This might sound strange, but... I miss the "old days". Before a certain video-hosting site (now owned by Google) was created, before the Golden Donut, before Bittorrent... back when file-sharing networks were the primary means by which we discovered and downloaded music videos.
I partially miss those days because so few videos had been lost and forgotten (see viewtopic.php?f=2&t=130030). If you deleted or lost a video, you'd just go back on whatever file-sharing network you got it from and download it again. I used to have quite a massive library of Evangelion music videos, but I've suffered a long, intense, and statistically near-impossible string of hard drive deaths and MIAs over the past 12 years, and as a result, almost all of my old library is gone. I'm trying to rebuild it, but the fact is that if a video wasn't uploaded to the Golden Donut, it's gone now... and the majority of videos were never uploaded to the Donut. They can no longer be acquired from ye olde file-sharing networks like Morpheus and Kazaa because those networks don't exist anymore. Bittorrent killed them. Some of them used to be downloadable via a direct or indirect link from this site, but about 99% of those links are dead now. Those independently hosted websites have all died or been sent angry letters from copyright-holders saying that they can't host videos anymore. A lucky few may have been uploaded to the Yootoobs, but only a few. The Eva music video set to Adam's Song by Blink-182 is gone. The video set to "The Last Unicorn" by In Mood featuring Juliette is gone. The Donut hosts four Eva music videos using Kryptonite by Three Doors Down, but none of them are the one that I remember from the old days.
I partially miss those days because there were fewer videos in existence, and as a result, it was easier to "collect" all the ones that you were interested in. It was easier to have a "complete" library. Unless you were interested in Linkinball Z videos. You were never going to collect all of those. But I was more into Evangelion, and back in 2005 or 2006, it seemed like there were only a hundred Eva music videos in existence and I had all of them.
I partially miss those days because last good version of Windows was also the dominant one and it worked with everything, and 4 GB of RAM was more than enough for anything that you'd want to do. Now, several important games and gaming services - Steam, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and Defiance, among others - refuse to work on anything older than Win7. All of the major browsers have dropped XP support, and now my XP partition has to use an obscure browser called "Mypal" in order to keep up with websites that blindly and idiotically insist on using the newest toys and standards as soon as possible without regard for browser compatibility. Shopping for XP-compatible hardware is becoming more of a challenge as LGA 1155 motherboards and the 700-series Geforce cards get harder to find. Only LAST WEEK did I finally learn the last piece of information that I needed to get Win7 into a tolerable, usable state, and now Microsoft is pulling the plug on Win7 in less than a year.
I miss the days of referring to the Angelpotion codec as "Satanpotion" because it would do horrible things to your computer if you installed it, but it was also the only way to watch certain videos.
I do NOT miss RealOne player. Fuck that.
I partially miss those days for reasons that have nothing to do with music videos, like the fact that I had money and my own place to live back then, and I still talked to my college friends, all of whom have moved away.
Now get off my lawn!
And you'd better not cut my Medicare.
