Youtube is one of the biggest platforms where people can upload anything they want with no effort. Videos can vary from vlogging or comedy accounts to skills and sports accounts but there are also a handful of weird videos uploaded when youtube first began. These videos show unsettling clips that portray random puppets or animations with no context.

The first and arguably most famous creepy video on youtube is “The Dining Room or There is Nothing.” With over five million views shows a realistic women puppet sitting in a burning house with soup in front of her. She seems to be mumbling inaudible words and at 16 seconds, her head abruptly drops into the bowl of soup. Her head stays in the bowl for another 30 unsettling seconds. The fire is the only movement in the video while the camera pans out. This video is extremely disturbing and is deemed one of the “top ten scariest videos on youtube.” The creator, David Earle, claims that “When looped, there is no actual beginning or end, and no real sense of where the beginning and end actually are.” I definitely would not recommend the video while you are alone at night.

The next video starts with an abrupt ambient noise and line of text explaining that the video was a tape recording found on an abandoned blue planet in the year 2571. The video is a horrible animation and has some audibly terrifying noise, with a mix of screaming in the background. This video, to me, is even more unsettling than the first because of the futuristic reference and the more anonymity of it. The creator, fividtelefuzzerator, says nothing about it except for in his description. He says, “In 2571, in the pile of cliffs in which the stones are not determined, on a blue planet, this video was found. The fact is that you’re going to see this, you have no connection with this tape.” That is the only context we have for this weird 1 minute 30 second clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqzESY7SIqU

The last collection of videos is Benjamin Bennett’s sitting and smiling series on his Youtube channel. These videos consist of Bennett sitting and smiling at the camera for 4 hours and even sometimes 8. These series of videos are not loops; he sits on the ground and does this for several hours. He also has a total of 300 videos in this collection, which adds up to at least 1200 hours of sitting and creepily staring at his camera. It’s unclear why Bennett makes these videos but there are a couple of theories. The scariest theory, in my opinion, is that he is being held against his will to perform these weird acts in front of the camera. The most likely theory, though, is that it is a form of art called Duration Art. Duration Art is a type of performing art that involves a hardship. Sitting for four hours straight and smiling would definitely consist of being hard. These videos might not seem scary to you but, in one of his many episodes, his house is broken into. Despite this, Bennett remains sitting and smiling at the camera while the door behind him is being opened. Bennett explained that he did not know what to do in the moment and that he was scared but in the end decided that not moving would be his best option. If anyone was scared, I would say breaking into a house only to find a man sitting and smiling at his camera to be a lot more scarier than being the one on the ground.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBsg8DzsvexfaSpA6XLjfY3XWthjjpuNN