My Favorite Youtube Video Turned 18 This Month

Twenty million videos are uploaded to Youtube everyday, but that doesn't matter because my most favorite one is old enough to drive now. I am referring to Rocket explosion compilation.

Rocket explosion compilation -- I'm gonna keep putting the title in italics, because the words in the title aren't all capitalized and I don't want things to be confusing -- was uploaded January 21, 2008 by someone named xeepers. Xeepers only has 6 videos to their name, with the most recent being from 2023 and the rest from 2008. Xeepers got out while the getting was good, and why not? You're not going to improve on Rocket explosion compilation.

Look, there are arguably better videos on Youtube. There are certainly sleeker and longer and higher-quality videos on there. But Rocket explosion compilation is, to me, the ideal Youtube video. It's five minutes of footage of rockets exploding set to Europe's The Final Countdown. It represents an era of what Youtube used to be, before video essays and people in gamer chairs with RGB-lit shelves of toys behind them pleading with us to mash that button and hit that bell. The thumbnail is an ugly mess, but at least there's no red circle or someone mugging to the camera.

I return to Rocket explosion compilation at LEAST once a year. One time I watched Rocket explosion complation while killing time at the Johnson Space Center in Houston! Near a real-life rocket!! I've saved the video in multiple locations, just in case something ever happens to xeepers' account (god forbid). Sometimes I just want to watch rockets explode.

I first became aware of Rocket explosion compilation sometime in the early 2010s. When I was a kid I had this edutainment software about space. One of the pieces of educational material on the CD was a compilation of very early rockets exploding set to jaunty ragtime music. The whole thing was supposed to evoke "ha ha, we've come a long way since then!" and I LOVED it; I'd load up the CD just to watch the teensy, grainy video. I figured surely someone would have uploaded that video into Youtube. I eventually found it, but also in the process I found Rocket explosion compilation, a longer and better-quality version of my childhood video, but now with a fun Europe soundtrack to boot!

Maybe you're thinking "wow, to like that video THIS much? This guy must really know a thing or two about rockets!"

Buddy, I dunno shit about rockets.

I mean yeah if you put on a documentary about early NASA I'm gonna plop myself down and watch the whole thing, and I've dabbled in Kerbal Space Program from time to time but have never had a successful launch. Well, not successful in the traditional sense. Very successful in the sense that they remind me a of launch gone awry in Rocket explosion compilation. But I can't tell you much of anything about the whys and whens of these particular rockets. I think the rocket in my most favorite clip (starts at 4:07) is a German V2? I do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it" to Nazi Germany, but I will say it's enjoyable to watch their rockets fail so spectacularly. This particular piece of footage was also in the compilation from when I was a kid.

Tip over. Pause. Explosion. Hell yeah.

Inevitably when watching Rocket explosion compilation, I think about When Buildings Collapse, a joke from The Simpsons about brainless entertainment for brainless people. I guess they got my ass. The best part is when the rockets exploded. I prefer not to think about if anyone got hurt, though.