a metaphysical artwork. To me, it's the best attempt at making a representation of obscurity, a deliberate attempt at making art for nothing and nobody, and it facinates me deeply.
People have complained that the installation will never exist forever, some giving it a max lifespan of 3 months. To me however, that adds to the message I see in the artwork, obscurity. It will be there, until by chance, it will be destroyed by nature itself.
That's also what draws my interest during the Public Art classes I take during art school. They're best experienced as something you just stumble into without really looking for it. Check out Anthony Gormley's human statue installations for sth similar to Toto Forever.
One of my favorite things to discover is old communities like an old subreddit or old discord server and still see it thrive with a little bit of people there, expressing their interests till the end of time. It's refreshing to know that even if something is obscure, there was still probably a group of people talking about it at one point. It doesn't matter if that group was small, just to know that life's limitless probabilities led them to that moment.
its kinda cute tbh..
Oh this hits too close to home. I Shed a tear
And then one of the saddest things is a once thriving forum that has slowly decreased in posts until where each subforum hasn't been posted on for months or even years. Makes you wonder if each of those users realized that this would be the last time they would post on or even look at the website.
I feel that way with Killing Floor 1
I've been on the internet a long time, and I always felt a profound sadness when I saw communities dry up and die. As I went from a child, to a teen, to a young man, and now slightly-beyond-young-man, I've perhaps become more jaded to that feeling. There's a very deep sense of loss, with these kinds of things. Like walking into an old home set to be demolished that over it's long life housed several generations of people. At one point, their home was the central point around which their lives revolved, and now it's .. nothing. A forgotten husk that once held meaning, and very soon, will cease to even exist, and not long after that perhaps, cease to even be remembered.
I remember seeing a facebook post about a fundraiser to help restore an old MIDI keyboard that only had roughly ~15 produced, most of which being lost or destroyed. I'm not quite sure why, but it just captivated me. Seeing a somewhat small facebook group dedicated to restoring this old piece of technology that could have easily been swept under the rug in seconds. What caught my attention more was the mystique, and how there were only 2 recordings of the MIDI that had the original sound.
The Vsauce vibes are strong and I mean that in the best way possible.
I somehow find it calming to think about being forgotten. We put so much meaning in every little thing and occasion and that’s not bad. But sometimes we get too obsessed.
Current: "Fortnite sucks!"
Future: "In this record, a person proclaims disdain for an antiquated period of time, equal two two weeks. He must have hated it so much that he misspelled it as well."
Future Future: "Fortnite sucks!"
Ah a primitive ape is making a statement from which we can infer that that ape must've hated the word "to" so much _to_ have misspelled it
-Signed, 2356 AD
@@unlimited8410 human, whatever you are, whoever you are, past or future,we must have 3 misspell the "to". We shall, as we name ourselves ; must thrive off such consistencies.
(English in not my first language btw ₩
You're trying to make it sound like I think Coolsville Sucks!
This video is filling the void left by old-school Vsauce, and for that, I cannot thank you enough, Solar.
My “mentor” once gave me a bunch of old pirated albums he’s passed away uncle that had a big influence on him had I didn’t just get his uncles movie taste, music taste and politics but I understood who he was as a person which was fascinating and saddening at the same time.
Chester A Arthur actually had a pretty interesting life/presidency. He did a lot to end the practice of cronyism, despite that being how he got basically every professional position of his life.
I don't fucking care lol
@@joaquinlaroca2886 you will be forgotten
@@joaquinlaroca2886 Nobody cares you don't care, lol
@@Cardboardtank i know, that's the good thing about caring
@@joaquinlaroca2886 ... ya know what fair fair enough.
as an artist, this reminds me that in the storage rooms of museums, galleries, and warehouses, there are artworks only the VIPs (donors, close partners, famous people) have seen at an auction or private show. they have and will probably never be photographed for the internet for the sake of exclusivity. i would love to get into archiving at some point, and have quite a few works that are obscure already and ready to be shown to the world :)
When I was a teen, the thought of being forgotten when I die disturbed me so much I had this nagging thought in my head that I had to do something memorable, good or evil. I'm glad I don't feel that anymore, but every so often I'm conflicted on how to feel about the thought of insignificance and being forgotten. Sometimes it's comforting to know that in the grand scheme of things and after enough time goes by, your actions ultimately don't matter, sometimes it's existentially crushing.
I really like your videos, they make me feel things. Those are the best kinds of videos. I don't necessarily believe in the concept of souls and all, but I'd say your videos touch my soul.
get mummified and put your hard drive in your tomb so archeologists will know who you are after 2000 years
For me, even if I am not remembered, I hope my actions will help others, and have an impact on the world, even after I am forgotten.
@@goldendeagle1914 bruh how do I even know I was remembered?
@@goldendeagle1914 the same happened with analog transmissions, outdated and unusable with modern technology.
@@aadarshroy3216 put a little guide on how to use it or maybe wait until we have better and longer lasting methods of data storage
This is why I hate current day TH-cam; it doesn't matter how many weird, obscure videos I watch, I don't get any similar recommended anymore. It used to be a game to pick out the strangest thing in my recommendations list and go from there
Yuuuup... miss that game
The internet in general has become that way. Everything used to feel personal and passionate to the people putting it out there. Discovering new things was fun before the algorythm, now it feels like a series of closed loops.
But it also feels somewhat more rewarding, when you eventually find something obscure nowadays.
the best way to find them is to look through old channels playlists
Ya, reccomended + video replies used to have a lot of 1000 less viewed videos that was actually related to what you were watching. This is how YTPs became so big, because you watched one YTP, and several others would be in the related tab. You can still find these videos but it's getting harder.
This is certainly surreal to watch as an alumni from Union College (NY), since Chester Arthur is the one US President that came from our campus and is known by Dutchmen as one of our most distinguished alumni. There’s even a statue of him near the student campus center, which I remember being decorated from time to time. Just goes to show how the definition of “obscure” always depends on who you ask.
The worst thing ever on the internet is to have something obscure deleted, because it will not be archived and will actually be lost forever
Amen! Theres this artist I used to love that abruptly deleted all of her art. I have spent countless hours trying to find any scrap of information about where she went and why. It's been years, but I still think about her art and how I'll likely never see it again.
@@maicey_t. yeah it's sad that artists can't understand the impact their work has on their fans, that's why i archive every underground song that i like because i know they'll be deleted
Stop... You are giving me to much existential crisis...
Bebo
the view out your bedroom window is lost forever every single day, is it really that hard to let go of?
Another brilliant video! The idea makes me think of Percy Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias and the idea of entropy.
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
And yet, we still recall his name...
@@sortagoodish8491 although, do we? Surely if a mountainesque statue had eroded to sand the plaque would have been long gone as well. I like to think that the writer of the plaque was trying to piggy-back on the greatness of this ancient ruin that had withstood time.
breaking bad reference
Sometimes I wish I could start civilization from the beginning and just write down and document every item or event that happens, from the start of the world, universe, civilization or whatever my mind wonders off to to the end and restart over and over until everything is documented
This video was 20 minutes long yet it felt like it went by so quickly. Another great video Solar! It always feels so strange to think about what future life will be like and to grasp one's own insignificance sometimes. I have my own complex and different life and yet you and I will likely never know of each other but what we put out on the internet.
Hello, just commenting to exchange a fleeting trace of my existence with another human o/
@@RyanTosh scary to think that. For every comment is bit a fleeting moment. That our only contact with each other in this 1 comment that will be forgotten
@@Ttegegg that's deep
commenting to leave my mark as a human being on this earth in north america, in the united states, in a state that starts with an i, in a pretty big city.
the feeling of sonder
dictionaire of strange sorrows
Sometimes I forget the "statues" from Pompeii aren't people sleeping but people literally boiling, bursting and burning alive. Their legacies are not what they did during life, but their last agonizing moments
my hobby is investing in really small indie games, its so fun being part of tiny fanbases like that just because of the sheer amount of interaction you get with game devs. and when the game finally comes out, you play it, and you see a part you suggested, thats awesome. i made that happen.
Hmm. Something that I consider to be “the most unknown” are dreams, actually. Like, the ones you have at night. You may have elaborate stories play out in your head at night, that make you sad or happy or scared or angry or… any other emotion, but chances are, no one will ever be able to understand them the way you did in the hours you spent within them. Including yourself, if you’re someone who doesn’t remember your dreams upon waking and doesn’t write them down.
I think about that a lot. My dreams are typically very elaborate, with worlds and stories and characters that would be amazing to share with the world. But then I wake up. And all I can remember is “something interesting happened but *I don’t know what*.” I think that feeling makes dreams even more unknown then things that absolutely no one truly knows about.
Oh, and I encourage you to throw any cool dreams you’ve had down here, in the comments. Perhaps it will help them be preserved for others to see… if you even remember them.
I've been keeping a dream journal for a few years now and here's the last one I wrote down.
I had a dream where Christopher Watkins was was my father and for some reason I felt animosity towards him because he disappeared for a long time. My aunt anjeanette was there too. We went to a gala to support various people, and I chose to support "sammy wong" because it was the offensive thing to do. For some reason my aunt anj sat about 20-25 feet from me. She told me that she was thinking of getting steak and peanut soup (or something like that) and I said "if you want to mess with your stomach go ahead, idc" but I had to yell it because she was so far away. This happened several times where I'd have to yall to respond to her. Each time I was agitated with her. I looked around the flat rectangular table I was sitting at and saw an empty seat, so i moved the plate to invite her over. That's when, I dont know if it was Christopher Watkins (my long lost father), a stranger, or my own subconscious, but I heard something along the lines of "do you really want to invite her over?" And I said no, not really, she's okay where she's at. (She was acting as crazy in my dreams as real life) so the voice/stranger/father asked me why I was going to invite her over and I said something to the effect of, "well I feel guilty" (she was sitting by strangers, not talking to them) the gala ends and we're all walking up a hill except christopher walkin had won a moped. I asked him if he had fun and he replied, "I'm a national treasure" that's when I woke up.
Omg I just had the exact same thought! Like- you barely ever remember them and if you do you probably don't remember all the detail and I also doubt that dreams that aren't lucid dreams would repeat themselves or as I said you'd just forget them. And even the ones you remember will be forgotten quite quickly unless you either write them down or tell someone about them but even that way they'll be forgotten sometime it's just- dreams are so unreachable and you will never be able to exactly document them it's like another universe and even when everyone experiences them the individual dreams are so unknown and unreachable
I keep a dream journal and some dreams really are like that. They make you think that it's an interesting and complex story when in reality it just portrays the feeling of it.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
@Daniel Scott it was actually written by Percy Shelley
Did not expect Shelly quotes but yay
@@oracle8192
And therein lies the other problem of legacies;
If one manages to leave any legacy at all, it will probably be misappropriated, mis-remembered, corrupted and maybe destroyed in other ways other than just being forgotten about...... as Julius Caesar once remarked regarding the problem of digital data storage over the coming centuries.... ;)
@@galaxysurfer1122 context is important too but no one cares about that, people will always simplify things
@@goldendeagle1914
You're absolutely spot on.
I've noticed that happening with archeology; someone finds some remains of a person who died many many centuries ago (or an artifact) and automatically assumes that person/artifact lived or was produced there and that they/it had always lived there and yadda yadda yadda, when in fact they could just have be a transient and just happened to have unfortunately died there or brought there as a one-off, but they, the archaeologist, then bases their whole narrative about how that person lived etc. etc when in fact they can't say any of that with any reasonable certainty.
I recently read a novel in which the main character didn't want to be remembered because after they die, they lose the control of the memory that people will have of them. Somebody could write a Tribute or Memoir of that person and make it seem like they were a complete different character...forever. Especially famous person's will be remembered through the works that other people make about their lives from their perspective to that person.
The perspective that you yourself had about yourself will vanish immediately with your death.
Eventually they’ll edit Solar’s Wikipedia to read:
“Profession: Philosopher”
The dude who makes me question myself
@UCvP7QcMvV2TpvyhG7t8erRA ok
You mean Wikitubia right?
Fun fact: Harrison's inaugural address lasted approximately 1% of his presidency
That would be like a week.
@@Yora21 I'm dumb and did the math in my head and got it wrong. Here's the actual math: 31 day presidency, that's 744 hours. 1h 45min speech is 1.75 hours. 1.75 hours is ~0.24% of 744 hours
@@Yora21 It would be about a working day after subtracting the lunch break.
@@Yora21 A week would be about a quarter of his presidency, not freaking 1%.
I usually never leave comments. But somehow this one makes me feel compelled to do so.
I want this video to reach as many people as possible. Simply incredible.
One idea that terrifies me is that there could have been genocides in the past that we will never know about because their perpetrators succeeded in wiping out all evidence of the people’s existence
Englishmen be like
native americans be like
@@Recreationaltrespasser rug the fact you know it happened me as it’s evidence want wiped
I think archeologist once found skeletons of an entire tribe of neanderthals(?)(could be just humans) who all died from violence.
i think a lot of ancient warfare was most likely genocide like the invasion of gaul by the romans and the war against the jews by the romans
I think about the topics in your videos frequently. Many times before you even put out the video. Its refreshing to see someone cover such enigmatic and obscure topics in a way I can relate with. Not a lot of creators do that. These thoughts and ideas sometimes plague me and I don't know how to put them into words or interpret them, thanks for being able to do that for me.
Exactly my thoughts, it makes us feel a tad less alone
You should also try watching Micah Tewers! He made a film and it made me feel the same way as watching a solar sands video
For years I've been trying to put words to that feeling of how much unknown there is, and how in another perspective, we're the unknown. Thanks for the work man.
I actually find it really comforting, the thought that I too will be forgotten one day. It means that no matter what mistakes I make, they all pale in comparison to the grand universe.
Even if your name is long forgotten in the sands of time, the actions you'd made, the wakes you'd created on the metaphorical pond that is existence, will continue to reverberate long after you are gone. Even though you might be forgotten, your actions, no matter how minute, will reverberate endlessly and irreversibly. Because of you, people will be held up or ahead of schedule. Some people will experience things they never had before, because they interacted with you. Their entire lives and the people they influence after that point are in flux, because of your influence.
Rebecca Black once had the most disliked video on TH-cam, and was arguably the most ridiculed person on the internet in 2010.
And yet, I don't think I've stumbled across a single reference to her in the last 5 years at least, if not more.
Unless you're a person like Hitler
For as long as humans have been around, we've had a desire to be remembered for as long as we have known the concept of remembering. We see it everywhere.
Graffiti of names on the sides of walls.
Mother's and children's handprints in moulding clay.
Even handprints in caves, with small handprints of children higher above the adults, where they were lifted so their print could be placed and remembered.
"I was human, I was here."
It's such a bittersweet reality, to know that you'll most likely be forgotten, but at the same time, that cosmic insignificance means we need to do our best.
It's ok to be a little critter called a human, just be a good human while you're here.
Beautiful...and there will come a day where your post...and my comment tied to it will fly away into oblivion like a kite into the starry void above.
But even so, the stories and principles that make us human will never vanish...there will always be people reaching out with flailing hands and saying
"I was human, I was here."
Well said.
Or you can be infamous :)
@@monsieurlemon Blow up a nuke in central america
It’s even scarier to remember even the most famous and most infamous will also be forgotten in time. Ghandi and hitler will be long forgotten aspects of history one day just as insignificant as the average man for their actions. In the end there is no real reason to be good or evil or anything in between but for the most part the majority of people try to what they view as good despite this due to some innate part of human nature though one man’s good actions are another’s evil so people can only do so much as what they view to be just
16:01 My man hit the world's first dab before dying and becoming an absolute legend.
Solar Sands is moving into VSauce territory, and I, for one, am very excited to see this process
I knew I wasn’t the only one who noticed this
@@footofthunder9763 h
@@jaceyjohnson8922 ?
@@mattyg7540 h
just yesterday i attended my grandpa's funeral, and a little bit before it started i began to wander the graveyard with my sister. while i was looking at the different tombstones, reading the names, birth/death dates and just information in general, all i could think about is what their lives might've been like. what family did they have? what were some hobbies did they have? what was their childhood like? etc, etc. and then i realized that my grandpa would soon become one of those people. just a simple tombstone on the ground with thousands of others, and passerbys having no understanding of who he was. soon to be forgotten. the realization hit me really hard tbh, knowing that someone you know a lot about with great significance in your life will forever be unknown to those strangers.
if you really care about persevering someone's memory, know that with our technology it's possible to archive data forever. just look at tutankhamon for example
I love that this ended on a positive message, instead of just "we're all gonna die and be forgotten everything sucks"
we're all gonna die and everything is doomed to be erased, so why not have fun and make mistakes since screwing up isnt the end of the world
This, this is the horror that really hits me. All the jumpscares and creepy things in the world will stop being scary after I've seen them a few times, but this is something else. Maybe it's the realization that everything I do just adds onto a pile of meaninglessness. Maybe it's knowing that the possibility that none of us here today will have any impact on the world in the long run. Many before us have lived, and been forgotten, and at some point it will end for all of us, and the same will happen again. We have a limited time to be alive, for some of us it could be a century, and for others, maybe even just a few minutes. Nothing is certain, I could be hit by a car tomorrow and everything I've ever done will be put to waste. What I'm getting from this is even if there's nothing I can do to improve the world, I can make it better for some people, and push aside this existential dread for just a few moments, and that could be all someone needs to achieve their goals. Another thing I'm realizing is making this comment is like throwing a stone into a pile of gravel, it's possible that nobody ever sees this comment, and I'm personally fine with that. If you are seeing this, go make someone's life just a bit better, you would never know what they might be going through
This type of horror is 1 real and 2 unavoidable
a fellow ralsei enjoyer
didnt think i would see one under this video
ok ulquiorra
I saw this comment
I don't think you Even Realize How Embarrassing you are right now Obessing over being Remembered and Being overwhelmed By such a thing that it takes you over like the Primal instinct of Lust
Imagine how much comments are never read. Solar... You’ve made me cry.
This is why I like doing Genealogy. Discovering people that I would have never known about otherwise but have directly resulted in me being me
“Ah, this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps in the whole Western world, and it’s without a signature: Chartres. A celebration to God’s glory and to the dignity of man. All that’s left, most artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked radish. There aren’t any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand, choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish.
“Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life. We’re going to die. ‘Be of good heart,’ cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced - but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.“
- Orson Welles
This is why i love finding my ancestors. It is like bringing them back to life. They have been forgoten, died. But they still live in my mind and my records. So they are very alive to me.
thats a very wholesome concept, but how do you get to know about ancestors beyond 3-4 generations? Just asking out of curiosity
@@tanishapandey400 monke
There’s a huge cemetery like a five minute walk from my house and the oldest part, from around the 17th century, is toward the middle of the cemetery. It is sectioned off with its own gate, like a smaller graveyard inside a cemetery. Sometimes I go there and leave offerings or libations at the graves. Idk, it just makes me sad when I think about nobody visiting or caring for the graves anymore.
I loved this video.
Obscurity and notoriety are things I think about a lot after creating my channel. I basically made it just to make History memes and shitposts, I never expected to get almost a million views on one of my videos, or to be approaching 10,000 subs. I am grateful for the attention of course, but I don't know how to process it really. The idea that several stadiums full of people have viewed something that I created just hasn't sunk into my brain in a meaningful way. It seems like something that should effect me in my daily life, but it doesn't nearly as much as you would think. The idea that I could pass someone on the street, a complete stranger, who has viewed my memes, and we would never realize it, is so strange to me. I want to use the fact that an audience of people who want to see what I make has suddenly fallen into my lap to spread ideas I care about, but I don't know where to start. I guess you could say I am both obscure and well-known at the same time, depending on how you draw the boundaries of the box of people you include me and my work within.
The most interesting aspect of this is that, even though thousands of people have seen my creations, it is still meaningless. My work will fade. The bounds of what constitutes fame have greatly expanded with the proliferation of the internet. In a way, I find this comforting. It doesn't matter if we are remembered after our deaths. We will be dead, we will have no stake in this world any longer after our demises. I take inspiration from the philosophies of Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in this regard. Reality is absurd, but this gives us the absurd freedom to create our own meanings relative to human experience in an ultimately meaningless world. When studying history one comes across so many small threads and tid-bits that could lead to a lifetime of research and exploration. The scope of what can be experienced is so great, and yet so small at the same time. I guess you could say that the human condition is...Uncanny.
Thanks for reading :)
"Love today and seize all tomorrows"
- All Tomorrows by C.M. Kosemen
That's just an advertising pitch
I always chuckle thinking of the ridiculously unlikely scenario that in thousands of years, humanity is almost gone and one of the only surviving pieces of literature is that book, a fictional recount of the future of humanity.
It’d be very confusing to find and read that.
A thought I’ve had for every single name I’ve seen in history class is that I will never know them as a person. Not in the obvious way that I’ll ever meet Andrew Jackson out for tea, or see Shakespeare on bench, but in that whoever they were as a person we’ll never completely understand. When you create, you’ll never be perfectly satisfied with something, but whether or not you were proud it’s unknown whether that creation may live on for thousands of years past you, regardless of quality. Shakespeare isn’t remembered as a person in my class, he’s remembered as a name on a book. It’s unlikely anybody in every single one of my classes cared about who we were discussing for who they were, and isnt that just as bad? This comment is just kinda clueless rambling but it’s an idea I’ve been sculpting and studying in the back of mind.
i think i know what you mean. sometimes when i'm in a car ride or on the bus, i see all these homes of people, with so much personality in them. every house is different in every small detail and you can tell so much from the person. the person that lives there, they know that place so well, it's familiar to them, but to me it will become just a shadow in my memory, to be forgotten soon. all that personality, all that life that the simplest things hold. can you imagine how easy they are to forget? it kind of makes me sad. there's a whole story behind everything we see, but we may never know about it. we probably won't. ever.
all the memories of the people that pass you by on the street, they all had happy moments, sad moments, families, friends, things they were proud of, likes and dislikes.. and one day everything that makes them.. *them*, will just fade away with time. that's sad.
This very topic always comes to my mind whenever I get nostalgic over something. The fashion, the TV and movies, types of technology that existed, the greater social/cultural climate, the trends, the overall aesthetic, the people you knew and the different person you once where once comprised a world different to this one which now no longer exists and so when we reflect back on another time period we experience that bittersweet emotional sensation where we feel warm while reminiscing about better time and place but are also faced with the reality that the world we once knew and loved (at least more than this one) doesn't exist anymore and never will and whose only remnants are old artifacts, photographs, digital media and memories.
I watched him in real time evolve from Undertale Deviant Art videos to this
It truly puts a tear in my eye
Oh god the idea of forgotten.
How the feeble have risen.
"Chester A. Arthur is the most unknown U.S. President."
Counterpoint: Die Hard With A Vengeance
Additional counterpoint: Futurama:
"Chester A. Arthur fall down."
"Just when I was getting over my Chester A. Arthuritis..."
As someone who knows my Presidents pretty well (having at least a good stockpile of trivia on almost all of them), I would have to say that Franklin Pierce is the most unknown President, because even I don't know anything about him, except that his campaign nickname was "Handsome Frank". And whenever I think to myself maybe I should go learn more about him, I just experience this feeling of a black hole opening up, like "No, there is nothing to find out."
I lived in a party house after high school with a group of guys. When I moved out, I printed off hundreds of little pictures of my face and hid them everywhere in the house. This accomplished nothing and made everyone very uneasy
For those interested, there are exactly 2 articles ever written about Silbannacus by academic sources. The first is "L' empereur Silbannacus: un second antoninien" by Sylviane Estiot from 1996, the second is "A New Roman Coin" by H. Mattingly from (1940). They say exactly what Solar said, but thought somebody might like knowing that.
Thank you :)
That "cave of hands" reminds me of a time that I walked on a footpath in a estuary, and I realized that that path could have... MUST have... been used by people for thousands of years. I tried to fathom all the footsteps that helped tamp down the soil, how day after day, month after month, year after year, people carried on, surviving, thriving, within the bounds of Nature...
What about the fact you could of been the first person to walk a certain path, and the last
This channel, Solar sands is a great example of doing something others love, getting popular, and then with that popularity and fame, you feel comfortable in spreading your opinions, your thoughts and what you love. Even this very comment can be lost under obscurity *doomed to be buried under others* but hey! Maybe not?
i screenshotted your comment.
@@MappingRobloxAnimations I screenshotted your reply
I made a mod for a game called Overgrowth. The mod changes the attack animations of characters and some of them have superpowers and bizarre abilities that haven't been made into a thing because the community has a more gritty and grounded taste when it comes to mods. I'm a pioneer of sorts but, no one will care, no one will remember me, and no one asked but, that's alrriiigghtt!
Overgrowth mods are a joy, what’s your mod called?
overgrowth! the bunny game!
@@connors3356OH YEAH, I REMEMBER THE BUNNY GAME!
Before they changed the algorythms, when google was still highly accurate, page 3-10~were still worth the effort.
now often times, even page 1 isnt related to your search in the slightest
It's truly a potemkin village now, much like most of the other search engines.
It's fine if you're specific. It's a craps shoot if you type a handful of words vaguely related to that thing you barely remember and it's been bugging you for, like, three weeks now.
I just realized halfway through this video, I literally think about this topic of just sheer obscurity very very frequently. Like even today a few hours ago I was thinking about human obscurity. In the shower just thinking to myself that my great great grandfathers are literally entirely lost to history. Their names entirely forgotten, their lives entirely forgotten, their very existence as human beings has been entirely forgotten. Every daily routine they had, every single word they ever spoke in their lives, their thoughts, emotions, memories, possessions, lost to time. And furthermore, that I myself will likely suffer the same fate. It is not as depressing as I make it sound though, I don't necessarily argue with the point in itself nor even rebel against it, but it's interesting to consider at a shallow level nevertheless. The interesting point about it though is that one cannot say that "it is almost like they never existed" because their existence directly led to our very existence. I am in some way convinced that we carry on the essence of our forefathers within us somehow. Maybe a partial transfer of human spiritualness or something in this way, quite metaphysical and unprovable. But still, I feel strangely connected to a life of which I've never personally lived.
This same elaboration you provide in this video is something I tell myself everyday, and I'm not pretending at all- "One day I will be dead, literally no one will ever remember anything I did, much less my failures, even my successes. That means I should do absolutely anything I want to do in this world so long as it doesn't hurt anyone directly or indirectly. It does not matter at all in the end."
worse than a half-hearted praise, worse than the meanest comment someone could say about your work, justified or not, the worst gesture that could happen to a piece of art is absolutely nothing, perfect silence, because it defeats the whole purpose of art: to define and impact culture
That's why youtube shouldn't remove the dislike button
Personally, as an artist, I've always seen art as communication - so, to "say something" and it not be "heard" hurts in a deep, deep way.
I feel this in all my videos and creation lmao
@@TygerTigerable
Same
If you could edit out humanity, you could see only the creation left behind. We are machines of expression, expression that is to be enjoyed by the living
This is possibly your best video yet. I love it! I keep rewatching it because of how much it makes me think.
If you want to study someone’s impact on the internet, try the legacy of Neil Cicierega. I can guarantee that you’ve seen/heard some of his work before and you may not even know it. Apart from his videos, I don’t think his musical act would’ve become as popular as it is (or even my biggest niche interest) if it wasn’t for the preserving power of the internet. You can listen to his start in making midi files, to when he first took up the moniker Lemon Demon in 2003, all the way up to his polished Spirit Phone which was eight years in the making, and in both areas of content he’s still chugging along!!
Even on the internet, once big names fade away and become obscure, Fred is a good example. He had various rolls on children’s shows due to his internet fame but now if you mention his name your brain immediately snaps. Even the internet’s preserving powers fail against the human memory + strings of events.
Oh, I remember Lucas Cruikshank. I just don't look him up because he was kinda a one-note comedy act.
Turns out he's doing ok for himself. Still on the platform.
omg i totally agree with what youre saying about neil cicierega! one night i went down a rabbit hole and found one of his first youtube channels
@@hollykeiser7258 I got into Lemon Demon around 2019, learned about his giant portfolio in 2020, and seriously fell into the rabbit hole about two months ago
wasnt he the dude who did harry potter puppet pals
@@eeelaynuh yup!! But also Brodyquest, Two Trucks, Windows 95 tips and tricks, Ariel Needs Legs , and much more •w•
“The Man From Earth” is a movie that takes the idea of a lone man who has lived long enough to see most of human history. I recommend to check it out if you thought this was interesting
I've been trying to fight obscurity with varying degrees of success for basically my entire life, and it reminds me a bit of Sisyphus. We can keep pushing the boulder up and up the hill, but eventually we have to go to sleep and the boulder runs down. No matter how far we push it up the hill, it will eventually reach the ground. Some people's boulder reaches the ground in a few seconds while others keep rolling down for thousands of years, but there always is a ground. Even the most famous person ever will eventually be forgotten.
Another thing worth noting is that a lot of interurban cars and streetcars have been completely forgotten and lost. A lot of interurbans and streetcars have no photographs of them, no blueprints, or don't exist anymore. They are only known by their number in one or two books, and maybe what company manufacturered it and when, but we do not know what it looks like. Only former employees or riders would have remembered these pieces of equipment are employees of that line and the people who rode them. Most of them have passed, and now, they are gone.
Most streetcars and interurban cars have been almost forgotten.
I make chiptune as a hobby, and this video has touched me in a very vulnerable spot that I think most artists can relate to. My work is known to maybe a thousand people- which is a lot to me (I got lucky), but in the grand scheme of things, not a lot at all.
The work I post is only fragments of what I've been making though... in the end, when I die, how many things will I have created then discarded, or simply let rot on my hard drive? How much work and effort will die on this computer when it succumbs to entropy, and how much will be wiped on the next? When I die, will anyone look at my creations on my computer, or will all of my data be wiped away and given to the next person?
Even the things I've uploaded will only last as long as the TH-cam servers, or even earlier, if my channel is deleted for some reason.
Perhaps though, someone will like something that you have made so much that they may incorporate it into their own work. Perhaps it will be a background track or they may have extended/added onto one of your creations but however it is done you will live on through them and their work, if they have decency you'll even be credited. And in time whatever they produce may inspire someone else to create so a roundabout way you and your creations will carry on beyond you or your singular life, diffusing into culture itself.
I think about that a lot too, thats why I have a SoundCloud account I shitpost everything on. Only has 20ish followers but it’s relieving to know the advancements I made in music will at least be SOMEWHERE.
I have a folder on my phone called "my beats". Most of these only I have listened to and ever will listen to. Sometimes I send them to my friends.
Pre-2010 I actually used to go sometimes as far as page 7. The relative importance often slowly degrades, but occasionally I see something I was looking for that just wasn't as popular as the front pages. Sadly, nowadays I think there is a "cliff" of relevance after page 1. Their old page rank algorithm, while flawed, wouldn't have had a hard cutoff. It's so ridiclous that sometimes if you search an exact phase without the quotes, it won't even appear on google search, but plenty of irrelevant stuff will start appearing on page 2. I don't like the current system.
"I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
~Percy Shelly.
I think the most unknown thing will always be the future.