Today In Pop Culture: Is YouTube Owned By Cats?

By Jeffery X Martin

It’s hard to imagine a world without YouTube. It’s even harder to comprehend that it hasn’t been around since the inception of the Internet, but the video-sharing site went live only 11 years ago, on this date. Created by three eBay employees, the company is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $40 billion dollars.

That’s a lot of funny cat videos.

Animals have always been a staple at YouTube. The first video, taken and uploaded by one of the site’s creators, is called “Me at the Zoo.” Trigger warning: there are elephants involved.

The problem with a platform like YouTube is the struggle for its soul. With practically anyone allowed to upload whatever they like, this website can be used for good or evil. Prank videos, misogynistic rants, endless vomiting, drunk girls pissing in a parking lot: all of those things and more can be found on the site, if you know where to look.

But you can also find historical events, all kinds of music, footage of beautiful places around the world, and educational videos. YouTube is one of the greatest repositories of human knowledge and cultural achievement.

You could literally learn how to do anything you want by watching videos on YouTube. You can fix a car! Make a quilt! Understand how the Large Hadron Collider works!

So, what do we do watch?

This.

And this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrtIznzT0qc

Also, this.

I’m not saying YouTube is owned by jokesters and babies. I know for a fact it is owned by Google, who acquired it for $1.65 billion in stock. But the channels of YouTube are filled mystery and intrigue. And if that kind of stuff is YouTube, and Google owns it, then who is really running Google?

Obviously, cats.

YouTube, like it or not, is the soul of this nation. Everything that is important to somebody is represented on this site. It is what we love, what we hate, and what we have ended up becoming, staring us right in the face with a simple click. As millions of new videos are uploaded every day, it’s important to remember two things.

We are still trying to evolve as a culture, and as a people.

But we will never, ever be better than the best YouTube video of all time.

Which is this one.