Every once in a while, something truly once in a lifetime comes along and you find yourself witness to an event that will never happen again. Unus Annus was one of those events for me, but even that is understating just how much it changed me.
For those who don't know, and for those fortunate enough to only need a reminder, Unus Annus was a YouTube channel and collaborative experiment created by Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nester, better known by the handles Markiplier and CrankGameplays. On November 13th, 2019 the channel was created with the ultimatum that it would only exist for exactly one year. The goal was that Unus Annus would be a truly once in a lifetime experience. Videos on the internet are immortalized forever, near-permanently available to rewatch over and over again. The automatic and easily accessed archival of online experiences means that very few things can ever truly give the experience of witnessing something that happens only once.
At the end of November 13th, 2020, just as promised, Unus Annus ceased to exist. After a twelve hour Livestream starting from 12:00 PM PST, the channel was deleted live on camera at the stroke of midnight. The social media disappeared, and the merchandise was discontinued. I can say with no small amount of bittersweet grief that I was there watching. It was a cathartic experience; it hadn't sunk in until just a couple of weeks before that our time with Unus Annus was coming to an end, but being there with over a million other viewers there to say goodbye together helped me come to terms with it. When the time came and Mark, Ethan, and Amy all pressed the button together I watched as the livestream stopped responding all at once and witnessed the slow disappearance of the channel, one video at a time, until finally YouTube's servers all caught up with the termination order and the page only showed a 404 error.
During the year it was alive, Unus Annus was roudy, absurd, and often pointless in the best way possible. Every video saw Mark and Ethan doing something ridiculous and entertaining, doing anything and everything from learning Chinese archery, to attempting to construct a new dog house for Chica, to running a military obstacle course alongside James Charles, to the infamous "pee sauna" plotline. In keeping with the channel's theme, which involved heavy use of the phrase "memento mori," they sought to make every day as entertaining and well-spent as possible. Even during the 2020 pandemic, when it became impossible for them to film together due to quarantine regulations, they simply sat down in front of their cameras at home and turned it into an era of the channel they jokingly referred to as "quarantannus."
All my descriptions of what their videos were like would fall flat, unfortunately, but I can tell you where to go in order to get the same experience. Mark's channel has a playlist filled with Markiplier Makes videos, collaborations between him, Ethan, and Tyler Scheid, which were in some ways precursors to the absurd at-home episodes, and Ethan recently released a video named "Markiplier Covered Me In His Glue" which would be right at home as an Unus Annus video if it had a little more of the channel imagery.
But for the most authentic experience, in December of 2020, shortly after the channel ended, FootofaFerret posted a tribute to the experience. In that video he describes perfectly the energy behind the channel and creates a short Unus Annus episode of his own. He captured the spirit of the channel better than I can.
Markiplier - Markiplier Makes (Playlist)
CrankGameplays - Markiplier Covered Me In His Glue
FootofaFerret - Pretending Unus Annus Isn't Over
Ultimately though, this isn't just about introducing all of you to a two years dead channel and leaving you grasping for what once was. Perhaps a little selfishly, but hopefully in due respect to the dearly departed, it's also about the impact Unus Annus left on me.
It's not a secret that Unus Annus changed me. Those of you who have already drawn parallels between my capsule's theming and the Unus Annus motto have probably worked out how. Unus Annus taught me that time is fleeting. Nothing lasts forever, and that's simply something we have to come to terms with. One day even the great classics will be gone. No one will ever again perform Shakespeare's plays or listen to Mozart's symphonies, Chess will be a faint memory of a once-great game, and future civilizations will wonder over the magical devices that once powered every aspect of our lives. Like the radio, or the abacus.
But whereas Unus Annus ended with a sense of true finality, I choose to come out the other side with a sense of hope. Even if it's true that everything must pass away one day, that only means it's our responsibility to preserve it for as long as possible. We can archive, restore, and recreate what we're in danger of losing forever and keep it sacred for the next generations, and if that's not possible we can still record the experiences in story. My children will know what a VHS player is, even if they end up never using one. Appreciating the past gives us a foothold to build into the future and a comparison that allows us to marvel over how far we've come. When we climb to the peak of technology, when there's nothing more to improve upon, or simply when we run out of time, it is my fondest hope that we will be able to look back on the history of everything that we've accomplished and appreciate what we have even more because of the things that slowly and surely got us there.
Memento Mori, my friends.
__________________ It's a good day to appreciate what you have. Feel free to send me an email.