YouTube is now an exhibit at one of the world’s biggest museums — and I’m shocked that 2006 is now considered ‘vintage’

Last year marked 20 years since YouTube was revealed to the world, as well as the anniversary of the first-ever YouTube video. To celebrate this milestone, it’s heading to one of the most famous art museums in the world, the V&A museum in London, and it’s wild to think that it’s now considered museum-worthy.

As part of the museum’s latest collection ‘Design 1900 – Now,’ which opens today (February 18), its curators have acquired a reconstruction of the original YouTube watch page from 2006, as well as a projection of the original video file for the first uploaded video titled ‘Me at the zoo’ — taken by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

While this part of the exhibit is designed to spotlight early web design aesthetics, there’s more to it than meets the eye. Its purpose is to showcase how YouTube’s early contributions to internet culture have shaped the evolution of content platforms and the formation of online communities.

“By reconstructing the original 2005 watchpage, we aren’t just showing a video; we are inviting the public to step back in time to the beginning of a global, cultural phenomenon”, YouTube’s chief executive, Neal Mohan, summarizes for the BBC.