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2005·Early YouTube·nostalgic·Uploaded by jawed

Me at the zoo

You might remember it as Jawed Karim elephants

  • SourceLikely original upload
  • MediaPlayable from the source

The first video uploaded to YouTube; an archive of internet video without it is incomplete by definition.

The story

What this was

Jawed Karim stands in front of the elephant enclosure at San Diego Zoo and says, in nineteen seconds, that the interesting thing about elephants is that they have really long trunks, and that this is cool. His school friend Yakov Lapitsky is holding the camera.

It first appeared in 2005, during early YouTube. Uploaded by jawed.

It is the first video anybody uploaded to YouTube, by one of the three people who built it, and it is a nineteen-second clip of nothing in particular filmed by a friend. Every convention of the medium that followed — the amateur framing, the shrug, the address to camera — is already in it, three weeks before the site opened to anyone else.

Karim has repeatedly edited the video’s description to argue with YouTube’s own decisions, over the Google+ sign-in requirement and again over the removal of dislike counts. The Victoria and Albert Museum acquired it in February 2026.

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The same internet

Early YouTube

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Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.

What we know

Where it came from

High-confidence original source.

View original on YouTube

Earliest known source: YouTube

Created by Jawed Karim. Originally uploaded by jawed. Established by research, not by who posted the copy shown here.

What happens
Jawed Karim stands in front of the elephant enclosure at San Diego Zoo and says, in nineteen seconds, that the interesting thing about elephants is that they have really long trunks, and that this is cool. His school friend Yakov Lapitsky is holding the camera.
When
24 April 2005 on YouTube.
Where
Known on YouTube.
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