Hello to Kindertrauma! I’ve recently discovered this site and absolutely am in love with the charming early web aesthetic! I’ve browsed through stuff on the site and I really felt like adding my own thing. Forgive me if this is worded very awkwardly, I’ve never done anything like this before.
First thing’s first, I am part of Gen Z, specifically of the group that (unfortunately) grew up on the Internet. YouTube was basically the main course of entertainment, mainly since I wasn’t allowed on sites that weren’t approved, not that I listened. Having unrestricted access led me to being a daily visitor to the weird side of YouTube. Obviously, this did not go well.
One of the more legendary videos of weird YouTube was none other than SCADshorts’s “Pencil Face”, a short film about a girl who discovers a rather smug life-sized pencil. The face on the pencil was already scary enough for little me, but my morbid curiosity just wanted me to keep watching. This pencil was able to make the girl make her drawings come to life, such as a cake and a kite.
That is until she thinks of a lollipop and tried to draw it with the pencil, only for a black hole to appear and having her get sucked in. I was incredibly sensitive as a child (and still am) so seeing that just really upset me. I never enjoy the idea of a child or an animal getting hurt.
Next YouTube video is a more relatively obscure one that I thought was lost media. The video is called “Head Flushed Down Toilet” uploaded by Joel Wise. I don’t think I really need to explain why it scared the hell out of me. That distorted face and the way the woman just mercilessly flushes it down the toilet… certainly an early YouTube video! The uploader did not deserve that much hate over a silly little video, though.
Speaking of videos considered fake, the sculptures of artist Patricia Piccininj were pretty much everywhere on videos talking about human-animal hybrids and similar, while some were in it just for the funny. Shortavi’s “WORLDS MOST UGLIEST WOMEN.” video contained one of the creatures from Piccinini’s Leather Landscape piece. Safe to say, it haunted me for days, if not months, and seeing it move just only made matters worse. I’m an art major and I honestly find it funny how some of my traumas were linked with art in some way.
Being that this is already long enough, the last video I’ll be mentioning is the one and only “I Feel Fantastic”, originally uploaded to YouTube by Creepyblog in 2009. There’s a full source of the video the clip came from that was uploaded by Yitz a couple of years ago as well.
I was a young and impressionable child that got spooked by anything out of the ordinary, and the sight of Tara the Android really struck a nerve in me. The rumors surrounding the video did not help, either, since it seemed to be common for early YouTube culture to immediately assume something unusual had to be related to serial killers. Saved Tara for last because she’s become such an icon of Gen Z’s Internet trauma. She forever lives on in our hearts… even if she terrified us originally.
That’s all I have. Wanted to keep it as short as possible. I’m probably an odd one out since i haven’t really seen anybody else write about stuff on the Internet that scared them. Strange how much time changes, huh? Thank you once again. With love, Lily
Thanks for the traumafession Lily! Can’t imagine what it was like growing up with the internet and all its crazy dark corners! It’s always great to hear some fresh kindertraumas and to know that no generation will ever find a way to avoid them!
Awesome post Lily,
Welcome to Kindertrauma, I remember Tara the android and the stories around it being communiques from a serial killer, very well.
I can definitely relate to internet traumas. I'm a millennial and I grew up with Web 1.0, back before the internet was neutered and sanitized, back before the bans, the youtube shuttening, hell, back before there was youtube, the troll storms, the great meme war (R.I.P. The Internet- we hardly knew ye) and oh boy was there some stuff out there.
I'll not go into it all, I'll just list a few names and leave it at that: Snuff X, Ogrish, Rotten.com, Stile Project. Most if not all of those are gone now, if you know what they were, you know what they were; if not, you're better off not knowing. If you're the sensitive type, I advise against looking them up as them waters get very choppy.
Shout out to 4Chan, 8Chan, Encyclopedia Dramatica and USACrime for keeping the very unsafe spirit of the old internet alive.