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Ok now this is awesome. While not necessarily failing to reach its own aspirations (its pretty self-contained and low-stakes), it does show a level of poor sentiment translation that feels really good when you watch it. This video was uploaded to YouTube in 2009 and my favorite part about it is that the audio from the video clips isn’t cut out. My second favorite part of it is that its moodiness is totally undercut by a punchline-like moment at the end of the video where a cat is shown sitting by an empty water bowl as Ben Gibbard sings the line “What does it take / to get a drink in this place.”
Sometimes I feel guilty for liking something just because it’s pixelated but it’s impossible to deny the filtering/cohesive effect of low-resolution stuff. The palette of muted pinks and blues, the snow outside, the floors and the rug, it all is blurred into cohesion. I think that’s why comedians are so inclined to use 1980s-style video effects or old cameras in their sketches and Instagram Reels: it applies a streamlining aesthetic/artistic matte to something that is kind of inherently anti-aesthetics. I know nobody would care about this video if it wasn’t from the past, but I think it’s okay to acknowledge the emphasis on medium that the passage of time promotes. As I always say, if something is old or using an old device or medium, it immediately at least 51% becomes about the fact that you’re using that old device or medium. If only there was sort of incredibly popular media theorist who wrote about this.
Sometimes I feel guilty for liking something just because it’s pixelated but it’s impossible to deny the filtering/cohesive effect of low-resolution stuff. The palette of muted pinks and blues, the snow outside, the floors and the rug, it all is blurred into cohesion. I think that’s why comedians are so inclined to use 1980s-style video effects or old cameras in their sketches and Instagram Reels: it applies a streamlining aesthetic/artistic matte to something that is kind of inherently anti-aesthetics. I know nobody would care about this video if it wasn’t from the past, but I think it’s okay to acknowledge the emphasis on medium that the passage of time promotes. As I always say, if something is old or using an old device or medium, it immediately at least 51% becomes about the fact that you’re using that old device or medium. If only there was sort of incredibly popular media theorist who wrote about this.
Feb 8, 2026