> While someone may have spent several hours waiting for a key software installer to download, almost no one would do the same for a video of dubious quality an

> While someone may have spent several hours waiting for a key software installer to download, almost no one would do the same for a video of dubious quality and content, certainly not in the 90s. I vividly remember waiting hours to download a video in the '90s. The Spirit of Christmas short that spawned South Park, and that news story about the exploding whale, were viral videos that predated modern video sites by many years. You'd download it off of an FTP server somewhere. At one point, the majority of my hard drive was devoted to half a dozen videos that I'd show to everyone who came over. Basically, watching a video on your computer felt new and exciting and worth waiting for. I'd never do that today even if I were stuck on a slow pipe, but at the time it was oddly compelling.