YouTube Attempts ‘1911’ April Fools Prank, Stock Plummets

Today is April 1. The day of fools. So of course that means an international holiday for the internet. And the folks from San Bruno are no exception.

Today YouTube launched an original video “Top Five Viral Pictures of 1911,” part of the YouTube 1911 theme taking over the site today:

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It’s hard to believe that just a century ago, YouTube was a fledgling video site for paupers and presidents alike. Today, we celebrate 100 years of YouTube, and we thought we would reflect on our inaugural year with a re-print of our first blog post from 1911. In honor of this milestone, today’s homepage is a reproduction of how you might have viewed it 100 years ago. Check out some of the most popular videos of the time and be sure to try out our new upload mode which summons a horse-drawn carriage to pick up your video submission from your home. Here’s to another epoch of great video!

The video features sepia toned old-timey versions of popular YouTube viral videos, complete with dialogue cards and a ragtime soundtrack. The highlights include “The Irksome Citrus” (Annoying Orange

), “Buggy Intruder” (Bed Intruder), “Swing Flummox” (FAILBlog), getting “Ruth Roll’d” (Rick Roll), and “Flugelhorn Feline” (Keyboard Cat).

Hats off to YouTube on this one. Also, the stock didn’t plummet. It’s actually up 8 points. Gotcha!

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