“Yeah so we were having a few beers and we started watching videos of footy highlights. Flick passes. Mad tries and stuff like that. Then moved onto a video of this dude doing the sickest beatboxing I’ve ever seen. Then as usual we watched a couple of video clips. Then one thing kind of led to another. And here we are watching two homeless people fighting."
Zac Turton (21) and Elroy Parsons (20) are two fairly good kids. They’re both pretty sporty and outgoing, and have never really given their parents much cause for concern.
Last night, they were tossing up going out for a few drinks at the local. However, at the last minute they changed their minds, and Zac popped round to Elroy’s place for a few beers and a YouTube session.
They alternated video choices, occasionally letting it auto play if the next video looked ok. They started with some of Kalyn Ponga’s Churchie highlights, some videos of crazy AFL goals and some beatboxing videos. They also watched some comedian doing impressions of celebrities and some skateboarding videos. Good, wholesome stuff.
Then at some stage over the next few hours, things went pear-shaped.
They don't remember specifically deciding to go down a darker path, but before they had time to notice it was even happening, their night had taken a turn for the worse.
All of a sudden, they stumbled into UFC territory. Still not a huge concern in and of itself, although that UFC video seemed to act as a gateway video, leading them down a darker path towards various street fights and other assorted explorations of the darker side of human nature.
Zac and Elroy are then a little reluctant to discuss the rest of the night's viewing.
Zac emplains that it wasn't particularly savoury.
"After the fighting videos, we then seemed to end up in some horrible corner of Youtube. A place where everything is weird and awful and you start asking yourself difficult questions about human nature and whatnot. Weird videos of people doing weird inexplicable things that no reasonable person would want to do or see. I don't want to go into specifics, but yeah it's a dark place. I'm not sure why we kept watching."
He said that he's not entirely sure how such a wholesome evening got so weird.
"I don't get it hey. Like we didn't specifically choose that stuff. It's just kind of where we ended up. But yeah we've promised ourselves next time we're gonna keep away from the weird shit. Just stick with sport and music and stuff."
This is a promise they've made themselves before. Youtube is a wild and mysterious beast that is very difficult to tame.